#Frank D. Williams

[godsfavoritelitlesilly]

smiley gangg

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Lessons to learn from HBO’s “The Last of Us” and Netflix’s “One Piece” when it comes to making a successful live-action adaptation:

1) Make sure the original creator has a ton of creative control. It’s their story, let them dictate how it should be re-told.

2) The showrunner should be a major fan of the original. In general, get writers and directors who are fully committed to doing the source material justice since they’re fans of it.

3) Doesn’t have to be 100% faithful. Changes are fine if it doesn’t hurt the overall story and actually improves on the original. For example, (SPOILER ALERT) Bill’s storyline in TLOU was overhauled completely, which was considered an improvement. And based on what I read from One Piece fans, Buggy the Clown was done better in live action and Zoro was set up better since the show used a scene that wasn’t in the anime or manga (the Mr. 7 stuff was apparently off-screen).

4) Casting is always key, but doesn’t have to be completely perfect. What’s important is that the actors understand their assignments. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey don’t exactly look like Joel and Ellie (Pedro even has a different accent) but they make up for it with their chemistry and understanding of their characters. Meanwhile, I feel that’s it’s generally agreed that the cast for the Straw Hats Pirates captured the spirit of the characters, even with the minor changes that were made.

5) If you’re adding original content, make sure it adds to the story. For example, the already mentioned Mr. 7 scene and Frank actually being present during Bill’s storyline.

[funshinebf]

hello trigun fandom. vashwood Aristocats au. that is all

[pedroam-bang]

Day Of Days - Band Of Brothers (2001)

[jeffcross5000]

[thebutcher-5]

Giù per il tubo

Benvenuti o bentornati sul nostro blog. Nello scorso articolo abbiamo ripreso a parlare sia di cinema sia di animazione e abbiamo preso in esame la DreamWorks con il loro 13° lungometraggio animato, La gang del bosco. RJ è un procione che cercando di rubare il cibo a un orso finisce per distruggerlo. L’orso gli da un’ultima possibilità: in una settimana dovrà recuperare tutto quel cibo o lo…

[denimbex1986]

'By now, we’ve all pretty much seen Oppenheimer, either by itself or as part of Barbenheimer mania, and the Christopher Nolan movie is being touted as his best yet by critics and audiences everywhere. Much has been said about it in the way of its seemingly progressive stance on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cruelty of the U.S. Military, and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s own complicated morality.

But is it really that progressive? Not really. As we’ve written before, many Japanese people were already pretty uncomfortable with the film. It leaves out crucial information about WW2 conditions between Japan and the United States that makes an otherwise unambiguous historical event muddled with contradictions.

Make no mistake: The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was willful genocide against a non-white population. We have ample historical evidence to back this up. According to Foreign Policy (and as mentioned in the film), Japan was on the cusp of surrender anyway. Resource-starved and up against multiple enemies (the Soviets were pushing aggressively), the Japanese government was only against unconditional surrender, as it meant Japan becoming colonized by Western powers (which happened anyway after the war).

Some higher-ups were also against the bomb. William D. Leahy, who was an American naval officer at the time, wrote in his memoir I Was There, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.” According to Origins at Ohio State University, Dwight D. Eisenhower was firmly against the bomb, writing to Secretary of War Henry Stimson in July 1945, “First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

Despite all of this, there are still way too many people clinging hard to the myth that the Japanese deserved the nukes. What’s so frustrating about the film Oppenheimer is that it hardly cares about this part of history. At most, the argument against using the bombs in the film is presented as a brief line or two, particularly when Oppenheimer says, “We bombed a defeated enemy.”

In contrast, there are numerous arguments in favor of the bomb that aren’t given proper rebuttal. Oppenheimer shuts down the idea of a measly demonstration blast, opting instead for the total annihilation of a city. What follows is a series of logical assumptions and risk-aversion, like the possibility of the bomb being a dud or the Japanese shooting the plane down. These counter-arguments are given the weight of reason and science and exist in ample number throughout the film. The few arguments against this are all framed haphazardly as an appeal to emotion, and in a film glamorizing science and discovery, empathy is the underdog.

As Mother Jones points out, many of the objections to the bomb that existed back in the 1940s are non-existent on screen. When one of President Harry Truman’s advisers raises doubt and concern about using such a weapon, he is immediately shut down and told that the Japanese won’t ever surrender. Nolan relies on the tragedy of a single scientist as the film’s only meager criticism of the bombing, someone who was “just doing his job.” But this isn’t enough. We need more than Cillian Murphy’s thousand-yard stare for such an incredibly sensitive historical event.

The film is more interested in making a victim of Oppenheimer, a martyr fraught with guilt over his actions. In reality, he was much closer to that of a spoiled rich kid who didn’t do much to reckon with his sins. As Vox writes, Oppenheimer spent much of his days enjoying a cushy director job at the Institute for Advanced Study, along with more than enough money and land to do with in one lifetime. Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank Oppenheimer, devoted his life to activism to a degree that J. Robert never did.

The focus of sympathy is entirely through the eyes of a wealthy white man. Viewers are not privy to the internal lives of the Japanese, nor do you play witness to the mass murder of them. In what is arguably the most haunting moment of the film, Oppenheimer gives a victory speech before a crowd of Americans, after the bombs have been dropped. He says, “If only we’d had it ready in time to use on the Germans,” the sound cuts out to silence, a single scream breaks through the room, and everything turns to white light. The people before him start turning to ash.

It’s a horrifying image; he has woken a monster and there’s no turning back. One problem: It wasn’t white Americans who were subjected to nuclear annihilation. The great failure of this scene is shifting attention from the fascist war crime just committed on foreign land to the idea of “this could happen to white people someday.” It’s a common sleight-of-hand done by white directors who prioritize the emotions of whiteness over the brutalization of the other. This limited view was somewhat baked into Oppenheimer from the start, with Christopher Nolan even writing the screenplay in the first person from Oppenheimer’s point of view. While that specificity of focus may explain (and to some viewers, justify) some of the limitations, it’s still worth critiquing Nolan’s choice that this story should be told, by him, from this perspective.

Many people have taken the film’s ruthless portrayal of McCarthy-era U.S. government as proof of critique, but this is complicated. The average film viewer can accept two “truths” at once: McCarthyist witch hunts are wrong, and Japan wasn’t going to surrender. There is no natural cause-and-effect linking human rights violations to the nukes in the film. Those who buy into this myth are probably against McCarthyism, segregation, and disenfranchisement. That’s why it’s the responsibility of the director to take extra care when making stories about history.

The film does not take this responsibility, nor does it shake the central narrative that dominates the frame. Oppenheimer’s personal struggle during his security clearance hearings does nothing to fight back against the message of “the bomb was terrible but necessary.” Ask yourself this: Why are we more concerned with the feelings of those who helped America do unspeakably horrible war crimes than the actual victims?

And this, perhaps, might be a failure of form. Biopics centered around the instigators, with their stories told by white men, are hardly the best vehicle to tell a story of imperial bloodlust and genocide. There’s no room for anything but the internal demons of “great” white men.'

[graphicpolicy]

Fall of X, G.O.D.S., Ultimate Invasion, and more in Marvel's Free Comic Book Day titles

Fall of X, G.O.D.S., Ultimate Invasion, and more in Marvel's Free Comic Book Day titles #marvel #fcbd #freecomicbookday #fcbd2023

This year’s Free Comic Book Day will be packed with new beginnings including a prelude to the X-Men’s next era, Fall ofF X; an introduction to Jonathan Hickman’s bold upcoming projects, G.O.D.S. with Valerio Schiti and Ultimate Invasion with Bryan Hitch; the debut of a new Venom villain, and so much more. In addition to these exciting lead-in stories for fans and newcomers alike, Marvel Comics…

[rockpaperscissuhs]

Band of Brothers Birthdays

January

1 John S. Zielinski Jr. (b. 1925)

21 Richard D. “Dick” Winters (b. 1918)

26 Herbert M. Sobel (b. 1912)

30 Clifford Carwood "Lip" Lipton (b. 1920)

31 Warren H. “Skip” Muck (b. 1922) & Robert B. Brewer (b. 1924)

February

8 Clarence R. Hester (b. 1916)

18 Thomas A. Peacock (b. 1920)

23 Lester A. “Les” Hashey (b. 1925)

March

1 Charles E. “Chuck” Grant (b. 1922)

2 Colonel Robert L. “Bob” Strayer (b. 1910)

4 Wayne “Skinny” Sisk (b. 1922)

10 Frank J. Perconte (b. 1917)

13 Darrell C. “Shifty” Powers (b. 1923)

14 Joseph J. “Joe” Toye (b. 1919)

24 John D. “Cowboy” Halls (b. 1922)

26 George Lavenson (b. 1917) & George H. Smith Jr. (1922)

27 Gerald J. Loraine (b. 1913)

April

3 Colonel Robert F. “Bob” Sink (b. 1905) & Patrick S. “Patty” O’Keefe (b. 1926)

5 John T. “Johnny” Julian (b. 1924)

10 Renée B. E. Lemaire (b. 1914)

11 James W. Miller (b. 1924)

15 Walter S. “Smokey” Gordon Jr. (b. 1920)

20 Ronald C. “Sparky” Speirs (b. 1920)

23 Alton M. More (b. 1920)

27 Earl E. “One Lung” McClung (b. 1923) & Henry S. “Hank” Jones Jr. (b. 1924)

28 William J. “Wild Bill” Guarnere (b. 1923)

May

12 John W. “Johnny” Martin (b. 1922)

16 Edward J. “Babe” Heffron (b. 1923)

17 Joseph D. “Joe” Liebgott (b. 1915)

19 Norman S. Dike Jr. (b. 1918) & Cleveland O. Petty (b. 1924)

25 Albert L. "Al" Mampre (b. 1922)

June

2 David K. "Web" Webster (b. 1922)

6 Augusta M. Chiwy ("Anna") (b. 1921)

13 Edward D. Shames (b. 1922)

17 George Luz (b. 1921)

18 Roy W. Cobb (b. 1914)

23 Frederick T. “Moose” Heyliger (b. 1916)

25 Albert Blithe (b. 1923)

28 Donald B. "Hoob" Hoobler (b. 1922)

July

2 Gen. Anthony C. "Nuts" McAuliffe (b. 1898)

7 Francis J. “Frank” Mellet (b. 1920)

8 Thomas Meehan III (b. 1921)

9 John A. Janovec (b. 1925)

10 Robert E. “Popeye” Wynn (b. 1921)

16 William S. Evans (b. 1910)

20 James H. “Moe” Alley Jr. (b. 1922)

23 Burton P. “Pat” Christenson (b. 1922)

29 Eugene E. Jackson (b. 1922)

31 Donald G. "Don" Malarkey (b. 1921)

August

3 Edward J. “Ed” Tipper (b. 1921)

10 Allen E. Vest (b. 1924)

15 Kenneth J. Webb (b. 1920)

18 Jack E. Foley (b. 1922)

26 Floyd M. “Tab” Talbert (b. 1923) & General Maxwell D. Taylor (b. 1901)

29 Joseph A. Lesniewski (b. 1920)

31 Alex M. Penkala Jr. (b. 1924)

September

3 William H. Dukeman Jr. (b. 1921)

11 Harold D. Webb (b. 1925)

12 Major Oliver M. Horton (b. 1912)

27 Harry F. Welsh (b. 1918)

30 Lewis “Nix” Nixon III (b. 1918)

October

5 Joseph “Joe” Ramirez (b. 1921) & Ralph F. “Doc” Spina (b. 1919) & Terrence C. "Salty" Harris (b. 1920)

6 Leo D. Boyle (b. 1913)

10 William F. “Bill” Kiehn (b. 1921)

15 Antonio C. “Tony” Garcia (b. 1924)

17 Eugene G. "Doc" Roe (b. 1922)

21 Lt. Cl. David T. Dobie (b. 1912)

28 Herbert J. Suerth Jr. (b. 1924)

31 Robert "Bob" van Klinken (b. 1919)

November

11 Myron N. “Mike” Ranney (b. 1922)

20 Denver “Bull” Randleman (b. 1920)

December

12 John “Jack” McGrath (b. 1919)

31 Lynn D. “Buck” Compton (b. 1921)

Unknown Date

Joseph P. Domingus

Richard J. Hughes (b. 1925)

Maj. Louis Kent

Father John Mahoney

George C. Rice

SOURCES

Military History Fandom Wiki

Band of Brothers Fandom Wiki

Traces of War

Find a Grave

[apazmackpie]

Happy birthday, Martin Freeman!! 🥳

53 years old, 53 characters he played.

I finished on time!! But sadly it's not as detailed as i wanted at first. :(

Anyway, if you wanna know who is who, i'll let you all the names under the cut.

From left to right and top to bottom:

Ricky Beck, "Casualty" (1998)

Frank, "I just want to kiss you" (1998)

Jaap, "Lock, stock" (2000)

Jamie, "Men only" (2001)

Ricky-C, "Ali G indahouse" (2002)

D. S. Stringer, "Margery and Gladys" (2003)

John/Jack, "Love, actually" (2003)

Tim Canterbury, "The Office" (2001-2003)

Mike, "Hardware" (2003-2004)

Declan, "Shaun of the Dead" (2004)

Kevin, "Call register" (2004) and "Rubbish" (2007)

Vila, "Blake's Junction 7" (2005)

Arthur Dent, "Hittchiker's guide to the galaxy" (2005)

Ed Robinson, "The Robinsons" (2005)

Matt Norris, "Confetti" (2005)

Sandy Hoffman, "Breaking and Entering" (2006)

Jeremy, "Dedication" (2007

Gary Shaller, "The good night" (2007)

Sergeant, "Hot Fuzz" (2007)

Pig, "Lonely hearts" (2007)

Chris Ashworth, "The all together" (2007)

Rembrandt van Rijn, "Nightwatching" (2007)

Mr. Codlin, "The old curiosity shop" (2007)

Danny Reed, "Boy meets Girl" (2009)

Chris Curry, "Micro Men" (2009)

Paul Maddens, "Nativity!" (2009)

Hector Dixon, "Wild target" (2010)

John Watson, "Sherlock" (2010-2017)

Clive Buckle, "The girl is mime" (2010)

Alvin Finkel, "Swinging with the Finkels" (2011)

Simon Forrester, "What's your number?" (2011)

Dr. Williams, "The Voorman problem" (2011)

Pirate with a scarf/Number Two, "Pirates!" (2012)

Albert, "Animals" (2012)

Bilbo Baggins, "The Hobbit trilogy" (2012-2014)

Don, "Svengali" (Movie from 2013 and series from 2009)

Oliver Chamberlain, "The world's end" (2013)

Lester Nygaard, "Fargo" (2014)

Milton Frutchman, "The Eichmann show" (2015)

Steve Marriot, "Midnight of my life" (2015)

Iain MacKelpie, "Whiskey tango foxtrot" (2016)

Everett Ross, "Captain America: Civil War" (2016), "Black Panther" (2018), "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" (2022), "Secret Invasion" (2023)

Phil Rask, "StartUp" (2016-2017)

Michael Priddle, "Ghost Stories" (2017)

Andy Rose, "Cargo" (2017)

Thomas, "The operative" (2019)

Charlie Green, "Ode to joy" (2019)

Stephen Fulcher, "A confession" (2019)

Paul Worsley, "Breeders" (2020-2023)

Harold Wallach, "Angelyne" (2022)

Chris Carson, "The responder" (2022-2024)

Jonathan Miller, "Miller's Girl" (2024)

Richard III, from the theather play with the same name. (2014)

[val-cansalute]

Summary: If there’s one person in this entire world who could leave your emotions in utter disarray, it’s your roommate, Ellie fucking Williams. On one hand, your wholehearted hatred for her is very much clear cut; she is loud almost every night, leaves clusters of garbage and stacks of plates that should’ve been washed days ago around the apartment, goes out of her way to piss you off because it’s entertaining to watch you scramble for another shitty comeback, and has zero regard for your comfort whatsoever. But on the other hand, when she appears in your doorway, you have to suppress the instinctive upwards tug of your lips, even when she’s teasing, you’re holding back a giggle, the way she looks at you makes your stomach flutter, and there are moments when she almost shows too much regard for your comfort, when you can’t help but acknowledge that she might feel a similar flutter in her stomach that draws her to come to your room to watch you scramble for a comeback. Moments like now, when you’re feeling under the weather, and Ellie is quick to help.

ch. 1 -

She’s at it again; the usual shenanigans, though, this time, your response is a little lacklustre. Maybe, even to the point of concern, so she checks your temperature, to your absolute shock, and loses her shit.

ch. 2 -

This chapter includes smut.

The day that follows, you’ve recovered, much to your dismay, and a wave of confusion overcomes you following a night of unexpected intimacy. Also, you’re out of milk, and a bunch of other shit, so time for a supermarket run with Ellie.

ch. 3 -

This chapter contains smut.

It’s been a week since you and Ellie fucked, and out of all the reactions you could’ve had, you had the worst possible one. It’s been radio silence, complete avoidance, and nothing but horrifying for Ellie. She’s upset, you’re upset, you need to make up.

bonus -

Oh, how the tables have turned.

playlist:

[hotvintagepoll]

this is a poll for a movie that doesn't exist.

It is vintage times. The powers that be have decided to again remake the classic vampire novel Dracula for the screen. in an amazing show of inter-studio solidarity, Hollywood’s most elite hotties are up for the starring roles. the producers know whoever they cast will greatly impact the genre, quality, and tone of the finished film, so they are turning to their wisest voices for guidance.

you are the new casting director for this star-studded epic. choose your players wisely.

Previously cast:

Jonathan Harker—Jimmy Stewart

The Old Woman—Martita Hunt

Count Dracula—Gloria Holden

Mina Murray—Setsuko Hara

Lucy Westenra—Judy Garland (rip)

The Three Voluptuous Women—Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, and Lauren Bacall

The Agonized Mother—Mary Philbin (rip)

Dr. Jack Seward—Vincent Price

Quincey P. Morris—Toshiro Mifune

Arthur Holmwood—Sidney Poitier

R.M. Renfield—Conrad Veidt

The Captain of the Demeter—Omar Sharif (rip)

The First Mate of the Demeter—Leonard Nimoy (rip)

Mr. Swales—Ed Wynn (rip)

The Correspondent for The Daily Graph—Ethel Waters

Dracula in dog form—Frank Oz with a puppet

Sister Agatha—Angela Lansbury

Mrs. Westenra—Gladys Cooper (rip)

Dracula's solicitors—Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee

Dr. Van Helsing—Orson Welles

Thomas Bilder, zookeeper—Lon Chaney Jr.

Thomas Bilder's wife—Elsa Lanchester

The Reporter from the Pall Mall Gazette—Hattie McDaniel

Dr. Hennessey works for Dr. Seward at the insane asylum and had a very eventful day, including spying on the neighbors, chasing after an escaped Renfield, and bribing some men who were dropping off some completely innocent boxes of dirt, recently shipped from Transylvania, at the house next door.

[xxmargarettexx]

...Remember my post about how Mr. D could have called Leo 'Louis Vuitton'?

...Percy could have been Pet Jar (PJ), Annabeth could have been Air Conditioner (AC), Luke could have been Lady Cruella (LC), Will could have been William Shakespeare (WS), Piper could have been Private Message (PM), Frank could have been Fried Zucchini (FZ), Kayla could have been Kim Kardashian (KK), Jason could have been Jello Grapes (JG), Reyna could have been Revolutionary Anti-Racist Action (RARA), Lester could have been Luigi's Pineapple (LP) and Hazel could have been Hearing Loss (HL) (It's ridiculous, why is my thought process like this)😭

(I'm sorry this was what I was thinking of instead of sleeping) (Prob edit this later when I get more ideas)

[tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons]

Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

[prettyoddfever]

the Fever-era clothes I actually remember

I can dump pieces that I do remember here since I've been getting several questions about clothes lately, but it's not like I was actively trying to track down what the guys wore back then. This post is mostly going to be stuff that I happened to recognize while roaming malls with friends or browsing online. So it's not going to include the normal dressy clothes the band wore onstage, even if their stuff was from Hot Topic or the women's section of Express because I was absolutely never looking at that style lol. So this is going to be rather limited...

I think this hat was from Urban Outfitters:

Brendon's purple bracelet that he seemed to never take off was from Border's and said "reading is magic."

Brendon, Ryan, & Jon wore a ton of American Apparel tshirts in summer 2006.... they seriously looked like they’d raided an American Apparel before going on tour. Brendon also had the women's hoodie in lavender, pink, and green:

Ryan's sneakers were part of the whole Pharrell Williams BBC Ice Cream thing with Reebok:

Brendon's shoes in the pic above were the Valentine's edition Nike Air Force 1 with the heart on the back side:

this was a Love for Sale hoodie from the women’s section of Urban Outfitters:

Spencer wore a lot of Morphine Generation. Both Spencer and Ryan are wearing that brand in these pics:

I thought Brendon's red glasses looked like Paul Frank, but some other fans thought they were Versace, so idk for sure.

Ryan had several Louis Vuitton belts & bags as 2006 progressed. I'll also use this pic to mention that I heard his hat was from Lids and the scarf was from Diesel:

Jon’s wearing merch from their opening band (The Sounds):

These women's Frye engineer boots that Brendon wore during the NRWC season were sold at Urban Outfitters and I wanted them so badly:

Brendon also had the plaid Pendleton Vans in fall 2006 (he had other plaid Vans too but I liked these best):

(obvs Spencer's sneakers in that pic are D&G).

ok that's what I can think of for right now

[sparkliest-bard-bracket]

Congratulations to ✨FREDDIE MERCURY✨ for being crowned the ✨SPARKLIEST BARD✨ in all the land!!!!

🎶HE. IS. THE CHAMPION. 🎶

Over the course of this bracket, he has faced off against many worthy bards, including an inter-dimensional storyteller, multiple irl musical artists, an immortal musically talented war criminal, and a muppet, and he proved himself to be the most sparkliest of them all.

Excellent singing, excellent piano playing, excellent songwriting, excellent fashion sense, and overall ~glamour~, Freddie Mercury has it all. Here are some of my favorite of Freddie's bardly moments, and feel free to reblog and add your own to celebrate our Bardly Champion!:

And to honor Freddie Mercury's wonderful legacy, I present my favorite Bohemian Rhapsody video ever -- he didn't even need to be alive to have a concert!:

And while we celebrate and throw a Queen-themed party for our Champion of Bards, do not forget to give a round of applause to all of the incredible bards who participated in this bardly showdown!! You can find all of their names and fandoms, along with the full completed bracket under the cut :D

That's all from me for now, folks!! I may make a poll for 3rd place if people are interested, and if people are very enthusiastic, I might make a round 2: fictional characters only! Lemme know if you'd be interested in either of those things, and thank you oh so much for your support through this whole bracket, and have a wonderful day all you fantastic bards and bard fans!!!

Complete Bracket in image format:

And the names and fandoms of all of our bards from the whole bracket!:

Jareth the Goblin King (Labyrinth)

David Bowie (Real Life)

Thom Merrilin (Wheel of Time)

Gurney Halleck (Dune)

The Bard/Kiwi (Wandersong)

Daeron (The Silmarillion)

Callie Cuttlefish (Splatoon)

Finrod (The Silmarillion)

Apollo/Lester Papadopoulos (The Trials of Apollo)

Apollo (Greek Mythology)

Bill Cypher (Gravity Falls)

Chong (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Max Rebo (Star Wars)

Edgin Darvis (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves)

Dimentio (Super Paper Mario)

Will Scarlet (Robin Hood)

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem (The Muppets)

Link (The Legend of Zelda)

Katalina (Tabletop Time)

Starling Birdsong (Realm of the Elderlings)

Orpheus (Greek Mythology)

“Weird Al” Yankovic (Real Life)

Dave BruBot/The Major Player (Toontown: Corporate Clash)

Carrie Wilson (Julie and the Phantoms)

Kvothe (The Kingkiller Chronicle)

Elan (Order of the Stick)

Raz'ul, Son of Daz'ul (BomBARDed)

Edward Chris von Muir (Final Fantasy IV)

Binary Bard (Poptropica)

Christian (Moulin Rouge)

The Bard (Shovel Knight)

Fflewddur Fflam (The Chronicles of Prydain)

Man with the Harmonica (Once Upon a Time in the West)

Kyoami/The Fool (Ran/King Lear)

Diedrich Knickerbocker (Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story)

Hannah Montana (Hannah Montana)

Bard the Bowman (The Hobbit)

Leliana (Dragon Age)

Sprig Plantar (Amphibia)

Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer)

Neil Banging Out the Tunes (Tumblr)

The Muses (Disney Hercules)

Robinton (Pern)

Thistle/Sissel (Delicious in Dungeon)

Loquatius Seelie (Critical Role)

Cicero (Skyrim)

Michael Jackson (Real Life)

Oli/TheOrionSound (Empires SMP)

Megamind (Megamind)

The Onceler (The Lorax)

Mettaton (Undertale)

Gamzee Makara (Homestuck)

William Shakespeare (Real Life)

William Shakespeare (Something Rotten)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Classicaloid)

William Shamspeare (Ace Attorney)

Marceline the Vampire Queen (Adventure Time)

Brook (One Piece)

Gerard Way (Real Life)

Sea Hawk (She-Ra and the Princess of Power)

Snufkin (Moomin)

Frank Sinatra (Real Life)

Lias "Cliff" Bluestone (Discworld)

Rick Astley (Real Life)

Alan-a-Dale (Robin Hood)

Essi Daven (The Witcher)

Lúthien Tinúviel (The Silmarillion)

Stefen (The Heralds of Valdemar)

Roman Sanders (Sanders Sides)

Remus Sanders (Sanders Sides)

Bard (Crypt of the Necrodancer)

Kass (Legend of Zelda/Breath of the Wild)

Steven Universe (Steven Universe)

Glenn Close (Dungeons & Daddies)

Miss Piggy (The Muppets)

Nydas Okiro (Critical Role)

Charlie Pace (Lost)

Dob the Half-Orc Bard (Oxventure)

Kitagra (Kings of the Wyld)

Kaylie Shorthalt (Critical Role)

Father Gabriel (The Mission)

Gabrielle the Battling Bard (Xena: The Warrior Princess)

Haer'Dalis (Baldur's Gate)

Tsukasa Tenma (Project Sekai: Colorful Stage!)

Tom Bombadil (The Lord of the Rings)

Sylvando (Dragon Quest 11)

Steve McKenzie/Jester (Galavant)

Gieve (The Heroic Legend of Arslan)

Jaskier/Dandelion (The Witcher)

Kubo (Kubo and the Two Strings)

Guiliastes/Gui (1/2 Prince)

Rocky (Lackadaisy)

Asmodean (Wheel of Time)

Neil Cicierega/Lemon Demon (Real Life)

Kermit the Bard (Tales of Tinkerdee)

The Pied Piper (The Pied Piper of Hamelin)

Venti (Genshin Impact)

Sir Robin's Minstrels (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming)

Franz Liszt (Classicaloid)

Eddie Munson (Stranger Things)

Puss in Boots (Shrek)

Freddie Mercury (Real Life)

Hoid/Wit (Cosmere)

Noise (Roleslaying with Roman)

The Amazing Devil (Real Life)

Klavier Gavin (Ace Attorney)

Rickety Stitch (Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo)

Ron Stampler (Dungeons & Daddies)

Thancred Waters (Final Fantasy XIV)

Raine Whispers (The Owl House)

Jack Black (Real Life)

Scanlan Shorthalt (Critical Role)

Éile (The Witcher: Blood Origin)

Hap Gladheart (Realm of the Elderlings)

Alastair Nobledrifter (Saving Throw - DnD Podcast)

Maglor (The Silmarillion)

Bill & Ted (Bill & Ted)

DJ Cadence (Club Penguin)

Imp Y Celyn (Discworld)

Bard Otter (The Last Dragonlord)

Yara of Nowhere, the Wandering Bard (A Practical Guide to Evil)

Dorian Storm (Critical Role)

Maria von Trapp (The Sound of Music)

Demyx (Kingdom Hearts)

Hisirdoux "Douxie" Casperan (Tales of Arcadia: Wizards)

Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit)

BMO (Adventure Time)