#I had to go back to their book and look at what happened in 2002/2003

[saucylittlesmile]

While I was researching at @sunskate’s costume question, I ended up on this YouTube channel. The uploader has got an amazing, astounding variety of old skating events. While it is possible that I have seen videos from them before, I don’t recall them off the top of my head - and the quality is great too. Meanwhile, although I have seen these skates before, it is always interesting to see them as a whole rather than just the program. For someone like me who always enjoyed even the small moments on broadcasts beyond the competitive skate, a whole show like this can be a bit of a gold mine.

This particular video doesn’t actually feature V/M. It is a broadcast that they aired it for a while that highlighted the gold medallists at the novice and junior levels, and as we saw from the 2001 edition*, sometimes the earlier levels too. In the 2002 season, V/M were competing as novices, and according to their book, they had a fall in their competition which ultimately left them in third place. As such, their skate is not highlighted here as the show only made room for the gold medalists. However, if you watch the opening credits you will see V/M in a small snippet of their free dance that year. I don’t recall ever getting a video of that dance, and certainly this does not give us any real inkling of it; however, it spoke volumes to me that the bronze medallists were still promising enough, that they made it into that sequence.

*Previously, I had only ever seen edited versions, whereas this is the entire episode, though VM are only in a small section. I always seem to forget just how much younger and tinier they were than their competition in the early years. 😂

[kunaigirl]

Hello! I just came across your epilepsy awareness/information post on my dash, and I wanted to ask you something about it if that's alright. You mentioned that having seizures as a kid made you forget alot of stuff and you had to relearn how to read as a 9-10 y/o. Can I ask about that? What was it like? Did things come back to you over time or was it a square one thing? Where you ever held back a grade? I'm not trying to be nosy, I'm just honestly very curious because I've never heard of something like that. I don't have epilepsy so I don't know (but I learned lots from your post and the links you included). I've asked one of my friends who does have it and he said stuff like that can happen but we don't know anyone who has irl. If it's not ok you can ignore this message. I don't want to make you upset, I'm just super curious about what it was like to experience.

Sorry I sat on this for a few days, I've been thinking of how to respond to it. First of all, thank you for asking so politely, that gesture alone means a lot. Anyways, it's ok to ask about it, I don't mind. It's a very alienating experience that had such a heavy impact on my core development, I've always felt really alone and even embarrassed by it. Maybe talking about it can help someone else feel less alone/traumatized. (Long read ahead)

I don't remember a lot of what lead up to when the memories vanished, but I know (from what my mom's told me that my doctors told her) that it was a fucked up reaction to the combination of the dose of medication I was on and the seizures I still kept having despite being on said does. This was back in 2001-2002. I started the process of re-learning from square one in 2003 as a home schooled 3rd grader. It didn't stick and I had to start all over again a few times, and I was still in the process of relearning from 2004-2005, which is when I was 9-10 years old. Also it wasn't just reading, it was writing too.

From what I've gathered, I had a bad enough case of epilepsy where the child meds weren't working, so they had me on a low dose of an adult medication instead, Starting at age 6. There was no way I was making it out of that without complications. I don't remember if I just woke up one day without any memory of how to read, or if it was a slower process of forgetting over a period of days. It's all way too blurry. The school district didn't want to deal with such a personalized learning program for just one kid, so I was home schooled.

What I DO remember was how much time I would spend crying. I KNEW that I learned how to read already, I KNEW I went to school with all the other kids and passed all the tests/etc. I recognized the covers of books I HAD read, and even remembered what was in them, but the words themselves were completely foreign. Gone.

It was like looking at a copy of a book you already read, but it's a different language. You know what's in it, but you don't know what words or symbols you're looking at. I knew this was the language I knew, the one I was speaking. It was ripped away from me, and I felt so stupid. Being told I wasn't going back to school because of it made me feel like a freak. You never feel like more of a freak than when you're 8 years old, struggling your ASS off to read "Cat in the Hat" It hurt in ways I wouldn't wish on anyone. The word "shame" doesn't even begin to cover it. It all felt so damn heavy.

People at the library or books stores would chime in and say "Oh! You don't want that BABY book do you? What about this one instead?" And I would take what they handed me, smile until they left, and then I'd put it down and run to go cry in the public bathroom. I couldn't read what they suggested. I was so furious with myself, it always happened. When we moved out of state in 2006 (6th grade) the schools were more willing to work with me privately, so I was back in public school once again.

From that point on, I was relearning with tutors and teachers in total secret. I hid all of these struggles from my middle school friends because I was horrified how they'd react if they knew about my struggles. Middle school was already fucked up enough. The books I'd carry around that I was "reading for fun" around them were always decoys. I had medical paperwork (IEP documents) that required ALL classes to give me extra time for tests and book reports by law.

Even though my hard work DID pay off and I (obviously) learned how to read and write again, I didn't feel "comfortable" reading until probably age 14. On top of ALL THAT I also developed dyslexia, and I also already had ADHD too. So, it's STILL a struggle sometimes. It's just something I have to live with. I still to this day read really slowly, like, it takes me months to finish one book slowly, but goddamn it, I'm still fucking reading.

I'm 28 years old now, it's been a long time since then. It was a part of my life I was forced by circumstances to experience, and it took a TON of extra hard work just to get to where I am now. I want to give myself some credit for that, and I will NEVER let myself feel ashamed of this struggle ever again. If anyone out there had any experience even remotely similar to this, I see you. I see how strong you are. Keep your head up, and keep reading.

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

When a Weird Dream from 2004 Links Two Disparate Things...

Around July of 2004, I had this strange-ass dream that has kinda stuck with me...

I was going to turn 12 in a few months. It started with my parents somehow leaving me behind in a grocery store after it closed. For some reason, Meg Griffin from FAMILY GUY was there, as was... I think her name was "Fanny"? from CODENAME: KIDS NEXT DOOR. I forget what number... Erm, NUMBUH... she was, but she was the bossy redhead with that shrill voice. (Not googling, because it's fun to write this as I'm remembering it.) They were both there for some reason, as dreams often tend to do. Throw in something or someone totally unrelated to the situation... Like that time I had that dream where I was at a casino, Metallica was having a concert, and Dr. Fauci of all people was someone I bumped into there.

Then I was going through books in one section, and happened upon...

A THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE picture book. As in a book made a little after the show came out in the U.S., the illustrations were painted and hand-drawn, but were show-accurate with all the right details. Like, for anyone who happens to be reading this who hasn't seen anything from the series prior to 2010... For the longest time, THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE was made using remote-control model trains on immaculately-crafted real-life sets... And some picture books replicated that quite well. This book from the dream was kinda similar to the '90s picture books from Random House/Please Read to Me.

Now, THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE was a hyperfixation of mine when I was a kid. Like, one of my prime special interests from age 6 to around 8-ish, then I dropped it for a bit, likely thinking it was all "babyish" or whatever for a third/fourth grader to be watching. Then around 5th grade, at age 10, I slipped back into it for some reason. Might've been because the new season dropped at the time (2002), and new characters came about, and back then, I was still like "Yeah, I like Thomas." It was the first new season of the show since 1998, and the only new Thomas stuff we got between both of those seasons was the especially weird theatrical movie THOMAS AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD. And that revisiting of THOMAS was a rather short one, and then by age 10 1/2 I was past it once more... But it continued to linger in subtle ways, because deep down I knew that show actually kinda freakin' ruled.

So now it's mid-2004, it's been about a year and a half since I actually watched a Thomas episode or looked at anything pertaining to that whole franchise spawned by Reverend Wilbert Awdry's legendary book series. I'm trapped in a supermarket that has closed, yet many lights are still on, but it's like mood-lighting almost. Soothing and kinda reassuring. And two cartoon characters from two shows I was watching *a lot* back in the day were there. FAMILY GUY was being re-run on [adult swim] and TBS at the time, after FOX had cancelled the show. These re-runs from 2003-04 were what brought the show a whole new fanbase, which in turn helped get FOX to renew the show for a fourth season that debuted in May 2005, and then it was unstoppable since then. I can kinda proudly say that I was at the forefront of FAMILY GUY's revival, I watched it almost every night, because it was edgy and cool for 10-12 year old me to put on after everyone was asleep. And as for CODENAME: KIDS NEXT DOOR? I watched it constantly, among many other shows being aired on Cartoon Network at the time. Cartoon Network practically raised me, so- I can only imagine why Meg and Fanny, of all characters, were there in the dream.

I come upon this illustrated picture book based on the THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE television series, and it gets my eye because... It features Thomas on the cover with a character that *never* appeared in the TV series proper. The character was known as "Diesel D199", a nameless bully diesel who showed up in the 1968 book ENTERPRISING ENGINES, and only appears in one of its four stories.

That story, 'Super Rescue', was never adapted into an episode of THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE... But I knew the character because toys of him existed, and he was unusual in that he had a yellow face while all the other characters on the show had grayish-white faces. This is likely because a lot of the diesel characters in the original book series didn't have gray-white faces, like the steam engines largely did. Characters like Daisy, BoCo, and the green bully diesel from 'Bowled Out' had gray-white faces in the show, but not in the books. Since Diesel D199 didn't show up in the series, the companies making the merchandise just used his yellow book illustration face. As a kid, who was only familiar with the show and not the books, that had always puzzled me.

The book cover depicted him and Thomas going up Gordon's Hill, smiling at each other. I was unaware that he was an antagonist in the books, as the merchandise usually depicted him with a friendly smiling face. The title of the book was "Diesel Do It Again", maybe this was so because my brain was recalling the Season 3 episode "Diesel DOES It Again" - featuring the character simply named "Diesel", an episode largely set on the seaside.

Which brings me to the next thing I want to talk about...

The Beach Boys.

One of my all-time favorite musical groups. I had known of this group since I was a small kid, because my mother owned the 1995 greatest hits compilation 20 GOOD VIBRATIONS, so I know a few of their iconic hits. Then, while spending days and nights at a beach house that my dad would rent at the time, I had my brain chemistry altered... When my dad bought a 30-song compilation called SOUNDS OF SUMMER: THE VERY BEST OF THE BEACH BOYS... That compilation opened with 'California Girls', and my mind was *blown*...

The collection contained several hits from their fruitful early period, all the hit songs off of PET SOUNDS, and a scattered mess of tracks from 1967-1969 and 1976-1988, and none of it in chronological order. It was a lot of weird whiplash between eras, styles, and moods, for sure. And often, on car trips, we'd only make it to about the 15th track or so. Usually it would end at 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', maybe the opening bars of 'Getcha Back'. (Which is a very weird song to transition into, coming off of PET SOUNDS' haunting opening track, but I digress.)

This music made me FEEL. And it's no surprise, Brian Wilson is a goddamn genius, but yes, even at age 11 1/2... I was like, really moved by how many of these songs were crafted and arranged. It was musical education right there. Years later, I deep-dived into their history and yeah, it too is a special interest of mine.

What the hell does this have to do with THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE?

Nothing, really... Except, for in my head.

I was staying at that beach house in mid-2004, and I was addicted to that CD at the time, and I had also dug out my mom's Beach Boys CD as well. So, my rotation in mid-2004 was largely that Beach Boys CD, Cartoon Network, some of my XBOX games (such as TEST DRIVE: OVERDRIVE and DISNEY'S EXTREME SKATE ADVENTURE), and... COMIC STRIPS.

I was really, really, *really* into comic strips back then, namely a strip called GET FUZZY by Darby Conley.

A hapless man with not much of a love life, his naive dog, and his rather mean cat... Sound familiar? Surprisingly, there was a lot to it that differentiated it from GARFIELD. I was literally *in love* with this comic back then, and I still love it, actually. It dawned on me many years, but it's autistic AF... and I'll likely elaborate on that some other time, maybe on here!

Anyways, comics... I opened the Thomas book in the dream, and it was half usual Thomas illustrations you'd often see in the picture books, *and* it was... Black and white comic strips with the characters and all these random human side-characters who looked like they could've come right out of something like SALLY FORTH or BEETLE BAILEY... Sort-of existing and being up to random things that didn't have much to do with the trains, but it was part of it all. Very odd in a way. And I was like "Wait-a-minute, Thomas was also a comic?"

Not much happened in the dream beyond that, and it went kind of quick, I recall Meg remarking "Oh yeah, I read/watched that when I was a kid!" (Meg is 16 in the first season of FAMILY GUY, meaning she was likely born in 1983-ish, so maybe she theoretically would've caught the show - as part of SHINING TIME STATION - when it first came out in the U.S. in 1989. But I'm getting way too ahead of myself here.) Other random stuff, the kind that usually happening in dreams, etc. It would go very off-topic, so I'll cap it there.

So, my mind was like... Hmmmm... This old show about talking trains and talking cars, and The Beach Boys did a lot of car songs...

But... Why was my autistic brain making this specific connection that likely was not there?

My guesses...

A) THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE had a lot of seaside episodes, either set at a harbor, or on a beach. Bright skies, water, seagull sound effects, etc. The whole book series and show is set on the **Island** of Sodor.

B) I had went to car shows a lot as a kid, and heard a lot of those Beach Boys, and many similar-sounding surf/hot rod songs.

C) I went to beaches *a lot* as a kid with my father. He also had a raft, and we'd fish or crab a lot, too.

D) A lot of the iconic RAILWAY SERIES stories, which the THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE TV series is based on, were written in the 1950s and 1960s. I didn't know this at the time, I only knew that the show came out sometime around the mid-1980s. The copyright dates on the American VHS releases of the show were kinda wonky and sometimes inaccurate. When I discovered the books for the first time, I was particularly struck by the illustrations done by John T. Kenney (1957-1962) and Peter & Gunvor Edwards (1963-1972)...

Like, I'm immediately reminded of all the retro 50s/60s stuff I saw quite often as a kid, *again*, at car shows and relatives' houses and such. Old toys, etc. I might've been born in the early '90s, but your relatives and people you know hang onto stuff from decades prior. I grew up around a lot of "old" stuff, old architecture and decor and such. My dad's former house, for example, had those '70s wood paneled walls and mustard yellow countertops. A green toilet, of all things. Lots of vintage crockery and such.

Perhaps that aural world that Brian, his brothers, and company created with their music in the 1960s and 1970s makes me think of Sodor in a way, a sort of quaint island community from decades back, albeit far across the Atlantic. It's worth noting that when The Beach Boys' popularity sunk in the U.S. in the late 1960s and they had an image problem, they remained ever-popular in the UK and most of Europe.

But yeah, one weird dream in 2004 linked the two things... And I guess I'm not alone, because someone made a mashup of Toby's theme from the TV series and 'California Girls'... and they go together very, very well...

Dreams are the brain's YTPs... and sometimes they make a real impression on you...

[phantom-le6]

Ramble of the month February 2025: 90’s MCU phase 9 – The Final Phase

Yes, ladies, gentleman and all other genders of the gender spectrum, we’re now at the conclusion of our 90’s-based MCU.  For those only just joining us, here’s a quick bit of house-keeping on this subject.  The reason I’ve done my own version of 90’s-based fan-cast, and done so in the way I have, is very simple.  Most memes positing a 90’s or 80’s MCU just take the key roles from the MCU we’ve already seen and cast actors from those eras, but this wouldn’t work.  Why?  Because the people making these memes are ignorant of the underlying real-world and source material elements that have made the MCU what it is.

For example, until 1995, Marvel had film rights to all their characters, only selling them off to various film studios in 1995 to avoid bankruptcy, so start an MCU prior to 1995 and you have the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic and Spider-Man (among others) to use alongside the Avengers and various other Marvel heroes of the MCU.  Also, various characters and plot lines would be different; Bucky Barnes being ret-conned into being the Winter Soldier and Civil War are plot-lines that didn’t occur in the comics until after the turn of the century.  Likewise, the Ultimates continuity that made Nick Fury a Sam Jackson lookalike and gave Hawkeye a family instead of being married to fellow Avenger Mockingbird with no kids was a year 2000 development, and the Starlord-led Guardians of the Galaxy team?  Didn’t happen in comics until 2007; prior to this, the Guardians were a future superhero team that travelled back in time now and then to cross-over with other Marvel heroes.

Given all these differences, it is impossible to re-cast the MCU for the hypothetical scenario that it started in a different era by just swapping out actors.  You have to look at all the characters Marvel would have to work with, consider all the plot-lines (and bear in mind Marvel has been going since 1961, or much earlier if you factor in any material relating to characters like Captain America and Namor that were created when Marvel was known as Timely Comics), and come up with a whole new films slate.  To that end, let’s now re-cap the phases that have come before…

Phase 1:

1992: Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man

1993: Thor, Spider-Man, Ant-Man & The Wasp

1994: Captain America, Fantastic Four 2, Iron Man 2

1995: X-Men, Avengers, Daredevil

Phase 1 established the initial characters of our MCU, putting the Fantastic Four first and foremost to bring them in line with their comic-book counterparts before beginning to develop the Avengers, the X-Men, Spider-Man and Daredevil.

Phase 2:

1996: Spider-Man 2, Thor: Land of Enchantment, Silver Surfer

1997: Hulk vs Wolverine, Fantastic Four: Doomsday, Iron Man 3

1998: Captain America: Society of Serpents, Daredevil 2, X-Men 2

1999: Avenger 2, Spider-Man 3, Doctor Strange

Phase 2 provides expansion as not only do most heroes get solo and ensemble sequels, but other characters start to take on films of their own.  The Silver Surfer is spun off from his appearance in Fantastic Four 2 into a solo film while Doctor Strange is introduced, and we also see the first examples of the “third film loss” trope, including Stark’s loss of his business and Iron Man persona through alcoholism, Doctor Doom destroying the Baxter Building while Ben Grimm loses a chance to be human, and Peter Parker loses Gwen Stacy.

Phase 3:

2000: Fantastic Four: World War III, Thor: Ragnarök, Daredevil 3

2001: Hulk: Rise of the Leader, X-Men: Fall of the Mutants, Avengers: Under Siege

2002: Doctor Strange 2, The Captain, Spider-Man 4

2003: Captain Britain, Fantastic Four: Enter the Negative Zone, Ghost Rider

Phase 3 further put our heroes on the back foot with yet more loss, most notably assaults on the X-Mansion and Avengers Mansion, but we also see more expansion; Namor, the Black Panther and the Inhumans all get introduced via the Fantastic Four, who then go on to become a family via the birth of Franklin Richards, and both Captain Britain and Ghost Rider get added to the mix.

Phase 4:

2004: Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Secret Wars: Part I

2005: Excalibur, Defenders, Ghost Rider 2

2006: X-Factor, Secret Wars: Part II, Heroes For Hire

2007: Namor the Submariner, Doctor Strange 3, Iron Man: Enter The Mandarin

Phase 4 took us through Secret Wars, and along the way gave us a lot more characters.  Black Panther and the original, pre-Carol Danvers iteration of Captain Marvel get solo films, former X-Men become parts of spin-off teams, and we see the formation of the Defenders and a one-shot of the Heroes For Hire, not to mention a Namor solo film and the return of Tony Stark.

Phase 5:

2008: Spider-Man 5, Fantastic Four: Unthinkable, Ms Marvel

2009: Elektra, Black Panther 2, Defenders 2

2010: X-Men: Proteus, Spider-Man 6, Ant-Man 2

2011: Silver Surfer 2, Avengers vs X-Men, Ghost Rider 3

Phase 5 gave us the Black Suit saga for Spider-Man as an aftermath of Secret Wars over the web-slinger’s fifth and sixth solo films, while the Fantastic Four’s sixth film would also be their last as we began the Infinity Saga.  In turn, Carol Danvers and a resurrected Elektra gained solo films, with the former precipitating an Avengers vs X-Men clash.

Phase 6:

2012: Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Panther 3, Iron Man: The Dragon Seed Saga

2013: X-Men: Phoenix Rising, Defenders 3, Ant-Man 3

2014: X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga, Infinity War, Blade

2015: Inhumans, Infinity War II, Deadpool

Phase 6 concluded the Infinity Saga while also removing Jean Grey and Cyclops from being active in the MCU via the Phoenix and Dark Phoenix sagas being adapted into a film duology.  We also add Blade to the MCU, and the Inhumans finally gained their own film, while several solo and group film franchises reached their third and final instalments.

Phase 7:

2016: Union Jack, Silver Surfer 3, Iron-Man/Spider-Man: Legacy

2017: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Blade 2, Ghost Rider Returns

2018: Eternals, Deadpool 2, New Avengers

2019: X-Men: Days of Future Past, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Blade 3

Phase 7 was all about dealing with the aftermath of the Infinity Saga and beginning a set-up of Secret Wars.  At the same time, we also added some new heroes, passed on a few mantles and otherwise paved the way for phase 8.

Phase 8:

2020: Wolverine: Enemy of the State, MI13, Ultimate Spider-Man

2021: Deadpool 3, Spider-Woman, Ms Marvel 2

2022: X-Men: Fatal Attractions, Venom, Great Lakes Avengers

2023: Secret Invasion, Howling Commandoes, Wolverine: Sins of the Father

Phase 8 was all about building up and dealing with two major story arcs in the forms of Fatal Attractions and Secret Invasion, while at the same time giving Wolverine his second and third solo films and concluding the Deadpool trilogy, even as a lot of other characters gained solo films for the first time, as did a couple of teams.  This now brings us to the slate for Phase 9…

Phase 9:

2024: The Marvels, Venom 2, Thor 4

2025: Ultimate Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Onslaught, New Avengers: Disassembled

2026: Nova, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Venom 3

2027: Captain Britain: Lionheart, Ultimate Spider-Man 3

2028: House of M: A Whole New World

2029: House of M: M for Mystery

2030: House of M: Endgame

As you can see, we’re taking on quite a few major stories and wrapping up any trilogies we can before diving into the concluding films of this MCU.  Now let’s look at how these films break down…

The Marvels (2024) Directed by Patty Jenkins & Chloé Zhao

Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel II = Melissa Joan Hart

Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel = Odeya Rush

Monica Rambeau/Photon = Zoe Kravitz

Rachel Summers = Danielle Panabaker

Rogue = Anna Paquin

Simon Williams/Wonder Man = Taylor Kitsch

Gabriel Summers/Vulcan = Billy Burke

Deathbird = Sunyata Palmer

Super-Skrull = Luke Evans

Delphinia = Karen Gillan

Raksor = Tom Hardy

AIM Scientist Supreme = Grant Gustin

MODOK = Adam Driver

Princess/Empress Lilandra = Winona Ryder

Gladiator = Luke Hemsworth

Oracle = Pom Klementieff

Araki = Mark Hamill

Hecate = Daisy Ridley

Hercules = Arnold Schwarzenegger

Zeus = Brian Blessed

Hera = Michelle Pfieffer

Skrull Fugitive 1 = Ashley Judd

Skrull Fugitive 2 = Elijah Wood

Skrull Fugitive 3 = Mandy Moore

Skrull Fugitive 4 = Dave Franco

While I think the version of The Marvels we got in the MCU proper was not brilliant, the idea of teaming up Carol with others who have laid claim to the Marvel title is not without merit.  To that end, I’ve put Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins on this film along with Eternals director Chloé Zhao.  In this case, Carol is mopping up after the failed Skrull invasion and learns of a Skrull-backed coup against the Shi’ar Empress Lilandra.  To deal with this, Carol not only needs to assemble allies she calls friends, but also bring along a couple of X-Men, which means seeking closure with Rogue.  Doing this also entails a side-quest for Carol and Rogue to the Olympian sorceress Hecate, which allows for some flashback guest appearances by those already cast for Marvel’s versions of Hercules, Zeus and Hera.  A lot of cast members are reprising roles from past films, but there are a few fresh ones in the mix as well.

Venom 2 (2024) Directed by Shawn Levy

Eddie Brock/Venom = Wentworth Miller

Anne Weying = Michelle Williams

FBI Agent Patrick Mulligan = Stephen Graham

Agent Alton Clark = Leslie Odom Jr.

Agent Monica Steen = Italia Ricci

Agent Garon Lewis = Terrence Howard

Donna Diego/Scream = Holland Roden

Trevor Cole/Riot I = Jack Whitehall

Carl March/Phage = Jamie Campbell Bower

Ramón Hernandez/Lasher = Diego Luna

Leslie Gesneria/Agony = Kate Mara

Carlton Drake = Jared Harris

Orwell Taylor = Daniel Kaluuya

Bomblast = Sebastian Stan

Curtis Elkins/Sentry = John Boyega

Samuel Caulkin/Ramshot = Jamie Dornan

Firearm = Paul Wesley

Maxwell Taylor/Screech = Lucas Till

Having used a combination of the Secret Wars films and a fifth and sixth Spider-Man film to give the alien symbiote its proper origin in films, and thus Venom as well, the first film was able to dive right in on his shift to anti-hero from villain, focusing on Venom going up against Carnage.  This time, however, we’re going for a more comic-accurate adaptation of the Lethal Protector arc from 90’s Spider-Man comics.  This accounts for the somewhat expanded cast relative to our first Venom film as well as Sony’s counter-parts.  In terms of roles reprised, only Brock, Weying and the various federal agents are returning characters, while everyone else coming into the film is fresh casting.  Direction-wise, we stick with Shawn Levy because while I’m happy sticking with the horror-comedy for Venom, I’m not in particular favour of Sony’s directorial choices for the franchise, and after Love and Thunder, I’m not about to consider Waititi for anything other than disdain and scorn.

Thor 4 (2024) Directed by Sam Mendes

Thor = Dolph Lundgren

Jane Foster/Thor II = Courtney Cox

Beta Ray Bill = Seth Rogan

Skuttlebutt Computer = John Oliver

Storm/Ororo Monroe = Halle Berry

Forge = Jimmy Smits

Danielle Moonstar = Selena Gomez

Paige Guthrie = Kelly Stables

Roberto Da Costa = Mario Lopez

Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane = Bonnie Wright

Xi'an Coy Manh = Katie Leung

Rachel Summers = Danielle Panabaker

Amara Aquilla/Magma = Isabela Merced

Loki = Gary Oldman

Loki (female incarnation) = Nina Dobrev

Mangog = DeObia Oparei

Hela = Cate Blanchett

Karnilla = Angelina Jolie

Odin = Anthony Hopkins

Frega = Glenn Close

Fandrall = Cary Elwes

Hogun = Tony Leung

Volstagg = Thomas Haden Church

Sif = Demi Moore

Heimdall = Keith David

Balder = Sean Bean

Valkyrie = Diane Kruger

Mist = Talulah Riley

Gruenhilda = Jane Levy

Hildegarde = Yvonne Strahovski

Krista = Samara Weaving

Eitri = Dominic Monaghan

Kindra = Esmé Creed-Miles

Hrimhari = Luke Bracey

One of my favourite story arcs concerning Asgard is actually an X-Men-New Mutants crossover where Loki tried to turn Storm into a Goddess of Thunder while Storm was depowered, and both Thor and Odin were missing.  This film, placed in the hands of British director Sam Mendes, adapts this along with the arcs for Beta Ray Bill becoming Beta Ray Thor and Jane Foster becoming a Thor as well.  Now I’ve noted Jane as a Thor II in the credits strictly for ease of reference, but since lifting Mjolnir only gives someone Thor’s powers and not his name, no one other than the one true Thor will be going by a Thor handle in the film.  Each will either go by their own name(s) or be given a suitable codename.

I’ve also decided to have Loki switch to his female incarnation early on in the film, as Loki assuming both male and female appearances is part of the comics lore and original Norse mythology.  I know that won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m not in the habit of catering to the ignorant and intolerant, whether it’s about my differences by way of autistic or the differences of others, so don’t go whining if you’re not able to understand acceptance of people being different.  Also, for those who know the comics but late to these rambles wondering why Paige Guthrie is among the mutants for this film instead of Sam Guthrie, that’s because I cast Paul Walker to play Sam in earlier MCU films, and since he died a while ago, I’ve been swapping out the character of Sam for his sister Paige in appropriate later films.

Ultimate Spider-Man 2 (2025) Directed by Ryan Coogler

Miles Morales/Spider-Man II = Noah Gray-Cabey

Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider II = Ross Lynch

Janine Godbe = Bella Thorne

Barbara Rodriguez = Barbie Ferreira

Rio Morales = Penélope Cruz

Jefferson Davis = Eriq La Salle

Ganke Lee = Jacob Batalon

Richard Fisk/The Rose = Tom Hooper

Delilah = Demi Lovato

David Brayer/Armarda = Taron Egerton

Alistair Smythe = Tyler Posey

Yuri Watanabe = Ally Maki

Dr Miles Warren/Jackal = Kyle MacLachlan

Kaine/Scarlet Spider = Wil Wheaton

Ava Ayala = Cierra Ramirez

Anya Corazon = Alejandra Reynoso

Shirley Lewis = Gabrielle Union

Devon Lewis = Niles Fitch

Jessica Carradine = Miranda Cosgrove

Desiree Winthrop = Dakota Fanning

Buzz = Joe Spano

Not really knowing the lore for Miles Morales as Spider-Man, my films for his character end up being about putting together plots that are based on the arcs I know from Peter Parker Spidey lore.  Not the best option, I will admit, but at the same time it creates interesting scenarios if handled right, which is why I’ve picked Ryan Coogler to direct this sequel to the first Ultimate Spider-Man film (that one having been directed by Denzel Washington, who has previously played Joe Robertson in this MCU).  In this film, Miles has help from Ben Reilly, a fellow arachnid-powered superhero known as the Scarlet Spider, as they try to take down the criminal empire of the Kingpin’s son.  However, little do the spiders know that the Jackal is still around, along with the flawed Peter Parker clone that is Kaine, and they will spell disaster.

X-Men: Onslaught (2025) Directed by James Wan

Professor Charles Xavier (revitalised version) = Daniel Stewart

Storm/Ororo Monroe = Halle Berry

Wolverine/Logan = Tom Cruise

Laura Kinney/X-23 = Dafne Keen

Rogue = Anna Paquin

Remi LeBeau/Gambit = Zachary Levi

Jubilee = Chloe Bennett

Emma Frost = Elizabeth Banks

Bishop = Winston Duke

Rachel Summers = Danielle Panabaker

Sarah/Marrow = Sarah Hyland

Beast/Hank McCoy = Alec Baldwin

Onslaught = Matthew Macfadyen & Daniel Stewart

Reed Richards/Mr Fantastic = Tom Hanks

Susan Storm (Richards)/Invisible Woman = Meg Ryan

Johnny Storm/Human Torch = David Spade

Franklin Richards = Ty Simpkins

Steve Rogers/Captain America = Brad Pitt

Thor = Dolph Lundgren

Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk = Lucy Lawless

Sam Wilson/Falcon = Will Smith

Monica Rambeau/Photon = Zoe Kravitz

Miles Morales/Spider-Man II = Noah Gray-Cabey

Juggernaut/Cain Marko = Greg Kinnear

Gabrielle Haller = Moran Atias

David Haller/Legion = Dylan Sprayberry

Joseph = Zachary Gordon

Exodus = Jean Dujardin

Spoor = Kevin McKidd

Scanner = Caity Lotz

Katu = Gil Birmingham

Joanna Cargill/Frenzy = Amanda Nunes

Magneto = Matthew Macfadyen

Peter Rasputin/Colossus = Henry Cavill

This film gives us a partial adaptation of a major story arc from Marvel in the mid-90’s, as the X-Men team up with other heroes old and new against the psychic entity Onslaught, a fusion of the darkest elements of Magneto and Professor X seeking to escape Xavier’s mind and wreak havoc on the world.  The film also adapts some of the set-up to the Onslaught arc, and as the continuity for these films is different, we use Xavier’s son David in place of Nate Grey for certain elements.  Much of the cast is returning from past films, and I can’t be sure which roles if any are new.  Direction-wise, however, I’ve given the reins to James Wan based on the quality of his directing for Aquaman (though I do wish he’d changed the casting for Mera instead of keeping on the husband-beater).

New Avengers: Disassembled (2025) Directed by Roland Emmerich

Scott Lang/Ant-Man II = Paul Rudd

Nadia Pym/Wasp II = Shailene Woodley

Dr Stephen Strange = Johnny Depp

Luke Cage = Tyrese Gibson

Hawkeye II/Kate Bishop = Hailee Steinfeld

Miles Morales/Spider-Man II = Noah Gray-Cabey

Amadeus Cho/Iron Man III = Charles Melton

Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel = Odeya Rush

Doreen Green/Squirrel Girl = Paris Berelc

Eros/Starfox = Joel McHale

Sersi = Gemma Chan

Gilgamesh = Don Lee

Cassie Lang/Stature = Joey King

Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff = Kate Beckinsale

Vision 2.0 = Paul Bettany

Ultron 2.0 = James Spader

Vlad Tepish/Dracula = Mads Mikkelsen

Arkady Rossovich/Omega Red = David Harbour

Deathbird = Sunyata Palmer

Super-Skrull = Luke Evans

Exodus = Jean Dujardin

Frank Simpson/Nuke = John Cena

Jackson Day/Corruptor = Robbie Amell

Part of setting up for a House of M story arc means we have to see Scarlet Witch undergo a mental breakdown and disassemble the Avengers, which is part of why the New Avengers were assembled in phase 7.  This film basically adapts the Avengers Disassembled arc as best it can within the timeline of this alternate MCU, with the actors who played Vision and Ultron in the real MCU now coming in to take over from the original actors for this 90’s MCU, namely Casper Van Dien (Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers) and Marc Alaimo (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Gul Dukat) respectively.  Except for one or two villains, the film is all returning cast under the direction of Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012, White House Down and many others).  This is the fourth film of this 90’s MCU I’ve put under Emmerich; the previous three were Avengers: Under Siege, Captain Marvel (solo film for the original male Kree bearer of the title) and Fantastic Four: Unthinkable.

Nova (2026) Directed by James Gunn

Sam Alexander/Nova = Raphael Alejandro

Kaelynn Alexander = Oshún Ramirez

Eva Alexander = Michelle Rodriguez

Corpsman Rhomann Dey = Will Poulter

Corpsman Jesse Alexander = Mark Ruffalo

Carrie = Lilly Aspell

Karl Moffet = Noah Schnapp

Principal Philbin = John C Reilly

Nova Prime Richard Ryder = Edward Norton

Nova Senturion Garthan Saal = Peter Serafinowicz

Corpsman Malik Tarcel = Jake Gyllenhaal

Rocket = Bradley Cooper

Hepzibah = Kirsty Swanson

Titus = Patrick Seitz

Gamora = Zoe Saldana

Fang = Matthew Lawrence

Raksor = Tom Hardy

Elaine Coll/Scorpia = Camilla Belle

Having had the Nova corps come up in this MCU’s Guardians of the Galaxy films as they did in the real MCU, a solo film focused on a human corps member seems like a logical and important project.  However, as Richard Ryder’s Nova has been used in the Guardians films this time round, it makes more sense to jump straight to the more recent version that is Sam Alexander.  This film is very much a passing-of-the-torch film in various respects, and I bring back Guardians director James Gunn to handle it (for the purposes of this hypothetical MCU, we’ll assume Gunn isn’t tied up by production duties with DC and Warner Brothers).

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2026) Directed by Miguel Arteta

Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider III = Taylor Lautner

Eli Morrow = Eddie Cibrian

Gabriel Reyes = Michael Cimino

Lisa = Madeline Brewer

Johnny Blaze = Connor Trinneer

Calvin Zabo/Mr Hyde = James McAvoy

Grumpy = Luis Guzmán

Guero Valdez = Rodrigo Santoro

Alejandra Jones/Vengeance = Alice Braga

Having given the Johnny Blaze iteration of Ghost Rider a trilogy by way of Connor Trinneer and then given Andrew Garfield the role of the Danny Ketch Ghost Rider for a solo film and a few team-ups, this last entry for the Ghost Rider focuses on the Robbie Reyes incarnation.  The film is largely new casting, with only Connor returning as Blaze as he advises Reyes on how to handle the Rider curse in his clash with fellow spectral super-being Vengeance.  The lead role of Reyes falls to Taylor Lautner more in spite of his past in the Twilight films than because of them, and since Reyes is a Latino superhero, I felt it important to have someone from the same background handle the direction, hence the selection of Puerto Rican director Miguel Arteta.

Venom 3 (2026) Directed by Shawn Levy

Eddie Brock/Venom = Wentworth Miller

Anne Weying = Michelle Williams

Flash Thompson/Anti-Venom = Ben Affleck

Sha Shan Nguyen = Grace Park

Knull = Rhys Ifans

Carlton Drake/Riot II = Jared Harris

Agent Patrick Mulligan/Toxin = Stephen Graham

Dr Karl Malus/Carnage II = Jared Leto

Patricia Robertson/Mania = Emily Osment

Agent Alton Clark = Leslie Odom Jr.

Agent Monica Steen = Italia Ricci

Agent Garon Lewis = Terrence Howard

Jefferson Davis = Eriq La Salle

Yuri Watanabe = Ally Maki

Dr Ashley Kafka = Keri Russell

Mac Gargan/Scorpion = Brian Bloom

Shirley Lewis = Gabrielle Union

Devon Lewis = Niles Fitch

For the third and final Venom film, we see Flash Thompson given an artificial symbiote that makes him the “Anti-Venom” in order to take down Brock’s anti-hero.  However, the two must instead work together when it turns out Carlton Drake and several others are not only hosting the symbiotes of Venom’s past foes from films one and two, but they’re also preparing to unleash their god Knull upon Earth.  This film is partly original films and partly a loose adaptation of various other bits of Venom/Spider-Man lore.  Again, I keep Shawn Levy in place to direct.

Captain Britain: Lionheart (2027) Directed by Sam Mendes & Patty Jenkins

Kelsey Leigh/Captain Britain II = Hermione Corfield

Brian Braddock Jr./Captain Britain = Jamie Bamber

Meggan = Sienna Miller

Martin Leigh = Matthew Illesley

Jenny Leigh = Elodie Blomfield

Mrs Shorr = Emma Thompson

Victoria Bentley = Emma Watson

Morgan Le Fey = Catherine McCormack

Umar = Ruth Wilson

Dirk Garthwaite/Wrecker = Dallas Page

Dr Eliot Franklin/Thunderball = David Otunga

Brian Phillip Calusky/Piledriver = Adam Joseph Copeland

Henry Camp/Bulldozer = Steve Austin

Roma = Rachel Weisz

Joseph Chapman/Union Jack III = Rob Mallard

Dane Whitman/Black Knight = Ioan Gruffudd

Dr Faiza Hussain/Excalibur = Nikkita Chadha

Scott Wright/Micromax = Jack O'Connell

Harley Davis/Motormouth = Louisa Lytton

Pete Wisdom = Tom Bateman

Ben Gallagher = Alex Pettyfer

Richard Leigh = Thomas Brodie-Sangster

As a Brit, I’ve made a point of peppering this MCU with one-shot films for various UK-based heroes and teams that I know are part of Marvel lore, and which the relevant studios that have rights to those characters either keep avoiding or get wrong.  This includes solo films for the original Captain Britain and the modern-day incarnation of Union Jack, plus team films for X-Men spin-off group Excalibur and the more government-based MI13.  For this film, however, we’re giving the spotlight to Kelsey Leigh, a woman who followed Brian Braddock as the second Captain Britain for a time before shifting her code-name to Lionheart when Brian Braddock resumed the Captain Britain mantle.

This film is part adaptation of Kelsey’s origin arc from the comics and part original film, including the additions of her estranged husband and a suitable new romantic interest into the film.  There’s a decent mix of new and old casting and also a little borrowing of characters from other places, including Dr Strange’s English friend and ally Victoria Bentley being a character in the mix.  For direction, I’m not aware of many British film directors that are also female, so I decided to pair Sam Mendes with Patty Jenkins so the former could bring the British perspective while the latter brings the female perspective.  Hopefully, the fusion of the two would be quite interesting to see.

Ultimate Spider-Man 3 (2027) Directed by Ryan Coogler

Miles Morales/Spider-Man II = Noah Gray-Cabey

Barbara Rodriguez = Barbie Ferreira

Ava Ayala/White Tiger = Cierra Ramirez

Anya Corazon/Spider-Girl = Alejandra Reynoso

Rio Morales = Penélope Cruz

Jefferson Davis = Eriq La Salle

Ganke Lee = Jacob Batalon

Dr Otto Octavius/Doctor Octopus = Alfred Molina

Sandman/Flint Marko = Dwayne Johnson

Phil Urich/Hobgoblin = Joe Kerry

Vincent Stegron = David Henrie

Francine Frye/Electro = Kaya Scodelario

Ana Kravinoff/Kraven the Hunter = Mia Goth

Yuri Watanabe = Ally Maki

Peter Parker = Wil Wheaton

Shirley Lewis = Gabrielle Union

Devon Lewis = Niles Fitch

While Peter Parker took on the Sinister Six in Spider-Man 4 within this MCU, we’re giving Miles a Sinister Six to fight on his third and final solo film.  However, unlike Peter, Miles is not alone, as we give two of Miles’ supporting cast their chance to shine as superheroes.  In terms of the villains, only Doc Ock, Sandman and the new female Electro represent returning cast members, while Hobgoblin, Stegron and Kraven’s daughter provide some new faces.  For direction, Ryan Coogler completes this trilogy just ahead of the House of M trilogy.

House of M: A Whole New World (2028) Directed by JJ Abrams

Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff = Kate Beckinsale

Magneto (revitalised version) = Matthew Macfadyen

Emma Frost = Elizabeth Banks

Wolverine/Logan = Tom Cruise

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler = Daniel Brühl

Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane = Bonnie Wright

Jubilee = Chloe Bennett

Bishop = Winston Duke

Rachel Summers = Danielle Panabaker

Neal Shaara/Thunderbird = Karan Brar

Rogue = Anna Paquin

Betsy Braddock/Psylocke = Lena Headey

Megan Gwynn/Pixie = Alexa Davies

Laura Kinney/X-23 = Dafne Keen

Dane Whitman/Black Knight = Ioan Gruffudd

Kelsey Leigh/Lionheart = Hermione Corfield

Sabra/Ruth Bat-Seraph = Gal Gadot

Navid Hashim/Arabian Knight = Marwan Kenzari

Dr Faiza Hussain/Excalibur = Nikkita Chadha

Scott Wright/Micromax = Jack O'Connell

Harley Davis/Motormouth = Louisa Lytton

Pete Wisdom = Tom Bateman

Alistaire Stuart = David Tennant

Joseph Chapman/Union Jack III = Rob Mallard

Brian Braddock Jr./Captain Britain = Jamie Bamber

Meggan = Sienna Miller

Dr Stephen Strange = Johnny Depp

Namor McKenzie/The Submariner = Christian Bale

Miles Morales/Spider-Man II = Noah Gray-Cabey

Amadeus Cho/Iron Man II = Charles Melton

Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel = Odeya Rush

Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel = Melissa Joan Hart

Sersi = Gemma Chan

Gilgamesh = Don Lee

Sam Alexander/Nova = Raphael Alejandro

Robbie Reyes/Ghost Rider III = Taylor Lautner

Peter Rasputin/Colossus = Henry Cavill

The House of M trilogy is set out a bit like Lord of the Rings; three films, all probably quite long, filmed back-to-back and released one per year.  However, unlike the Lord of the Rings, we’re changing up the directors and while films two and three occur in the altered reality that shares its name with the films, the first film is very much an Infinity War-style enterprise.  The Scarlet Witch gets free and begins to hunt once more for the means to alter reality.  Every hero still active in the MCU shifts into gear to stop or delay her in her quest, and when reality changes, will anyone remember how things were before?  This film is all returning cast, directed by JJ Abrams.

House of M: M for Mystery (2029) Directed by Roland Emmerich

Magneto (revitalised version) = Matthew Macfadyen

Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (House of M guise) = Elizabeth Olsen

Quicksilver (House of M version) = Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Polaris (House of M Version) = Samara Weaving

Havok (House of M Version) = Lucas Till

Peter Rasputin/Colossus = Henry Cavill

Psylocke (House of M version) = Daisy Ridley

Wolverine/Logan = Tom Cruise

Rogue (House of M Version) = Debby Ryan

Raven Darkholme/Mystique = Connie Nielsen

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler = Daniel Brühl

Neal Shaara/Thunderbird = Karan Brar

Emma Frost (House of M version) = Alice Eve

Kate Pryde (House of M version) = Hailee Steinfeld

Iceman (House of M Version) = Dacre Montgomery

Pyro (House of M Version) = Adam Demos

Cannonball (House of M Version) = Peyton Meyer

Siryn (House of M Version) = Amybeth McNulty

Scott Summers (HoM Version) = Miles Tiller

Jean Grey (HoM Version) = Emma Stone

Dr Hank McCoy (HoM Version) = Tom Hardy

Sean Cassidy (HoM Version) = Michael Fassbender

Alison Blaire/Dazzler (HoM Version) = Jennifer Lawrence

Jubilee (HoM Version) = Lana Condor

Warren Worthington III (HoM Version) = Chris Pine

T'Challa/Black Panther (HoM Version) = Michael B. Jordan

Ororo Iquadi T'Challa (HoM Version) = Zazie Beetz

King Namor (HoM Version) = Zachary Quinto

Doctor Doom (HoM Version) = Christoph Walz

Prime Minister Brian Braddock = Jamie Bamber

Lady Meggan = Sienna Miller

Prime Minister Ruth Bat-Seraph = Gal Gadot

King Navid Hasham = Marwan Kenzari

Queen Faiza Hussain = Nikkita Chadha

Agent Whitman = Ioan Gruffudd

Agent Wisdom = Tom Bateman

Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (House of M Version) = Margot Robbie

Peter Parker/Spider-Man (House of M Version) = Tom Holland

Gwen Parker = Dove Cameron

Ben Barker (House of M Version) = Matt Le Blanc

May Parker (House of M Version) = Leah Remini

J. Jonah Jameson (House of M Version) = Gary Oldman

Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino (House of M version) = Dave Bautista

Luke Cage (HoM Version) = Michael Colter

Kamala Khan = Odeya Rush

Tony Stark (HoM Version) = Luke Evans

Sam Alexander = Raphael Alejandro

Robbie Reyes = Taylor Lautner

Clint Barton (HoM Version) = Chris Pratt

Layla Miller = Lulu Wilson

Dr Hank Pym (HoM Version) = Oscar Isaac

Black Bolt = Pierce Brosnan

Medusa = Elizabeth Hurley

Crystal = Dina Meyer

Gorgon = J.G. Hertzler

Karnak = Alexander Siddig

Triton = Orlando Bloom

Sersi = Gemma Chan

Ikaris = Richard Madden

Gilgamesh = Don Lee

Thena = Rose Byrne

Kingo = Kumail Nanjiani

Makkari = Lauren Ridloff

Phastos = Brian Tyree Henry

Ajak = Jennifer Lopez

Druig = Barry Keoghan

Mentor = Michael McKean

Eros/Starfox = Joel McHale

Dr Stephen Strange (HoM Version) = Benedict Cumberbatch

Matt Murdock (HoM Version) = Charlie Cox

For the second House of M film, not only do we launch into a whole other world, but we undergo a major re-cast.  A lot of this is because various actors will have aged out of their former roles since this MCU began in the 1990’s, and a few have even passed away, requiring either other characters to replace them or re-casts to finish final performances.  As a result, the cast includes a multitude of “House of M Version” notations to show up where new actors take on the roles.  Another reason for these changes is that a new world and new timeline brings with it an alternate history, resulting in some differences in personalities.  Plot-wise, the film is largely focused on Wolverine, who now remembers his entire life from the MCU prior to Wanda altering reality.  This makes him a danger to the status quo of the House of M, which is shown through various vignettes interspersed throughout the film.  That being said, there is also a major arc in this film for Spider-Man that, together with Logan’s arc, really sets up for the last film.  In addition to the various House of M variants, we also get Layla Miller added as the one new character overall in the film.  Direction-wise, Roland Emmerich handles this middle instalment of the trilogy.

House of M: Endgame (2030) Directed by the Russo Brothers

Magneto (revitalised version) = Matthew Macfadyen

Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff = Kate Beckinsale

Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (House of M guise) = Elizabeth Olsen

Quicksilver (House of M version) = Aaron Taylor-Johnson

Polaris (House of M Version) = Samara Weaving

Havok (House of M Version) = Lucas Till

Peter Rasputin/Colossus = Henry Cavill

Psylocke (House of M version) = Daisy Ridley

Wolverine/Logan = Tom Cruise

Rogue (House of M Version) = Debby Ryan

Raven Darkholme/Mystique = Connie Nielsen

Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler = Daniel Brühl

Neal Shaara/Thunderbird = Karan Brar

Kate Pryde (House of M version) = Hailee Steinfeld

Cannonball (House of M Version) = Peyton Meyer

Scott Summers (HoM Version) = Miles Tiller

Jean Grey (HoM Version) = Emma Stone

Dr Hank McCoy (HoM Version) = Tom Hardy

Sean Cassidy (HoM Version) = Michael Fassbender

Alison Blaire/Dazzler (HoM Version) = Jennifer Lawrence

Jubilee (HoM Version) = Lana Condor

Warren Worthington III (HoM Version) = Chris Pine

T'Challa/Black Panther (HoM Version) = Michael B. Jordan

Ororo Iquadi T'Challa (HoM Version) = Zazie Beetz

King Namor (HoM Version) = Zachary Quinto

Prime Minister Ruth Bat-Seraph = Gal Gadot

Luke Cage (HoM Version) = Michael Colter

Kamala Khan = Odeya Rush

Tony Stark (HoM Version) = Luke Evans

Sam Alexander = Raphael Alejandro

Clint Barton (HoM Version) = Chris Pratt

Layla Miller = Lulu Wilson

Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (House of M Version) = Margot Robbie

Peter Parker/Spider-Man (House of M Version) = Tom Holland

Dr Stephen Strange (HoM Version) = Benedict Cumberbatch

Matt Murdock (HoM Version) = Charlie Cox

Kelsey Leigh = Hermione Corfield

Martin Leigh = Matthew Illesley

Jenny Leigh = Elodie Blomfield

Mrs Shorr = Emma Thompson

Richard Leigh = Thomas Brodie-Sangster

Alistaire Stuart = David Tennant

Bruce Banner (HoM Version) = Rory Cochrane

Jennifer Walters (HoM Version) = Krysten Ritter

The title says it all, really.  Through Layla, the memory of how reality should be is restored and they prepare to assault Magneto and his family to try and set the world right.  How it ends, I’m not sure; in the comics, Wanda said “no more mutants” and just reduced the mutant population to virtual non-existence for a time.  With some different wording, the films could either end on a reboot or they could take out everything normal, giving all our heroes happily ever afters in a world like ours.  Either way, it’s the Russo brothers that see this iteration of the MCU to an end.

So, that concludes anything superhero fan-cast related for a while at least.  I am working on TV show-style fan-casting for Marvel and DC, but I’m not yet ready to turn either into rambles as yet.  For now, fan-cast fans will have to content themselves with my Poirot and Marple fan-casts, and for DC fans, I am still working on Gotham episode reviews, though at the moment it’s going to continue to be at a reduced rate for a while.  So, until the next ramble, ta-ta for now.

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

Problematic Faves Cliffs Notes: Harvey Dent/Two-Face

Batman (1980) #329

Summary: Once a crusading district attorney that worked alongside Batman and Jim Gordon to fight crime – now the duality-obsessed super criminal known as Two-Face.

Harvey Dent also serves as a dark reflection of Batman's own struggles living a dual life with conflicting identities.

Main Goal: To enact his own justice whilst committing crimes.

Fears: Uncertainty, himself in general [the things he's capable of, specifically], losing control, his loved ones dying, his darker half discovering Bruce's secret identity [Detective Comics (2016) #1021], Renee Montoya's rejection [Batman: No Man's Land, novel], and the Joker [Joker (2008), only].

Mindset: Sees himself bound by fate and its will. As a result of Harvey's black-and-white worldviews, he considers his two-headed (scarred on one side) silver dollar a truly objective instrument of justice due to it only yielding two simple, 50/50 outcomes at the end of every coin toss.

"Some people go to the beach to forget their problems. They can watch the waves for hours. I understand the fascination.

There's a pattern – then there is no pattern.

It's the same with the coin. We want it all to mean something – we want to find the pattern – but in the final analysis, it's just waves."

— Harvey Dent, Secret Origins Special (1989) #1

•••

"He was always interested in the law – some might say obsessed. Man's law gave order to Harvey's world – they delineated the parameters of right and wrong, good and evil. They gave him something to believe in."

— Gilda Dent, Secret Origins Special (1989) #1

•••

Hugo Strange: Let's go back further, you were a rising star, a beacon of light for this city. A white knight riding in to save it with the Dark Knight not far behind.

Harvey Dent: You can leave him out of this. He is wrong. They all are. No one understands the beauty of fate's hand. I am grateful to Falcone. He gave me a clarity; a purity that few will know. Everything boils down to a simple choice, this way or that way, good... or bad.

Hugo Strange: Do you really believe that?

Harvey Dent: How could I not?

— Batman: Arkham City

•••

Batman: If you pull the trigger, how are you different from the Roman?

Harvey Dent: That's Jim Gordon talking. You know the system doesn't work. That justice can be decided like the flip of a coin.

— The Long Halloween

•••

"You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time... but you were wrong! The world is cruel. And the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased, unprejudiced, fair."

— Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight

•••

"Life's a lottery, Holman. It's chance that decides who lives and who dies. Who gets cancer. Which kid is born with spina bifida. Who gets run over by a truck.

This [the coin] is what decides whether or not I blow your wife's brains out."

— Harvey Dent, Joker's Asylum: Two-Face #1 

Teen Titans Spotlight (1987) #13

Character Traits:

🌗 Loving • Idealistic • Genuine • Principled • Resolute • Focused • Driven • Workaholic • Passionate • Eloquent • Wrathful • Obssessed • Brooding • Self-loathing • Black-and-white thinking • Dauntless • Fair • Honest (generally) • Man of his word • Learned helplessness (regarding the coin and his choices) • Self-destructive • Unpredictable • Hair-trigger temper • Can be persuaded • Charitable (depends on coin toss) • Takes his pain out on others • Self-enabling • Serious • Harsh • Intimidating • Vengeful • Physically violent • Self-aware • Conflicted • Feels remorse • Tries, but fails to improve as a person • Too Dependent on his coin • Fatalistic • Suicidal • Forgiving • Self-centered, but not selfish 🌗

Key Facts:

Harvey Dent...

• Had mental health issues long before his disfigurement [Batman Annual (1990 #14, Batman: The Animated Series - Episode 10, and Batman: Arkham City].

• His father physically abused him every day as a child. Christopher Dent used a double-headed coin to make Harvey believe he could "avoid" the beatings if the coin landed on the non-existent "tails" [Batman Annual #14].

• Bruce Wayne was his childhood friend [Rebirth universe & Batman: Nightwalker].

• Harvey "Legal Eagle" Dent was the top of his class [Secret Origins Special (1989) #1].

• Paid for his father's nice apartment [Batman: Two-Face (1995) - Crime & Punishment].

• Half of Harvey wanted to love his father, while the other half wished him dead. Despite everything, he tried to make peace with Christopher prior to the acid attack [Batman Annual #14].

• Never stopped loving/thinking about Gilda Dent when she disappeared from his life following the events of the Long Halloween [Batman (2006) #653 & Batman (2011) #712].

What's more, Harvey continued loving Gilda so much that he wound up murdering her second husband's killer in a pre-Long-Halloween continuity [Batman (1980) #329] because the man's death left Gilda grieving.

• Fun fact: The Power of Love helped him resist Poison Ivy's pheromones in the Dark Victory #11!

Begone, thot!

• Blamed Batman for what happened to him with Salvatore Maroni Carmine Falcone and the acid attack that scarred his face [Batman: Arkham Knight].

• Uses his coin to determine whether he should kill or spare his victims. Also, he has been known to perform acts of charity [Detective Comics (1942) #66 & Batman: The Silver Age Newspaper Comics Volume 3 (1969-1972)] sometimes.

• Loves and hates Gotham [Batman and Robin (2013) #23.1].

• Dislikes hypocrites [Batman: Two-Face (1995) - Crime and Punishment & The Spectre (2001) #5].

• Developed strong feelings for Renee Montoya in the Batman: No Man's Land storyline.

• Continued caring about Renee deeply, despite the events of Gotham Central (2003) #10 [Convergence: The Question #1-2].

Received training from Batman [Batman #653] and Deathstroke [Deathstroke (2018) #38].

• Has tried growing better as a person, but he keeps failing [Batman Annual #14 & Batman and Robin Adventures (1995) #1-2].

• Has re-scarred himself more than once [Batman Annual #14, Batman #653, and Batman: Black and White (1996) #1].

• For all his faults and crimes – such as nearly beating Dick Grayson to death in Robin: Year One – he has helped people [The Batman Chronicles (1999) #16], defended Jim Gordon from himself as Jim's defense lawyer [Detective Comics (1999) #739], cares about the women in his life, and keeps his word when the coin comes up good.

He is a complex character, period.

Other Facts:

• Has seen Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" [Batman (1986) #397].

• Knows how to sculpt [Detective Comics (1986) #563].

• Owns a "thememobile" like Batman [Batman (1987) #410]!

• Likes baseball [Batman (1987) #411].

• Likes symmetry [Batman (1989) #442].

Smokes, but also doesn't [Batman (1994) #513].

"My own version of the literary reference mark known as a diesis – more commonly known as a double-dagger! My next pair shall strike to the heart of the matter!" — Harvey Dent, Batman: Two-Face Strikes Twice #1 – the words of a man who certainly reads a lot!

Batman Annual #14 & Teen Titans Spotlight #13 – A himbo he is not!

• Reads classic books such as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" [Detective Comics #66] and "A Tale of Two Cities" [Batman: Two-Face Strikes Twice #2].

• Still finds putting criminals behind bars fun [Batman Gotham Adventures (1999) #12].

• Can speak Spanish [The Batman Chronicles #16].

• Doesn't mind hitting women at all. There are so many examples of this; Harvey confirmed it himself [Batman: Streets of Gotham (2009) #7], and beat up Jim Gordon's wife in Batman (1999) #572.

• Made a self-insert comic book in an art therapy program. Yup, he wrote and drew it himself [Detective Comics (2001) #753]!

Called it "The Adventures of Copernicus Dent and His Best Girl and Plucky Assistant R'Nee!" 

• Plays chess with Batman [Gotham Knights (2002) #32].

• Has watched Star Trek [Nightwing (2008) #150].

• Fought and killed a werewolf [The 2008 DC Universe Halloween Special]. Yes, really.

• Was a cult leader [Detective Comics (2020) #1020].

• Rebirth!Harvey is now working as a jailhouse lawyer in Blackgate [Detective Comics (2020) #1024].

• Understands how binary code works, but computer geeks make him sick? [Robin (1994) #11] Yeah.

• Has kids. Twins! [Batman: Two-Faces Strikes Twice]. It looks like they're irrelevant.

• Remembered Renee's birthday and sent her tulips [Detective Comics (2000) #747].

• Has been a judge before [The New Batman Adventures - Episode 24 & Arkham Unhinged (2013) #11].

• Hates odd-numbers [Robin: Year One #2].

[kiragecko]

DC Sidekick Age References

Here’s a dump of all the references I’ve found. Know I’m missing a lot, and quite a few were found on other sites that didn’t give me the most precise info.

If you know of anything else, can correct a mistake you see, or want to discuss comic book aging - please send me an ask, message, or reblog!

?? - means I don’t know where the info is from, “quotes” are direct copies of the wording in the comic

-

?? Parents died when Bruce was 8

Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) – Batman introduced

Detective Comics #38 (Apr 1940)  – Dick is (8 when parents killed/9 when Robin) 12 when he becomes Robin, it's Bruce's 3rd year as Batman

More Fun Comics 73 (Nov 1941) – Green Arrow Introduced

1962 - JLA formed

1964 – Dick teams up with Wally and Garth

Teen Titans 1 (Jan-Feb 1966) – Teen Titans form, Donna is introduced (all 5 are 14ish?)

Detective 359 (Jan 1967) – Babs introduced, has PhD, has graduated

Batman #217 (Dec 1969) – Dick graduates high school, enrolls in University (starts 3 months later)

1971 - Roy discovered using drugs by Ollie and Hal in a drug den (he was trading arrows for drugs), retcon has Wally and Dick discovering him at tower and making him promise to get help

Justice League 116 (Mar-Apr 1975) Charley Parker is 16

Batman Family 10 (Mar-Apr 1977) – Dick is teenager, Babs is 25

Teen Titans 53 (Feb 1978) – Dick, Wally, Donna, Vic all started college at same time

DC Special Series: The Flash Spectacular (May 1978) – Wally graduates high school

New Teen Titans 1 (Nov 1980) – Raven forms New Titans, Gar is 16 during run

New Teen Titans 2 (Dec 1980) – Slade meets team, Grant dies

1981 - Dick drops out of university after 1 semester, he never really was interested

New Teen Titans 20 (June 1982) – Vic turns 19, Donna already is

Tales of the New Teen Titans 2 (July 1982) – Raven turned 18 just before forming Titans

Batman #357 (Mar 1983) – Jason’s first appearance

Detective Comics #526 (May 1983) – Bruce adopts Jason, Dick is there and approving

New Teen Titans 34 (Aug 1983) – Terra turns 16

Batman #368 (Feb 1984) – Dick gives Jason the Robin costume, Jason becomes Robin

Blue Devil(84) – Eddie is 11/12

Tales of the Teen Titans (May 1984) – Joey introduced, Author describes him as 17?

New Teen Titans #39 (Feb 1984) – Dick stops being Robin, Wally quits being a superhero/the team

Tales of the Teen Titans 50 (Feb 1985) – Terry and Donna's wedding (she got married while 19)

New Teen Titans 10 (July 1985) – Kole says she's at least 18

Crisis on Infinite Earths 7 (Oct 1985) – Supergirl dies in Superman’s arms after mostly destroying the Anti-Monitor, who has to flee reality

New Teen Titans 18 (Mar 1986) – Dick turns 20 (“Dick Grayson celebrates his birthday away from home with a traditional Tamaranean feast.” (While sulking because Kory got space-married))

New Teen Titans 20 (May 1986) – Roy locates baby Lian, Terry Long is 29

?? Roy is 22(when he gets Lian)

Batman #404 - Batman Year One (Feb 1987) – Bruce is 25, spent 12 years training, became Batman at 26, Barbara Gordon is pregnant, her and Jim move to Gotham

Detective Comics #571 (Feb 1987) – we see Bruce’s fear gas induced vision of Jason’s tombstone (birth: 1974 – death: 1986, so he’d be 12)

Secret Origins 13 (April 87) – 15 years ago, it was Dick’s 5th birthday. Soon after tenth birthday, parents are killed. [Set during New TT 18])

Batman #409 (July 1987) – Jason becomes Robin (In Detective Comics, Jason has been Robin the whole time, but is still being wwritten with Pre-Crisis personality)

Flash 1 (June 1987) – Wally turns 20

New Teen Titans Ann 3 (Nov 1987) – Danny Chase is 13 and introduced

Batman #416 (Feb 1988) – Dick in Gotham, meets the new Robin on patrol. Confronts Bruce later, says he was ‘fired’ less than a year ago (since then he was briefly in college), makes Bruce admit he missed him. Dick finds Jason again, expose the drug dealers, and Dick gives Jason his old costume (symbolically, since Jason already has one) and a phone number, Dick was Robin for 6 years

Batman #427 (Winter 1988) – Jason dies

Batman #436, Batman: Year Three (Aug 1989) – 2 years since Dick stopped being Bruce’s sidekick (When he became Nightwing? Or when he quit?), parents died 10 years earlier

Batman #441, A Lonely Place of Dying (Nov 1989) – Tim 13, was 7 when Dick’s parents died

Robin #1 (Jan 1991) – Tim debuts as Robin

New Titans 84 (March 1992) – Joey dies

Deathstroke, the Terminator #15 (Oct 1992) – Rose introduced

Team Titans 3 (Nov 1992) – Robert Long is born

Adventures of Superman 500 (June 1993) – Kon appears and escapes from Cadmus with Newboy Legion, John Henry Irons first appearance, Eradicator and Cyborg Superman also appear for first time

Batman: BTAS: Robin’s Reckoning (1993) - 'Richard 'Dick' Grayson: Age 10'

Detective Comics 668 (Nov 1993) – Tim gets license (because dad is disabled) even though he hasn’t turned 16 yet, gets beat up by Jean-Paul

Flash 92 (July 1994) – Bart aged to 14

?? Shortly after Knight’s End – Tim is 15 and in the 10th grade

Flash 0 (Oct 1994) – Wally is 23

Damage 1(94) – Grant is 16

Deathstroke, The Terminator Annual 4 (Aug 1995) – Rose is 14, “What would that do to a kid? A fourteen-year-old girl whose father is an assassin she’s never met?”

Wonder Woman 105(95) – Cassie is 14

Tempest 1(96) – Garth spends many months in other dimension

Aquaman 20 (May 1996) – Garth aged 3-4 years in other dimension, now older than other Titans

Teen Titans 1 (Oct 1996) – Argent, Risk, Joto, Prysm all turn 16(they were conceived by seed things on same day)

Superboy Annual 2 – to Kon: “Happy birthday, Kid - - number one in a long successful series, we hope.” “He will effectively remain sixteen years old - - forever!”

Green Lantern 82(97) – Robert Long is 3

Wonder Woman 121(97) – Terry and Robert die

Secret Origins Giant 1(98) – Bart is “Three. Fifteen. Depends.”, “you’re almost 15, Tim.”

Titans 5(99) – Donna is 23

Titans(99) – Lian is 4

Sins of Youth(99) – Kon 16, aging normally again

Aquaman 63 (Jan 2000) – Future Garth tells granddaughter Donna about Cerdian being born (think this is his weird birth issue)

Wonder Woman Secret Files (2002) – „Wonder Girl is a precocious outgoing 15-year-old named Cassandra „Cassie“ Sandsmark.“

Bruce Wayne: Murderer (2002) – Oracle says Tim is 15

Batgirl #37 (April 2003) – “Cain said ... today was ... my birthday.”

Batgirl #39 (June 2003) – “I see an eighteen-year-old girl, who’s out of her depth.” (Babs about Cass)

Robin #116 (Sept 2003) – Dana: “Oh, I’m so glad we’ll all be together on Thursday ... !” Tim: “Why? What’s Thursday?” Jack: “Yeah. What’s Thursday?” Dana: “Wait a minute – seriously? Tim: “Yeah. Tell. Us.” Dana: “It’s nothing – never mind. Just leave your schedules open for a nice family dinner.”| Jack: “Dana, what’s – “ Dana: “Shh! Thursday ...  the 19th of July ... ?” Jack: “Um ... oh! Right!” | Steph: “So – Thursday!! Are you excited? Got any ideas for it, yet? ... Tim ... ?” [Tim is asleep.] | [Ives and Steph come over, with pizza that says “Happy B-Day Tim.”] Ives: “Sixteen spankings – get that boy up!!” | Dana says: “I remember when I was in 11th grade.” | he also gets the first ‘clue’ for Bruce’s ‘birthday present.’

Teen Titans 1 (Nov 2003) – Gar is 19, Is this Joey’s return?? (He’s puppeting Slade)

Teen Titans ½ (2004) – Rose’s early years, with a ‘6 years ago’ flashback, she was raised in a brothel her mom ran, tutored, never allowed the outside world, but had relationships with kids her age

Detective Comics #790 (Mar 2004) – Jason’s 18th birthday “he would have been 18 today”

Teen Titans 8 (April 2004) – Raven looks 'barely older' than Cassie

TEEN TITANS #1/2 [2004]: The flashback panels totally sync up with my age theories; Flash to 10 years ago: Dick Grayson’s parents die. Flash to 6 years ago: Rose Wilson is schooled at home by her mother, Lili. Flash to 5 years ago: Ravager I is killed. Flash to 3 years ago: Slade is forced to kill Jericho. Flash to 2 years ago: Cadmus attempts to clone Superman. Flash to 18 months ago: Rose deals with the death of her mother. Flash to one week ago: Bart Allen is shot by Slade.

Identity Crisis 4 (Dec 2004) –(Tim still 16)

Green Arrow 47(05) – Mia is 17

Return of Donna Troy 3(05) – Cassie barely 16

Nightwing: Year One(05) – Dick is 26

Batgirl #65 (Aug 2005) – Cass decides to figure out if Shiva is her mom, Jason and Cass roughly the same age

Flash(05/06) – Wally is 26

?? Robin #136 – Tim still 16 ???

Detective Comics #868 (Oct 2010)– Kate is 32 years old??

One Year Later(Mar 06)

Flash 1(06) – Bart 4 years older(20?)

Blue Beetle 2 (June 2006) – Find out Jaime was in space/a pocket dimension for One Year Later

?? Just prior to 52 (July 2006-July 2007)– told Tim is 17 (long before he’s also  17 in Red Robin, 52 is 1 year long)

Teen Titans 42 (Feb 2007) – Eddie is 17

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds 3-4 (Apr-June 2009) – Bart and Kon back, same as when died

Batman 677 (July 2008) – Batman over 30

Batman: Battle for the Cowl (May-July 2009) – Damian is 10, Ends with Dick and Damian becoming Batman and Robin

Brave & The Bold 2 (May 2007) – Kara is 17, “You have food in the refrigerator older than her, Hal. Who are you, Ollie? No bad thoughts. She’s seventeen.”

Batgirl #1 (Oct 2009) – Steph starting college

Batgirl #7 (Apr 2010) - Damian is "what happens when you work with a 10-year-old."

Red Robin #12 (July 2010) – Tim spent “a few months” looking for evidence before returning to Gotham, becomes emancipated minor

Detective Comics #871 (Jan 2011)– Mention that Dick and Babs went to prom together

Red Robin #25 (Sept 2011) – Tim “and you are only 17”

The Batman Files (Oct 2014) – Jason was 15 at death (seen on death certificate)

?? Rebirth Young Justice series – Cassie: “didn’t mean to end up back in high school feeling - - like I did back when I went to high school.” Later, she says she’s in Metropolis “Working. Going to school in the fall.” So she’s probably starting college.

?? Bart in some Rebirth comic: “Am I six? Am I nineteen? That’s a really freaky thing, right?”

?? At some point: Donna says shes a little older than Kyle

[adamsvanrhijn]

not to be very annoying, but do you happen to know any good books/resources about lgbt slang/identities in victorian/edwardian/etc england? (i mean, things such as lesbians calling each other "toms" and the like). don't worry if you don't know any, but i just figured i'd ask since this was kinda in your Area Of Interest so you might know some off the top of your head.

the not annoying at all but this is a more complex question than at first glance hahaha

TL;DR: there are many types of queer language / we have way more info about men, who have their own lexicon / this era is widely seen as the era in which the concept of identity is actually coming into play / books list at the end, scroll down til you reach bolded text if you don’t want my commentary.

so when you’re looking at mid 19th - interwar lgbt communities, whether in europe or the uk or the usa it doesn’t really matter bc this is quite universal, you’ve got at least three registers, for lack of an easier word:

how self-identified homosexual, inverted, queer, abnormal etc men (henceforth gay men) speak with each other

how self-identified “” women (henceforth lesbian women) speak with each other

interactions between these groups

these naturally intersect with other socioeconomic class factors.

back to england specifically:

despite legal considerations gay men have the most agency and ability to move around and therefore are more likely to interact with each other and form communities. so now you have additional registers:

upper middle / upper class

middle / lower middle / working class (more registers here but nobody asked me and i promise i will give you recs soon)

again, interactions between them

the latter category has limited applications; most of them have to do with prostitution or casual sex and tend to be about categorizing people in terms of what sex acts they participate in. (this is universally true of most forms of gay slang and/or their origins for obvious reasons) think locker room talk. OR, we’re looking at cross class relationships and how other people view members of cross class relationships. not to generalize bc there are other things than this but what is best documented here is the upper class pov of these interactions

for the first category there is much less slang & unique community language, when you look at letters and works of literature etc etc people are picking and choosing from both medical/psychiatric terminology, which is developing rapidly from the 1860s on, and like, classical works; you get a lot of alluding to things. artistic communities (bloomsbury group, natalie clifford barney’s harem in paris and what have you) meanwhile are sort of all over the map. but bc this isn’t Polite Society talk, most of the sources for this kind of language tend to be limited in scope. which is true for all subculture language really but like in this case, authors of the day who are writing what they know are we think giving a pretty accurate picture of what their actual communities were like... but it’s put through a filter for publication.

by the 20th century urban working class gay men in certain circles are using polari, a subcultural lexicon which came from mid/late 19th century theatre and music hall slang, which came from fairground cant, seafaring , labor slang, Yiddish, cockney, theatre slang, fishmarkets, French, Italian, underground crime rings literally i could go on and there’s lots of debate about this. it’s turn of the century when it comes to be used very widely within the gay community, and while its origins are in london it made it to other uk urban centres fairly quickly. this lasted well into the latter half of the 20th century and is the base for a lot of community slang today, which leads me to

lesbian women, who also used polari, albeit to a lesser extent. these were primarily lesbians who were also in the 3rd camp above - ones who are involved in the community and interacting w/ gay men regularly. (”straight women who work in theatre” is another category of woman polari speakers haha but performance slang went thru many changes and eventually things got p separate so you had fairground & theatre cant and gay subculture slang having similar roots but very distinct in usage)

for lesbian communities the same thing as w gay men applies for the upper classes just to a lesser degree due to the relative lack of a community experienced by women

but a very important point here is that, ESPECIALLY during the victorian period, less so moving into the 20th century, intimate relationships between women are viewed very, very differently than those between men - male relationships have hard and fast boundaries of what is and isnt acceptable, those of women do not. 

the development of identity w/ sexuality for women i think in many ways had a lot more to do with women who expressed their gender differently than women who had intimate exclusive relationships w/ other women 

anyway the point is there unfortunately is no like comprehensive text for All Queer Language at this point in time, nor for the development of sexual identity, and the nature of this field (linguistics + history + sociology about queer stuff) means that a lot of the good work is in academic articles which i do NOT know off the top of my head. :-( but here’s some stuff !!

LIST OF THE ACTUAL BOOKS SORRY ABOUT ALL THAT

ok so these are all nonfiction, mostly academic nonfiction, but i want to stress that contemporary literature is a REALLY good way to get a (often rose tinted but not always) look into subculture and there are many novels that play with and/or poke at the ongoing development of sexual identity, especially in edwardia, especially especially in the 1920s, so if youve got endless time to read on your hands it is absolutely worth poking around there.

i have a list in the works of 1920s literature that has lgbt stuff in it and i realise thats a bit late for you but even so!!

also: compilations of letters, memoirs, etc are like super super invaluable 

anyway ive bolded the most important ones:

Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve. Epistemology of the Closet. 1990. University of California Press. [required lgbt theory reading, literally the foundation for soooo much]

Marcus, Sharon. Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. 2007. Princeton University Press.

Robb, Graham. Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century. 2003. [this is like, functionally prerequisite reading for any gay male stuff for the 19th century & robb is an excellent popular historian who also has an actual academic background]

Rupp, Leila J. Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women. 2008. NYU Press.

Russett, Cynthia. Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood. 1989. Harvard University Press. [touches on things but is not About sexuality/identity]

these are both already on my downton abbey research list but they both discuss language thruout and identity very thoroughly:

Brady, Sean. Masculinity and Male Homosexuality in Britain, 1861-1913. 2005. Palgrave Macmillan.

David, Hugh. On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality 1895-1995. 1997. HarperCollins.

for polari, see basically everything paul baker’s done. the 2019 might be the most accessible but i havent read it yet:

Baker, Paul. Fantabulosa: A dictionary of Polari & gay slang. 2002. London: Continuum.

Baker, Paul. Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men (Routledge Studies in Linguistics). 2002. London: Routledge.

Baker, Paul. Fantabulosa! The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language. 2019. London: Reaktion.

while it predates the era youre asking about, this book is good reading that leads up to the changes of the victorian era in sexual morality & how that affects identity and language:

Donoghue, Emma. Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668–1801. 1995. HarperCollins.

also i hate to do this but like. foucault lol. obviously not focused on britain but very much focused on the development of identity and sexuality. 

ive been working on this for like three straight hours im gonna go eat lunch now

[bigassheart]

Updated TUA Timeline

A little over a year ago, Aidan posted a timeline for the events of the Umbrella Academy on his Instagram. I posted it on this blog at the time and promised I was going to update my TUA Timeline post with that info. Never did. But I am now! So, here it is. The updated TUA Timeline.

Also, there will obviously be spoilers, so don’t read this if you haven’t watched season 1.  

October 1st, 1989 - The Umbrella Academy kids are born.

1993 - Grace Joins the family. This is according to Aidan’s Timeline. Depending on the time of the year, the kids would be 3 or 4 when this happens. This may or may not be when the kids get names. 

1993/1994 - Vanya forgets about her powers. Vanya also trains with Reginald and is subsequently made to forget about her powers around this time. Though we don’t get a specific date or length of time that Vanya trains, the flashbacks don’t appear to show her training for a super long time. I think a good guess would be less than a year for this training, putting Vanya’s age at 4. (This also matches up with the casting for the young Vanya and young Allison roles, which I used previously to estimate this age/date)

1997/1998 - Klaus is locked in the mausoleum for the first time. I am basing this on the casting for the role of young Klaus, which has him at 8 years old.    However, it’s not quite that simple, because when Klaus is talking to his dad in episode 7, he says that his dad locked him in the mausoleum when he was 13. Complicating matters even further, there is a post somewhere out there that took a screen shot of Reginald’s journal with notes about locking Klaus in the mausoleum. (I have not been able to find that post again, so if anyone knows the one I’m talking about and has a link, I would love to put it in here). The date recorded on those notes is 2001. (I don’t remember the month, but I think it was summer) That would have made him 11 years old. It’s possible that this was just an inconsistency in the writing. Or it’s possible that Reginald locked Klaus in a mausoleum on at least 3 different occasions at age 8, 11, and 13. Possibly more. 

2001/2002 - The Umbrella Academy stops a Robbery  I’m basing this on the fact that all the same actors were used for these scenes as were used in the scene where Five leaves, so they can’t be much more than a year younger than that. 

November 10, 2002 - Five leaves the Academy  According to Pogo in episode 1, Five has been gone for 16 years, 4 months, and 14 days. The date in that episode is March 24th, 2019 (according to Vanya). That means that Five disappeared on November 10th, 2002, a little more than a month after the Umbrella Academy kids all turned 13. (This date is also confirmed on Aidan’s timeline)

(Side-note. Remember when Klaus mentions being locked in the mausoleum when he was 13? That means it probably happened not too long after Five disappeared. Holy Fuck Regi!)

2006(?) - Ben Dies OK, this is only a guess, BUT it’s a good one and if you scroll down to the additional notes at the bottom, you’ll see why. 

2014 - Vanya publishes her book In episode 3, we learn that Vanya wrote her book 5 years earlier. (when they were 24) At this point, Ben is already dead and Luthor has not had his accident yet.

2014/2015 - Luther has his accident We’re not sure how long it takes Regi to send Luther to the moon after his accident (days? weeks? months?) so all we really know is that the accident happens sometime between Vanya publishing her book and the moon trip.

2015 - Luther goes to the moon In episode 6, Luther says that he was on the moon for 4 years, making him about 25 years old when he left. Aidan’s timeline also confirms that Luther went to the moon in 2015. 

March 24th, 2019 - Reginald’s Funeral We know this because they tell Five the exact date. 

April 1st, 2019 - Apocalypse (Dear Commission: Worst April Fools joke ever). 

This Brings us to the present. The members of the Umbrella Academy are all 29, except for Five, who is 58, and Klaus, who spent 10 months in Vietnam and is therefore 30 now. 

Additional Notes on the Timeline: 

Five in the Future Five finds Delores pretty soon after the apocalypse (again, same actor, so I’m figuring a year leeway at most). He tells Klaus that he was with Delores for 30 years. That would make him about 43 when The Handler shows up. When Five gets back to the present, he gives a very specific amount of time he has been gone: 45 years. This means he spent 15 years working for the Comission, making him 58 at this point. Five also traveled through history extensively while working for the commission. His last mission had something to do with the Kennedy assassination, which would put him in 1963.  (Quick note on this one - Someone commented on this post a while back with a correction and I was going to go back and do more research so I could correct these numbers, but now I can’t find the post and it’s been so long that I can’t remember what the correction was. So, if these numbers look off, let me know and I will fix it)

1968 - Klaus travels back in time to the Vietnam War Historical Context: This is 3 years after the first American troops arrived in Vietnam and 5 years after Kennedy was assassinated. Nixon was elected in 1968. This was also the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive campaign by the North Vietnamese Army to push the US troops out of the country and ferment rebellion among the South Vietnamese people. This was the big turning point in the war and marked the beginning of the US troops’ defeat. This was also the year of the My Lai Massacre, where the US Army murdered more than 500 civilians in the city of My Lai. This incident was covered up for a year before the American press found out about it.  

Finally, the reasoning behind my guess that 2006 is the year Ben died: 

Klaus mentions that Ben died “young and tragic”

Everyone left the house after Ben died, according to Vanya.

In episode 3, Alison says that they left their mom alone for 13 years. (13 years ago, they would have been 16) We don’t know how quickly everyone left, if it took days, weeks, or even years, so it’s possible that 13 years ago was when Alison left specifically. It could be that everyone was gone by that date. Or it could be that this is when everyone started leaving. 

Diego mentions moving out at 17. Again, everyone left after Ben died, so it would have happened before that. 

Ben’s statue does not have a date on it, but obviously he would have had to be at least the same age as he is depicted there.

We also have the following portraits sequence in episode 1 that was used to show Five’s disappearance and Ben’s death. Here are all 4 portraits.

Portrait 1 is done when they are all 12 or 13 years old. Everyone looks about the same age in portrait 2, so I’m assuming it Reginald had it commissioned right after Five disappeared. It would therefore make sense that portrait 4 was done right after Ben died. There are clearly several years age difference between portraits 2 and 3. It also looks like there may be another year or so age difference between portraits 3 and 4. Because of this, I would argue that the children are at least 15 years old in the final portrait. Therefore, Ben dies at age 15 or 16.

Last bit of evidence is Aidan’s timeline. Now, the year for Ben’s death is blacked out, BUT we can see the general shape of the numbers. The first number is clearly a 2, so we know that it’s not just a bunch of 0′s as a place holder. The last two numbers are rounded at the top and the bottom. In the font they are using, that gives us these possible years: 2003, 2006, 2008, 2009. 

The placement between 2002 and 2015 is just a little past the middle point, so at first I figured that would mean the year was 2009. HOWEVER, that would mean he died at age 20. The other kids definitely don’t look 20 in the portrait after Ben dies and this doesn’t match up with the comments Allison and Diego make about leaving when they were still in their teens. Also, if you look at the timeline for earlier years, the same space between dates is used across the board, whether those dates are 4 years apart or 9 years apart. 

Conclusion: I think Ben died in early 2006 (making him 16). 

And that’s all I’ve got so far.

If anyone else has more clues for the timeline, please add them to this post. 

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Wherever They May Roam: Dave Mustaine

Dave Mustaine was born on September 13, 1961 in La Mesa, California. His heritage is that of German, Jewish, Irish, Finnish, and Scottish. His family also were practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses. His childhood growing up emerged as a very difficult one as his father embodied a violent alcoholic. His father and mother would divorce when he was only four years old. Mustaine had two sisters that were so much older than him that he thought of his siblings more as aunts. In high school, Mustaine began to use hard drugs very early, eventually working as a drug dealer. Through his customers, he began to learn about British metal bands like Judas Priest. He even had one client that would pay for his drugs with record albums. His first band emerged with Panic in the very early 1980’s. This was a very short lived group as the drummer and one of their sound techs died on the night of their second show. The band slowly started to disintegrate with the final straw being that the rhythm guitarist also died within a year. They never made any official recordings, nor a demo.

In 1981, Mustaine responded to an ad posted in a local newspaper The Recycler from Lars Ulrich seeking a lead guitarist for a new band. The guitarist recalls his first meeting with Ulrich and James Hetfield. "I was in the room warming up and I walked out and asked, 'Well, am I gonna audition or what?', and they said, 'No, you've got the job.' I couldn't believe how easy it had been and suggested that we get some beer to celebrate." They began to record their first album Kill ‘Em All in 1983, but problems had immediately come to the surface related to Mustaine’s membership in the band. Brian Slagel of Metal Blade Records recalls the recording of that album. “Dave was an incredibly talented guy but he also had an incredibly large problem with alcohol and drugs. He'd get wasted and become a real crazy person, a raging megalomaniac, and the other guys just couldn't deal with that after a while. I mean, they all drank of course, but Dave drank more… much more. I could see they were beginning to get fed up of seeing Dave drunk out of his mind all the time." The first time he was fired from the band came after he brought a dog to a recording. The dog jumped on the car of bassist Ron McGovney causing the paint job to be damaged. James Hetfield upon seeing this kicked the dog in a fit of anger, which led to a huge altercation with Mustaine. After the initial termination, he begged the other members to let him back into the group. They did grant him this request, so his firing was canceled. Another incident occurred when Mustaine poured beer into McGovney’s bass guitar, who was unaware when he began to plug it in. He then received a tremendous electric shock leading to him kicking both Mustaine and James Hetfield out of his house. The bass player would leave Metallica shortly after that. In April 1983, the group traveled to New York to record their debut album, but upon arrival they decided to officially fire Dave Mustaine from the group. They cited the reasons of alcohol and drug abuse, aggressive behavior, too many altercations. The band drove him to the Port Authority bus terminal and put the former Metalica guitarist on one back to California. The amount of collaboration Mustaine had with the band in those early days has always been a debate between the current Metalica and him. He would co-write four songs on Kill ‘Em All, as well as two more songs from Ride the Lightning. The songwriter has unsuccessfully contended that he also helped with “Leper Messiah” from Master of Puppets. Upon returning to San Francisco, he worked very briefly as a telemarketer, would leave this job upon earning enough money to get an apartment in Los Angeles. Mustaine would start a very short lived group called Fallen Angels with two of his coworkers from that telemarketing job. The group never played a live show or recorded anything as Mustaine later commented on the group. “We lacked the chemistry, the energy, the spark—or whatever you want to call it—that gives a band life in its infancy."

The guitarist would soon befriend a neighbor living a floor below his apartment that first began as a confrontation. His name was Dave Ellefson, who would soon join Mustaine‘s new lineup for what would become Megadeth. Originally, he was still utilizing the name from his previous effort, Fallen Angels. He had wanted any group that he played with now to present more thought provoking lyrics and a more precise, intense brand of metal music. A drummer Lee Rausch and guitarist Kerry King would join this initial lineup only to be replaced by Gar Samuelson and Chris Polish respectively. In the case of King, he went back to his original group, Slayer. Megadeth's debut album would be released in 1985 on Combat Records entitled Killing Is My Business. The group received a great amount of buzz that by the time they recorded the second album the band had signed to a major label, Capitol Records. The second album, Peace Sells, But Who’s Buying would go on to become a thrash metal classic earning gold record status. Throughout the 1980’s and early 1990’s, the only two members to be a constant with the band were Mustaine and Dave Ellefson. Other members of the group consistently changed from album to album as Mustaine’s addictions to drugs and alcohol only got worse. He would finally quit drugs and alcohol in the late 1990’s permanently. The amazing thing was despite these addictions, the band led by Mustaine in writing all the songs made mostly quality albums like 1992's Countdown to Extinction, 1994's Youthanasia, and 1997's Cryptic Writings. The only one that was really perceived as a mediocre effort came in 1988 with So Far So Good So What. This would be followed by Rust in Peace, which represented a record that made people think that Mustaine was finally clean and sober. Unfortunately, he would use the rest of the decade to struggle with those demons.

In 2002, the guitarist briefly disbanded Megadeth after a serious arm injury caused him to rethink how he would even be able to play in the future. He was able to successfully rehab from this injury, so the band went on, but with an entirely new lineup. This meant that long time collaborator Dave Ellefson was asked to leave the group. He would not return to Megadeth until 2010. Dave’s reasoning at the time was that he asked too much for his own songs to be played. “I hated being around these guys so when the arm injury happened, it was a welcome relief and an indication that I had to stop." In 2003, Mustaine also turned to Christianity. He began to look at other areas besides the beliefs held by Jehovah’s Witnesses. His description of this transformation was described in a way only Mustaine could possibly describe. “Looking up at the cross, I said six simple words, 'What have I got to lose?' Afterwards my whole life has changed. It's been hard, but I wouldn't change it for anything. Rather go my whole life believing that there is a God and find out there isn't than live my whole life thinking there isn't a God and then find out, when I die, that there is." As had always been the case with the band, Megadeth would release a new album every 2 to 3 years almost like clockwork. In 2010, Mustaine would release his autobiography entitled A Life in Metal. By this time, the war with former bandmates in Metallica began to thaw a bit. He would play five songs with the band at their 30th anniversary concert. A year later they would all tour together as part of the Big Four tour including Anthrax and Slayer as well. Surprisingly, the guitarist has been happily married since 1991 with a son and a daughter. More recently, health issues have come to the forefront including spinal stenosis which he claims was from years of headbanging. In 2019, Mustaine was diagnosed with throat cancer, but he says now that he is cancer free. One thing overall that has always concerned Mustaine is his legacy and place in the history of heavy metal guitarists. He has always been supremely confident in his ability as he noted in this interview. “To be the No. 1 rated guitar player in the world is a gift from God and I'm stoked about it…” In 2009, he gave an interview to Classic Rock Magazine that revealed this telling insight into the man. Mustaine was talking about learning he had been named the number one heavy metal guitarist ever in a book by Joel McIver. “It was especially sweet when I found out that Joel has written books on Metallica. Every page I turned, I became more excited. I get to Number 5 and it's Kirk Hammett, and I thought, 'Thank you, God'. At that point it didn't matter [which position I was]. To be better than both of them [James Hetfield and Hammett] meant so much – it's been one of the pet peeves of my career and I've never known how to deal with it. All I thought was – I win!" Upon reading this statement, one could partially see why Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield did not want him in the group.

[sanderssidesfanfiction]

If There’s a Place I Could Be - Chapter Eighty

If There’s a Place I Could Be Tag

August 30th, 2002

Emile set down the last box with a heavy sigh and looked to Faith with a smile. “That’s the last of them,” he assured her.

“Thanks for being willing to help me move, Emile,” Faith said. “I really wish my folks weren’t so far away sometimes, but you and everyone else I’ve made friends with have been a huge help.”

“Hey, no problem!” Emile chirped. “So long as you crush your final two years like you crushed them at your last school, you’ll do fine.”

Faith grinned and crushed Emile in a hug. “Thanks. Now, I think you’d better find Remy, because I believe some of the guys in the dorms were eyeing him earlier...”

Emile groaned and nodded. “Thanks for the tip. Talk soon?”

“You know it!” Faith exclaimed with a grin.

  January 26th, 2003

Emile laughed a little as he moved the last box from the car to the townhouse he and Remy were now proudly paying a mortgage for. He wiped the dirt from his hands and looked around the empty space with a happy grin. Remy was leaning against the wall with a huge smile. “We’ve done it!” Emile exclaimed. “We’ve officially moved into a townhouse!”

“No more mother coming to bother me, no more Grace knocking on our door or subtly hinting that she doesn’t approve of us!” Remy crowed. “Oh, God, we’re gonna have to save up for more furniture than just a couch, the TV stuff, and a card table, but we have a fully furnished master bedroom, an office, and two guestrooms, and that’s good enough for now!”

Emile closed the front door and sighed, looking around. “We should probably unpack our clothes and stuff soon. Before tonight. And get out enough plates and utensils that we can eat.”

“You take care of the clothes and I take care of the kitchen?” Remy offered.

“You just want full range of knowing where everything in the kitchen is without both of us arguing over the sorting systems of pots and pans,” Emile playfully accused.

“Duh,” Remy said, shamelessly grinning.

“Of course, you know if you sort the pans and I sort the clothes, I get to color-sort your shirts,” Emile said innocently.

Remy froze at that declaration and Emile watched the gears whir in his mind, weighing his options. Remy hated when Emile tried to sort through his clothes, so this would either make or break the afternoon plans. “You know what? Fine. It’s worth it if I get free reign over the kitchen,” Remy said with a shrug. “And if I don’t like your system I’ll just move all my clothes around at a later date.”

“We both know that’ll never happen, but all right,” Emile laughed, taking the boxes of clothes and heading to the master bedroom.

Emile set the clothes down with a sigh, stretching before pulling out hangers and getting all of his clothes in the closet the way he liked them first. Sweaters and sweater vests on the inside, shirts in the middle, pants towards the edges, and everything sorted by color. He went through Remy’s clothes, after, tutting at the state that they were in. Remy had mostly thrown all his clothes into the box, barely folding anything outside his suit and blouses.

Slowly but surely, Emile sorted through everything and followed the mirror image of what he had done with his clothes for Remy’s. As Emile moved the last of the clothes, it became evident that Remy had used the box for more than just moving the clothes, as there were lumps and bumps that were slowly revealed to be knick-knacks. Emile glanced at the bedroom door. Hopefully Remy wouldn’t mind if Emile looked through them.

Emile saw Bones first, of course, and carefully put him on the bed, making sure nothing had dug into or torn the fur. Next, came a small trophy that Emile recognized as being from when all their friends had gone to the dollar store and gotten each other trophies with various ridiculous stickers on them. Emile kept that in the box, figuring that Remy would want to deal with that on his own. There was a small yet valuable stack of comics, and underneath...

Emile blinked when he pulled out a photo album, the cover done in blue plaid, with stickers on the front, slapped on in the way a child might try and be neat, spelling “BEST BROTHERS” in all capital letters. Emile flipped the cover open and put a hand to his mouth as tears inexplicably formed in his eyes. There, the very first photo, was a picture of a toddler with almost-tamed brown hair and freckles, staring in wonder at a baby with a blue blanket and hat. He flipped the photo over and saw “Toby meeting Remy” in loopy cursive written on the back.

The next photo in the album was the same toddler, sitting on a sofa, staring adoringly at the baby as a woman who looked like Remy’s mother pointing, no doubt showing the toddler how to hold Remy. There were several pictures of the toddler and the infant, one where the toddler was holding a bottle which made Emile grin and coo at the photo. There were a few photos of the two playing, or the toddler and another girl sitting and reading while a baby Remy slept in the corner.

Then came a photo which had Emile outright crying. A baby Remy, with unkempt blonde hair was reaching for a slightly-older-than-toddler Toby, foot raised midstep as Toby held out his arms. The photo directly after that showed Toby hugging a beaming Remy, and Emile knew that had to be Remy’s first steps.

“Emile, come on, sorting clothes can’t take this...” Remy paused midway through his sentence, staring at Emile, who glanced back at him guiltily even as he was still crying. “...Long. Where did you find that?”

“It was at the bottom of your clothes box,” Emile said, offering it back to Remy. “Sorry for prying, I was just curious.”

Remy looked at the photos on the page Emile had been staring at, and he smiled. “Hey, those were my first steps. Toby asked for a hug and I just walked over and gave him one.”

“I thought they must be, to be captured on film,” Emile said softly. “How long have you had this?”

“Toby gave it to me that first Thanksgiving when I went back home, a reminder that we’d always be there for each other,” Remy said softly, flipping through the pages, before turning the book over and flipping to the last photo, where there was a beaming Toby and a reluctantly smiling Remy in his cap and gown. “That was the day I graduated high school,” he said. “Toby insisted on getting a picture where I didn’t look completely sullen.”

Emile grinned, marvelling at the picture. “That’s amazing, Rem,” he said.

Remy sniffed a laugh. “Yeah, Toby always insisted I smile for at least one photo for his album. This was his. He had to be about five when he noticed my mom had photo albums in our parents room and he insisted on having one of his own, complete with copies of the photos that featured me and him when I was just a baby.”

“Wow,” Emile said, not really knowing what else to say.

“Yeah. He had one for him and Vanessa, too, but this was ours,” Remy said with a smile. “He was so proud of it, even when he went off to college. He would brag to me about how he would always catch me mid-smile without me realizing, no matter how much I would snarl after I realized he took a photo of me. He loved photography, and graphic design. That’s actually his ideal job. Marketing and graphic design.”

“He went to an art school, I remember you saying,” Emile said. “I was surprised. I would have thought your parents wouldn’t want him to take that sort of risk.”

“Nah, Toby was the golden child, he could do no wrong and he could make anything work so long as he put in the effort,” Remy said, shaking his head. “Once he started showing that he had a knack for art my parents pushed him to continue. You should see his portraits, Emile, they’re works of art.”

“You don’t resent him,” Emile observed.

Remy looked up, confused. “Why would I?”

“You said he was the golden child, and most kids resent when one of their siblings is favored over themselves,” Emile said.

“Nah. Toby made up for the love my parents didn’t give me in spades. They adored him and he adored me.” Remy shook his head again, blinking back tears. “I miss him and his dorky insistence on taking a photo at every big milestone. He would insist on taking a photo the opening day of Sleep Easy, when that happens, and he would have probably gotten a picture of today, too, and just...God, he took so many photos, but I do miss it.”

Emile swiped Remy’s tears away with the pad of his thumb. “Hey, remember what Dice said? He has the city. He has the city Toby is in and he’s asking around for a specific address and phone number. We’re so close to finding him, Rem. We might even find him before Sleep Easy opens and he can take that picture opening day. You two will be together, and get to take so many more photos.”

Remy laughed. “So many photos. I’ll be begging him to stop, and he’ll simply respond with a ‘never.’”

“That’s the spirit!” Emile encouraged. “He’ll take pictures and we’ll cover the walls of this house with them. It will be great.”

“You really mean that?” Remy asked. “You’d really cover the house with photos that Toby took?”

“Yeah, I really would,” Emile said. “Even if he never took a single one of us, which I severely doubt, I would buy his art in a heartbeat to cover the house with. Because it’s a good reminder that he’s there for you even when it doesn’t feel like it.”

Remy smiled softly. “I think there are probably some old home movies of Toby and I running around and playing. We’d go on epic adventures around the house, and Mom hated us climbing on the furniture to do it, but she didn’t stop us until I was about five and old enough to understand that the table probably wouldn’t support my weight if I kept clamoring on it.”

“Did you have a favorite adventure?” Emile asked, electing to ignore the comment on Remy’s mother for the time being.

“Oh, I loved them all, it’s hard to think of just one. I loved being astronauts, pirates, criminals, cowboys, any and everything Toby and I could think up. We’d spend most of, if not the whole day playing in just a single world with one of the scenarios we came up with. That’s what made it so special. Toby would spend hours with me, just playing. There were times he’d spend the day with Vanessa, or Mom, or Dad if Dad was off work. But then he’d spend days with me...and it was like nothing could make me happier. I had his undivided attention, I could talk to him about whatever I wanted. And sure, I could talk to him on days we didn’t do that, and he’d still give me undivided attention. But the fact that he did that on his own, for a whole day, just because he wanted to...it meant the world.”

“I wouldn’t recommend climbing on the furniture when we find him again, but I’ll leave you two be to talk all you want,” Emile said.

“What? No!” Remy exclaimed. “Emile, you don’t understand. You’d be part of that conversation. You’re just as important to me as Toby. I want Toby and you to talk and get to know each other too. When we meet up again, I’m keeping you in on the conversation, too. It’s only fair.”

“And...you wouldn’t mind?” Emile asked, a little shocked. “You always talk about you and Toby together when we go over this sort of thing, and...I don’t want to accuse you of anything, you just...usually don’t include me in the equation.”

“Because I mostly talk about memories and things that have already happened, Emile,” Remy said, not unkindly. “I let you in on those memories so you’re not completely lost when I talk about stuff Toby and I have done. Because we will slip into inside jokes and ribbing each other at a moment’s notice. I want you there, Emile, of course I do. I want the two most important people in my life to meet.”

Emile grinned shyly. “Thanks, Rem,” he said softly. “Is there a reason you came up here?”

“I figured we could celebrate our new home by cooking something, making this place smell like home. You in?” Remy asked.

“Absolutely,” Emile said, kissing Remy’s cheek. “I’d love nothing more.”

[callmeblake]

Frank Iero, New York, NY, June 2019 (X)

Aug 29, 2019, 09:10am

Frank Iero May Just Be His Own Puppet Master

Photo Credit: Audrey Lew

Interview below the cut

Derek Scancarelli

Contributor

Hollywood & Entertainment

I am a music journalist living in New York City.

Frank Iero is breathing deeply and fighting off nausea. This isn’t uncommon for the 37-year-old guitarist and vocalist, given his predilection for debilitating anxiety. But on this occasion, it isn’t pre-show jitters.

“Oh my god, I hate this f*cking boat,” Iero says, as the docked vessel on which he sits knocks against a pier in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Iero and his band, The Future Violents, just finished an intimate Saturday matinee show as fans sweat, sang and caught a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

It had been about 16 years since Iero and his now defunct band, My Chemical Romance (the band broke up in 2013), first performed on water. In July of 2002, the band released its debut album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. In October of 2003, the soon-to-be emo heroes performed alongside New York Hardcore legends Sick Of It All at an aquatic gig booked by New Jersey college radio station WSOU. And in June of 2004, My Chemical Romance released Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, the band’s platinum-selling breakthrough record. In a matter of two years, Iero’s life changed dramatically.

In 2019, Iero still hasn’t found his sea legs, but a lot more has changed. He’s fathered three children, released three full-length solo records (including 2019’s Barriers), and survived a near-death experience. And as he gets older, he finds truth in life’s greatest clichés.

“Time flies, it just screams by,” Iero says. “You think you’re appreciating the time, but it’s easy to take it for granted. It’s a shame.”

But Iero is trying his hardest to pay attention to the little things, especially when it comes to family. He and his wife, Jamia, have three children together: nine-year-old twin daughters, Cherry and Lily, and a seven-year-old son named Miles.

“It’s wonderful to see them evolve and come into their own,” Iero says. “But it’s funny how personalities are innate. We shape the way they experience things or teach them the ropes, but for the most part, I’ve found that we are who we are when we’re born.”

From the start, Iero has seen an even split in the twins’ personalities. Cherry, he says, most behaves like her mother, whereas Lily possesses her father’s attitude.

“Some of the sh*t I hear coming out of my daughter's mouth,” Iero says laughing. “My God! It’s stuff I think but never say — they don't know to be ashamed yet! It's amazing and honest and pure. And I know exactly where she's coming from because I feel the same way.”

As part of fostering a relationship of trust and honesty, Iero has been age-appropriately transparent with his kids about the 2016 accident that almost killed him, his brother-in-law and guitarist Evan Nestor and his manager Paul Clegg.

While unloading gear from their van in Sydney, Australia, a city bus crashed into the group and their vehicle. In a 2017 interview with MTV, Iero recounted, in vivid detail, the moment he was dragged underneath the bumper of the bus, the screams of his brother-in-law, and the blood pooling from his manager.

Although Iero was able to walk into an ambulance carrying one of his friends, the scene was a spectacle overrun with emergency personnel — they even landed a rescue helicopter in nearby Hyde Park. Despite serious injuries, amazingly, there were no fatalities.

When Iero returned home from the hospital, he explained to his children that he was in a car accident, but that it was a singular freak incident.

“You don't want to lie,” he says. “They're getting older. Their friends and their parents are on the internet. They're asking questions. It does get back to them.”

Iero was as honest as possible, but avoided any gory details. He was also conscious that it wouldn’t be long before he would travel for work again — and he didn’t want to scare his kids any further.

Almost four years later, residual damage from the crash is impossible to ignore. Nestor has nerve damage in his leg that may never be corrected. Clegg’s leg and knee have undergone multiple surgeries, but are in poor shape. And Iero still has a tear in his shoulder that hurts every time he plays the guitar. Despite the pain, he’s afraid to undergo surgery.

“I was lucky enough to walk away and still play,” Iero says. “If I were to test fate again and go under the knife, if something were to go wrong… to let that be taken from me … no, I can't.”

On some days, the emotional toll of surviving such a traumatic accident weighs more heavily. Iero describes his recovery as non-linear: some days he feels collected and in control, other days the memory rushes back into his mind.

After his new band finished recording Barriers, Iero and his team went back to Australia for appointments pertaining to the accident and corresponding litigation. As soon as he exited the plane, Iero felt like he’d returned to the horrific scene. For the following week, he was barraged by an unending state of panic.

“You go through these instances of PTSD,” he says. “You never know what's going to trigger and send you all the way back to the beginning with recovery.”

Iero greatly underestimated how difficult his return to Australia would be. When navigating to a doctor’s office near where the accident occurred, he couldn’t bring himself to walk down the street. And suddenly, he felt surrounded by buses.

“I don't know if this is true,” he says. “But it felt like every other car on the street was one of these f*cking buses. They were everywhere. It was frightening. I couldn't do anything. I was shaking like a leaf.”

Despite the traumatic flashbacks, Iero continues to reflect on that day. In the promotional run for Barriers, he discussed the accident at length. And on the record itself, he addresses the complicated ripple effect it’s had on his entire sense of self.

“I don't think it needs to define me,” Iero says. “But it was something I needed to talk about on this record. It's not something I could sweep under the rug. But do I want to dwell on it every day and relive it? No. But I think about it constantly. I feel the pain constantly. It's on my mind.”

In recent interviews, Iero has tended to frame a few philosophical takeaways from his ordeal. In simple terms, the first idea is that he’s found a new lease on life — that everything happens for a reason and he’s been given an opportunity to seize the day. The second philosophy is much darker, a sort of survivor’s guilt compounded with fear and existential dread. The third and most abstract consideration is closest to Simulation Theory — where Iero has the ability to control his own artificial timeline.

Sometimes, Iero questions if actually died that day. He wonders: Is this all real?

“It’s hard. No one can tell you what to believe,” he says. “But you come to this realization, ‘Well, this is real to me, the hand I was dealt, so I have to make the best of it!’”

Through the acceptance of uncertainty, Iero surmises that he just may be his own puppet master.

“If this is a figment of my imagination,” Iero says. “If this is all in my head, then I am the master of my own destiny. If I want to do something, I can manufacture it. And if it's not the case, then at least it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe putting positive vibes out into the universe is beneficial. If we didn't make it and we're just going through this weird labyrinth in my mind, I can do anything I want.”

And lately, he’s been doing just that. Call it sorcery or the power of positive thinking, but Iero is motivated. For Barriers, he was able to assemble a dream band, The Future Violents (different lineups of his backing band have previously gone by The Cellabration and The Patience), featuring his brother-in-law Nestor on guitar, Thursday’s Tucker Rule on drums, Murder by Death’s Matt Armstrong on bass, and Kayleigh Goldsworthy on keyboard.

The theme of the album — and his own internal dialogue — mostly relates to tragedy and timing. Did the universe have a course set out for him? Or was he just some random victim?

“The crazy thing is that you didn't do anything wrong,” Iero says of the accident. “Yet, all of this stuff was taken from you and you have to make these decisions. You get angry a lot.”

He continues: “These random, abrupt, violent actions. Do they happen to us? Or for us? I wouldn't have been able to make this record if it didn't happen. And it made me realize a lot of things about myself. Am I happy it happened? No. But I'm happy where I am right now.”

Iero views Barriers as an exercise in vulnerability. If the aftermath of his accident taught him anything, it’s that success was meaningless to his character, but adversity helped him grow. For the first time, addressing childhood trauma helped Iero expose himself in a way that felt freeing.

“When you put something to song, it gives that memory weight,” Iero explains. “If you never talk about it, it's almost like it didn't happen. There's a fine line between relinquishing that power to this memory, situation or trauma, or holding that power over it and creating your own narrative from it.”

Barriers also intertwines Iero’s childhood experiences with his current perspective as a father. This go around, he felt comfortable writing about his parents’ divorce — the couple split when he was three and divorced when he was seven.

He looks back on the unpleasantness of the process and his consequential understanding of his mother’s issues with addiction, depression and mental illness. On his 2016 record, Parachutes, Iero first referenced his mother’s struggles and his own liability to inherit her traits. He’s still horrified by the idea of predeterminism.

“When you're a young kid being surrounded with it, it doesn't feel right,” Iero says. “You're not happy. You're scared. You're constantly concerned for your parent. It’s almost as if you become the caregiver.”

He continues: “Then you see yourself falling into these patterns that you were witness to and maybe in a roundabout way were taught. That addiction, that depression, runs through you. It's easy to fall off that cliff. I don't want that for my kids and I need to stop this cycle. Like this sh*t stops with me. Whether it be I get okay, or I f*cking turn my lights out.”

It’s this sort of tongue-in-cheek use of concerning language that keeps Iero’s fanbase enthralled, yet somewhat on edge. Take for example, in the comment section for his video “Young & Doomed,” some diehard fans are troubled by his repeated use of the words “hurt myself again.” While he’s surprised to hear about the response, he counters that the record is ultimately meant to feel uplifting and positive, even if addressing dark topics.

“I don't think that we should strive for perfection,” Iero says. “This idea that we should all have this perfect life and be pretty and purse our lips to post a picture on social media is bullsh*t. The things that make us unique are important.”

He continues: “Sometimes we're our own worst enemies and we hurt ourselves. Those scars, though, are important. They're beautiful. ‘Young And Doomed’ is a call to arms to celebrate the things people think are wrong with us.”

Now, Iero just hopes his story and music inspire fans to try, fail and try again.

“You don't find out who you are unless you get a scar and get hurt,” Iero says. “You should be hurt, hurt other people, and learn that it feels terrible to hurt someone else. You should feel sorry for it and make amends for it. These are important lessons to be a better person. You find out who you truly are by attacking things that scare you the most.”

Frank Iero is currently touring Europe with Laura Jane Grace & The Devouring Mothers.

[adultswim2021]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #35: “The Shaving” | October 26, 2003 - 11:45 PM | S03E15

In this Halloween episode, a monster from the Aqua Teen’s attic comes down and introduces himself. His name is Willie Nelson, and just like Old Kentucky Shark, he’s been there this whole time. Wait-- Willie Nelson... Old Kentucky Shark... wow, if this was a David Lynch movie we’d find out they were some kind of other-worldly manifestation of the other one or something like that. Anyway, he’s a pretty tepid monster, and Shake takes on a Hitch-like role, trying to get him to live up to his full monstrous potential. What this means is he’s basically trying to goad him into scaring/murdering Carl.

This one is wonderful, and I’m not just saying that because it happens to have Tom Scharpling for a guest star. Tom Scharpling is the voice of Willie Nelson, at the time he was a cult radio personality on WFMU. His popularity is cult-like to this day, but when this aired you either had to live in the New York City area or be willing to download RealPlayer to your computer to listen to him. Now he’s a highly-respected figure in the comedy world. He was a fucking guest star on the Simpsons for fucks’ sake. This was actually my first exposure to him. The often-mentioned Kon pointed me towards a couple interviews he did with Dave and Matt on The Best Show on WFMU:

June 18, 2002 / January 7, 2003

Sorry for being imprecise; you’ll have to scrub through the shows if you wanna find the actual parts where they call in. But this piqued my interest in the show, which for some reason I thought was internet radio being done out of a guy’s house, and that the kid on the show, Petey, was Tom’s son. But I kept learning about the show more and more and by the summer of 2005 I was an extremely regular listener, even going through the entire WFMU archives obsessively. I remember days where I listened to five 3-hour long shows in a row.

This episode is wonderful, not just because of Tom Scharpling, and not just because it’s a Halloween episode. Those two things do matter, though. This one is wonderful for the stupid little character dynamics playing out, yielding all kinds of wonderful moments. Carl and Meatwad inexplicably getting sorta tight is so great. And there’s a lotta funny lines, too. I laughed hardest at Shake describing the modus operandi of your typical slasher villain being especially brutal towards women, because “they have the organs that you wish that YOU had!“.

Anwyay, this episode is great. Tom Scharpling is great. His book came out earlier this year: “IT NEVER ENDS”. Check it out! It’ll make you squeal.

MAIL BAG

Look! REAL MAIL! From harmony-karmany:

I can't imagine the writers block you will inevitably face when you get to Robot Chicken. How is it even still going?

Oh yeah, Robot Chicken is fucking dreadful. The first show on Adult Swim that I REALLY hated. Felt like it was an afront to what Adult Swim once was. I still can’t stomach it. At least with that I can try to assign a best sketch (least-worst sketch) and worst sketch, maybe? But part of me hopes I’m dead by then.

When are you gonna get to The Big O

NEVER

If a large bird flew into your home, turned your life upside down, smacked you around, and your cat just sat there licking it's paw would you punish your cat?

My cat is eternally punished for not kissing me back when I kiss her on the lips. I would catch and eat the bird in front of her.

If someone says Horatio Sanz one more time I'm gonna fucking scream!

Don’t worry! There are no more Horatio Sanz messages

I work for Seth Meyers (I know, its not a good show, but the pay is great) and Seth says Horatio is a stand up guy and is being railroaded. He's pretty trustworthy as far as bosses go. Anyway the lawyers for the supposed victim have been astroturfing anti-Sanz stuff everywhere even on tumblr so watch out! And use this hastag #IBelieveHoratio at the end of your writeups if you want to help out. Okay I gotta go do a Taliban parody for Seth. Should be fun.

Sorry, I forgot about this one. What is taliban

[if-fortunate]

John Parry Backstory Headcanons

We don’t know much about John Parry aside from the fact he was a Colonel in the Royal Marines at the time of his disappearance, and that he knew enough science to pass as a scientist when he got stuck in Lyra’s world. I really realised this when I started writing about him. HOWEVER, my brother is a war studies student and friends with a bunch of soldiers so knows a lot about the British military. We had a massive headcanoning session. I did a stupid amount of research. I thought it might be useful to share on here for anyone who is interested.

This is based on the series chronology rather than the books, so a world in which he heads off for that last expedition around 2006/7.

By the time you’re a colonel, you’re going to be in your late thirties / early forties. Here is a handy chart of data about career progression in the Royal Marines. Also here’s a chart of ranks in different parts of the armed forces for comparison – the Marines are part of the Navy, not the Army.

This means that he probably joins up around 1993, after university (as I believe many people in British officer training programmes do uni first). In my brain, he does physics at university in Cambridge but idk – could be anything, really.

He trains at Lympstone in Devon, which is on the Devonshire Coast. Fun fact: it has a train station called Lympstone Commando which is a request stop on the line between Exeter St Davids and Exmouth. She says, totally not taking detail and accuracy to really stupid levels. You can dm me if you want to know more about the trains.

The Royal Marines Officer training programme lasts about 60 weeks. It is intense (think hiking 30 miles in full gear in under 7 hours as part of your final exam). You can read about it here. There is also an award called the King’s Badge which is given to the best recruit in a troop (but it isn’t given to all troops). I don’t know if it applies to those in officer training, but I’d imagine John might have been awarded it.

He passes out of training, and I think he joins 45 Commando as a lieutenant. This is based at RM Condor in Scotland. It is made up of six companies and is part of 3 Commando Brigade.

The Royal Marines are specialists in (especially) amphibious landings. You can see a clip from Top Gear showing a Royal Marines practise landing here – take out the yellow car with Jeremy Clarkson in it and you’ve got a good sense of what happens.

In 1994, the unit deploys to Kuwait to reinforce the border between it and Iraq (possibly Operation Vigilant Warrior – at least, that was the US mission in the same time/space).

In 1998, they are on exercise in the Caribbean with HMS Ocean when Hurricane Mitch hits central America. They are involved in the aid efforts in Honduras and Nicaragua.

Sometime in the 1990s – maybe 1997/8/9, he is training in the Arctic (not strictly true this bit, but it’s a thing that easily could have happened, considering a team of female soldiers skied across Antarctica the other year and the Marines do polar training). They hike to somewhere near the magnetic north pole on an exercise.

In late 1999/early 2000, he’s a captain, an executive officer (XO – second in command) of a company of 103 soldiers. His company have been deployed to Kosovo as part of KFOR, the peacekeeping arm of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). KFOR is operating under the umbrella of LANDSOUTH, the NATO Command which operates out of a base near Verona.

In my mind, this is when and where he meets Elaine, who is spending a year as an au-pair in Verona after her mother died.

He is part of Operation Jacana, Britain’s initial conventional deployment to Afghanistan from April – June 2002; most of 45 Commando are sent on sweeps through the countryside; limited contact with the enemy, little accomplished. Operation commanded by General Roger Lane, who was relieved mid-operation – some allege due to lack of results.

John is promoted to Major after he gets back from Afghanistan and is now in command of a company of 103 soldiers.

In March 2003, he commands a company from 45 Commando in operations on the Al Faw Peninsula alongside US and Polish marines. This is part of the invasion of Iraq.

Unit go on to Northern Ireland in 2004, but John is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and gets a PhD funded for him on a physics topic (that in my mind involves travelling to go use a lot of telescopes and things because road trip) at the University of Oxford. He comes back and moves in with Elaine and they are very happy together.

Does his PhD, he and Elaine spend some time travelling together. When it’s done, he agrees to go on this mission to the North Pole as a joint Army/University of Oxford project. Before he goes they realise that Elaine is pregnant, and he’s able to stay for Will’s birth and the first few months of his life. He and Elaine agree that he has to do this trip because he can’t back out now and he really does love the Arctic, despite the fact that all he wants to do is hunker down in Oxford and look after the baby with Elaine. But then he says he’ll see if he can take a staff job with the Marines and if not, he’ll retire and go into academia instead. When he comes back, he’s not going out again.

And then we all know what happens instead. Sobs.

[unchartedtrivia]

All Nathan Drake’s girls

ALL NATHAN DRAKE’S GIRLS

(Note: I am basing ONLY on Nate’s journal, games, comics and book. I don’t mention the jobs Nate or Sully mentioned. It’s not an official timeline, just my try to write about Nate’s girls). WARNING: SPOILERS. ALAIRE Q As we know, Nate precisely records all his trophies in his diary; on this basis, it could be assumed that his first partner was Alaire Q. (or Alaine Q). Judging by the date of the affair that had lasted in 1996, she was Nate’s first girlfriend. Nate was born in 1976, which means that he started dating quite early, at the age of about 20. Perhaps he was influenced by Sully, who – as we know – was an incorrigible womanizer and possibly instilled in him such a model of upbringing. GEORGINA S. & RIKA RAJA Nate’s affair, as we see after the next date, did not last long – he’s met Georgina S. from Ipswich in February 1997, and after this he met Rika Raja, Eddy Rajas’ sister, in 2001. Importantly: Rika officially appears in the interactive comic “Eye of Indra” where we get to know more details of their acquaintance. It’s also a prequel to Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune.

The circumstances seem quite typical for Nate – Rika saves him from shootout in her own bar (Campin bar), pulls Eddy into Nate’s plan, helps him get the treasure, and later – in the end – she deceives both Nate and her brother.

Interestingly, Rika is also the only one villain in the Uncharted series who has achieved her goal and did not suffer any consequences because of it. This has never happened to any of the villains. Almost all of them – Roman, Navarro, Flynn, Lazarevic, Marlowe, Talbott, Rafe, Orca and Asav suffered consequences.

Let us leave this digression, however; Rika’s character clearly shows what kind of women Nate is interested in: proud, ready to take action, brave and resolute. He is not interested in typical “girl next door”, but rather women who can surprise him, not necessarily positively. Nate is vulnerable to such girls. What is equally interesting is the fact that he is most likely also looking for an “adventure companion” – a woman who would be willing to support him in solving mysteries and seeking treasures. As we know, he is not a person who could give up expeditions to focus on a peaceful family life – and Rika, dangerous and charming, perfectly matched his standards. On this basis, it could be assumed that Alaire Q. and Georgina S. might also have had some connections with the search for treasures.

Returning to the comic: “Eye of Indra” ends with Elena’s show in TV, in which she talks about her discoveries, presenting them to the viewers. Nate tells Sully that he has already contacted this journalist and he will meet with her the next day. However, which is very important, the game says that romance with Elena began in 2006 around June, judging by the dates in Nate’s journal. So what about the date 2000 written in the diary? Based on what we know, I have three theories: 1. A meeting with Rika took place in 2006 (not very reliable theory) 2. Date was the mistake of the creators (not very reliable too) 3. Nate’s meeting and suggestion about cooperation with Elena was postponed by the TV station for several years or required long preparations. I believe that this is the most likely option. Why?

Because large TV stations need several years to prepare a budget, write the whole script and shoot episodes in the meantime. It should also be noted that Nate also needed a long time to find Francis Drake’s coffin (because he had not found it yet). So, just preparing the topic, writing the script, and planning the budget could take several years from 2000.

An equally possible explanation may be the fact that the station proposed a presentation of several other archaeological topics to start with to minimize the risk of working with someone unknown and untested like Nate. So Nate and Elena could show some other discoveries first, and then discover the Francis Drake’s coffin. Given the fact that in Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune, Nate and Elena behave as if they’ve known each other for a long time, the last theory would not seem strange, and the date with Rika would then fit the whole. So I personally assume that the romance with Rika Raja took place in 2000 in Jakarta, after which Nate met Elena, and they began to work together to finally discover the secret of Sir Francis Drake in 2006. CHLOE Another Nate’s affair that was noted in the journal is Chloe – and it dates back to 2002. You would think that this is about Chloe Frazer, but this isn’t any way possible. Why? Well, Nate, in addition to the date of the girls affair and name, sometimes notes their phone numbers, e–mails or addresses. Chloe from 2002 has an American address and lives in Tulsa. Chloe Frazer in Lost Legacy said she had never been to America, but would like to visit this country someday. In addition, the dates do not indicate that it could be one and the same person. Nate probably had an affair with two girls named Chloe, especially when he knew Chloe Frazer earlier. SHAMFUFU & CASSANDRA S. Later Nate met Shamfufu – the affair most likely took place at Christmas in 2003. It is hard to say anything more about it – her name, like the names of Georgina and Alaire, had never appeared again in the series. What is interesting, however, is the fact that Shamfufu’s address is from South Africa. The girl lived in Cape Town or he met her in this city. Shamfufu was most likely of South African descent, which would suggest her name. Perhaps she was a partner of Drake’s next adventure, like Cassandra S. from Pasadena, whom Nate met in June 2004. ELENA FISHER According to the journal, it is assumed that after 2004 Nate did not engage in any affairs until June 2006, when the plot of the first game begins – Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune. Then Sir Francis Drake’s coffin was finally discovered, as well as the secret of Borneo. Importantly, as I mentioned in the theory above, Nate and Elena act as if they’ve known each other for a long time. Perhaps they have known each other since Rika Raja’s story, given my theory presented above.

Given the Nate’s nature and his taste regarding the choice of partners, it would not be surprising if he wasn’t interested in Elena at the very beginning. Judging by her overall character, Elena was not initially in Nate’s type, especially when compared to Rika Raja or Chloe Frazer. Returning to Nate’s diary, we can see that his affair with Elena didn’t last long, only three months. Importantly, Elena is the most distinguished among all his partners – just like Chloe (not Frazer) in his journals. KARIS & MAGGIE H. In September 2006, Nate met Karis in Istanbul – perhaps she was his next partner during his adventures, just like previous girls. It would not be surprising, but Elena in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves speaks about herself “Elena Fisher. Last year’s model.”

Importantly, affair with Maggie H. from Montreal is dated to December 2008. This suggests three theories:

1. Either the Nate and Elena romance lasted from 2006 to 2008–2009

2. Elena was not aware of the Nate and Karis romance. In that case, she probably didn’t know about Maggie either.

3. Alternatively, Nate and Elena returned to each other for a short time in 2008, before breaking up again soon by Maggie or Karis. Given Nate’s character, his approach to women and adventures, as well as Elena’s pursuit of a peaceful, stable relationship without dangerous adventures, their breakup would not be strange. Interestingly, both Nate and Sully mention Montreal in the game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, where Nate met Maggie. Although they didn’t say anything more, it would suggest that it could be one of their last jobs between 2006 and 2008–2009. THAT’S ALL? WELL. LET’S TALK ABOUT FRAZER. CHLOE FRAZER. This ends Nate’s diary – but, importantly, two more of his partners appear in the series. The first is Chloe Frazer, who appears in the game in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, while the second is Marisa Chase from the game Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Interestingly, in Nate’s attic in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End there is a box with the name Marisa. Perhaps Nate was supposed to send her something back (especially since boxes with objects etc. from his trips were usually signed by the name of the place, e.g. Borneo, Nepal, etc.). Let’s go back to Chloe Frazer: like Elena, Chloe seems to be the second most important girl in Drake’s life. In addition to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, she also appears in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, in the DLC Uncharted: Lost Legacy, in which she is the main character. She also became his partner in the 2011 comic of Uncharted, where she worked for Gabriel Roman. This suggests some inaccuracy – after all, as we know, Roman dies in 2006 during his trip to El Dorado. If Roman dies in 2006 and the story of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves happens in 2008–2009, in what timeline the Uncharted comic takes action? Let’s get back to the events of Among Thieves. Chloe Frazer appears during the meeting of Harry Flynn and Nathan Drake; Flynn introduces her as “the best driver in the industry”. Chloe then gives Nate a hand and introduces himself as “Chloe Frazer.” “Drake. Nathan. Nathan Drake.”. Given the fact that they had known each other before in the Uncharted comic, it suggests deliberate action on the part of Chloe – namely, reassuring Flynn that both she and Nate had not known each other before. This would mean that Chloe was planning to leave Flynn from the very beginning and find Cintamani’s stone with Nate’s help. Equally interesting is the fact that in the comic we see the same or very similar model of the plane that Sully uses in the game Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune. This would suggest that after the events of the comic, Sully renewed the plane. This would mean that events even happened before Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune, and Chloe and Nate have known each other for a very long time. It would also explain why Roman is still alive, while logic would point to something completely different. All this suggests that the comic’s action takes place before Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. But why didn’t Nate write about her in the journal? Perhaps he had never placed much hope on Chloe for any relationship or anything more permanent; in that case, not writing down this date would be perfectly understandable. All right, but Chloe from 2002 was mentioned. Assuming Chloe and Nate had known each other for a long time, he might have noticed Chloe in his journal – and it would have been the Chloe of Tulsa. At the same time, it would also suggest that the creators have not completely thought through her character, because in Lost Legacy Chloe claims that she has never been to America. What could other explanations be? 1. Chloe gave the address of her own mother (and, importantly, the mother and her daughter emigrated to Australia while Chloe was very young and they probably didn’t move)?

2. Did she give a somebody else’s  address, not her own? Personally, I think that Nate did not write about her because of the reasons mentioned above – his acquaintance with Chloe was on clearly defined principles. In addition, as the events of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted comic show, Chloe’s attitude clearly indicates her lack of desire to establish a more lasting relationship. From the overall history of Nate’s personal relationships, we can see that all Nate’s affairs were rather short and fleeting, except for the affair with Elena: he most likely has been returning to her every few years; you can also see that he had been choosing resolute, firm partners that were also able to help him on his temporary adventures. Some agreed with it, just like Chloe, and considered it a short–lived affair – but we know that Elena was opposed to some of his adventures, probably wishing for a “normal” life and “ordinary” relationship. It was their source of conflicts, especially in Uncharted 2: Among thieves and in Uncharted 3 and Uncharted 4.

MARISA CHASE

Interestingly, Marisa Chase seems to be similar to Elena – although she was not afraid of danger, Marisa has been refusing to use weapons and violence if she was not forced to do so (importantly, Elena was able to defend herself, but both similarly fit the “girl next door” model). In other words, Marisa was a character who could captivate Drake – he ultimately tried to protect his companions at all costs. However, Drake did not note her in the notebook – perhaps because the romance between the two of them was not fulfilled despite the suggestive ending, or they both have had a similar approach to Chloe’s attitude. JADA HZUJAK Another character that appears in the series – however, only in the book "Uncharted: The fourth labyrinth" is Jada Hzujak, the daughter of a well–known archaeologist. Jada is Sully’s goddaughter; we get to know her strong personality – she’s non–compromisable, determined and ready to help others. In the series, the tension between them is easy to spot, but Nate had decided not  to have an affair with Jada, because he was aware of Sully’s reaction. In addition, as it turns out at the end of the series, he began to treat her more like family. However, this is probably one of the few romances that Nate voluntarily rejected in favour of something else. This has not happened in any other part of the series so far. CHRONOLOGY SUMMARY 1.       From the overall chronology of the series, it appears that the comic appeared first. Chloe Frazer appears in the comic for the first time, and it is clearly stated that she had already met with Nate or it was their first meeting. Personally, I suppose Drake had known Chloe even before, judging by the language sphere they use and the situations that affect them – they both act as if they knew each other well. A similar situation happens in Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune.

2.       Next is Fourth Labyrinth, where Nate decides to not contribute to the affair with Jada Hzujak. Interestingly, at the end of the book, Sully mentions  a “job” in Peru. Perhaps that’s where he’s met the bartender he mentions in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Equally interesting is the mention of Margaret Xin, who has probably been Sullivan’s former partner and appeared in the book on several dialogues.

3.       Later we have Uncharted: Golden Abyss; Drake’s main partner is Marisa Chase this time. At the end of the game, we see clear inclinations of the characters being interested with each other, but the whole thing is spoiled by Sully, interrupting their attempt to kiss. Interestingly, Consuela is mentioned in the game as one of Sully’s partners.

4.       Later there is the interactive comic “Uncharted: The eye of Indra” – there Drake meets Eddy’s sister, Rika Raja. Why do I suppose the comic is first? Because, as I mentioned in the theory above, Nate noted Rika in his diary. Both info about places and the women are accurate. This is followed by Uncharted 1: Drake’s Fortune, where Nate is working with Elena Fisher. Affair with Elena is short–lived.

5.       Later, in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves we discover that the romance between Elena and Nate ended some time ago. At the end of the series, they get back with each other. Chloe Frazer officially appears in the game for the first time, having an affair with both Nate and Harry Flynn (although the affair with Flynn must have been going on before action of the game starts, since Chloe has treated him in a special way since the beginning of the game).

6.       After that, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception appears. No new character appears but Chloe and Elena, who is known to had once again broken up with Drake to return to him at the end of the game. The exact date of their wedding is unknown –  though it is known that in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Nate is already married. This is where Drake’s Angels end. BONUS: SULLY’S GIRLS In the whole series we meet only a few of Sully’s partners. We know about them mainly from mentions in the game. They do not appear in comics, but one of them appears in the book – Margaret Xin from Oxford University. Nate calls her Maggie. She was probably Sully’s ex girlfriend. As far as we know, they both did probably break up after a big argument, perhaps because Maggie could not accept Sully’s lifestyle and way of being. It results from the dialogue presented in the book: - Sully is in trouble. I know you two ended kind of messy, but I need your help. - It ended messy between Victor and me. In fact, messy probably doesn’t begin to cover it. I wish he was a different sort of man, but I can’t blame him for that. - So do I – Maggie replied. – When you catch up to Victor – - Yeah? - Give him my love. Sully’s other partner was a Peruvian bartender. Victor was completely crazy about her and often mentioned her. Nothing more is known about this affair, unfortunately. A little more is known about the Consuela, which is mentioned in the dialogues between Nat and Sully in the game Uncharted: Golden Abyss. SUMMARY: First Official Girlfriend: Alaire Q. Longest known girl: Chloe Frazer Longest romance: Chloe Frazer Rejected romances : Jada Hzujak Nice interludes : Shamfufu, Maggie H Big Win in the lottery of life : Rika Raja The biggest affair disappointment : Rika Raja Nate’s Chosen : Elena Fisher

[olderthannetfic]

It’s International Fanworks Day and also the 30th and final post in this series. If you follow my tumblr, you know that my true fandom isn’t buddy cops or Highlander or any of those things. No, my true fandom is...

WANK

No matter which bitchy piece of fujo-course nonsense you’re looking at on tumblr, no matter which debate about WNGWJLEO or women in slash or fanfiction vs. media you're reblogging, your grandma was having that fight in a zine somewhere in 1985 and at Escapade in the 90s.

Here’s a vid review from 2002:

"History Repeating," [...] was an Amanda vid. In-fucking-credible. Who knew? Who knew I could like Amanda? Who knew there were fresh HL clips I hadn't seen a thousand times before in HL vids? (Of course, as someone pointed out, she had her own spin-off.) This rocked--sharp, fast cutting and pretty, pretty shots, with a hot bisexy vibe running through it. And, you know, people like to say that there's all this self-hating misogyny in fans--you know, that women hate shows about women, hate women characters breaking up the OTP, etc. But when you see a femme-centric vid like this bring down the house, you really have to wonder. Is it misogyny, really, or is just that we usually see a bunch of crap representations of women in media and resist them?

So on the theme of There Is Nothing New Under The Sun, here is a selection of past Escapade panels on gender, representation, and problematicness:

1993 - Anti-Feminism in Slash Fandom (Or, how 'it was never this good with a woman' syndrome... where are the women, and why do we care?)

1995 - Why Lesbians Read Slash - (What's the attraction? Why do they care? Why do they write it?)

1996 - Character Bisexuality: Convenient fiction or character trait? (Is this a good compromise between "We're not gay, we just love each other" and "I was gay all along and just faking it with women"? Or is this too easy? Special mention for the stereotypical bisexual villian who's evil, sexy, and can come on to everyone.)

1996 - Female Heroes: Female Empowerment, or male power in women's bodies? (Give a woman a gun and make her really tough. Wow, cool! yes, or no? Are we celebrating women, or are we merely putting breasts on male action heroes? Heroines under discussion may include (but not be limited to) Sara Connor, Ripley, Vasquez, Thelma & Louise.)

1997 - Gender Astigmatism (The Gender Continuum: in what we read, in what we write, and what we are, there is always a connection with a point on the gender continuum. How do our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" influence our creativity? Where do bisexual characters fit in? (besides there, you dirty-minded person!)

1998 - Xena: Does Girl-Slash Get Us Going? (Xena is the first show with a feminine couple to be really popular. What kind of slash fans are interested? Does gender orientation matter? Or do slash fans love slashy couples regardless of their gender? Can m/m fans be 'converted' to f/f fans?)

1998 - Bastards & the Women Who Love Them (When Methos says, "you live to serve me," any normal '90s woman says, "I don't think so!... or does she? A happy contemplation on the virtues of handsome thugs.)

1998 - Slash: a Continuation of Women's Writing, led by Constance Penley (In case you didn't know, in her recent book NASA/TREK (yes, the slash is intentional), she addressed slash as a continuum of women's writing, combining women's romance, and the male quest romance. Join her for a discussion of slash -- where it was, where it is, where it might be going.)

1998 - The Trauma of Slash Fans in Het Fandoms (Or, what to do when find women doing all that cool, tough-guy stuff you love.)

1999 - Male Slash Fans - Welcome Voice, or Infringement? (Slash is written by women for women — or is it? The Internet has attracted new fans, including the "male slash fan". Who is he? What does he think of what "we" do? Do we care?)

2002 - Femslash (General discussion on female/female slash fiction. If Buffy wanted something cold and hard between her legs, why didn't she just choose silicon?)

2003 - Slash: Feminist political act or really good porn?

2005 - Where have all the lesbians gone? (When some slash lists explicitly state m/m only, where do you go for femslash? Are there any hot femslash couples? Pimp your femslash fandom here, or bemoan the lack of strung female characters in the current conservative social climate.)

2007 - Femslash: The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Femslash. It's a work that makes some of our hearts leap for joy and inspires complete and total disinterset—or even dislike and disdain—in others. Where can we find the good stuff? What makes it good? And what's up with the haters?)

2007 - SGA: The Women of Atlantis (What do we like about how the women of SGA are written and portrayed, and what makes us wince? What do we think about how their issues are being woven into the show's narrative?)

2008 - Gay is Not Slash (...even though slash is sometimes gay. The current argument about m/m romances by women as taking recognition *away* from male gay writers, depends on m/m writing being intended as gay lit. And slash, for one, isn't, even if there can be overlap. What overlaps? What doesn't? What examples do fans like?

2009 - Female Character Stories: Halfamoon, Full Moon or Just Moony (F/f slash, and other stories centered on female characters, are gaining visibility in fandom. Are there things fens will write about women that we won't about men? (Given MPreg, *are* there?) Should f/f be like m/m, or is it unavoidably different?)

2011 - My ***** is Not Ideologically Driven, But is it Homophobic (Slash fandom often sees itself as a mostly liberal community. IDIC, right? But recently there's been a slash backlash: it's anti-feminist, a 'symptom' of internalized misogyny. We're 'erasing' the women characters after all. Is slash homophobic? Does slash fandom appropriate gay culture? Is it awesome and ennobling as it makes us happy in our panties, or is all that self-hatred bubbling just beneath the surface of our porn?)

2012 - Natural Woman (We've lamented the lack of strong, believable female characters (who dress appropriately). But now we have them: Gemma Teller and Audrey Parker; Salt and Haywire; we've got Bechdel-passing women who look like they can throw a punch. Still, most of them are in the sci-fi or action genre, so are we really seeing progress? And what are we doing with them, as fans?)

2012 - Don't Call It a Bromance (It's Just Canon) (TPTB are increasingly aware of slash, and bromance is regular fare on TV canon these days. Does overt bromance make the fic and art hotter or just vanilla? Is there an anti-slash backlash in our shows? Is the emphasis on men's relationships making women disappear? Inquiring minds want to know. If you have answers, theories, or just want to squee, join in the fun!)

2014 - (The End of?) Ladybashing in Slashfic (Slashfic used to regularly feature bashing of female characters. Now, blatant bashing seems less fashionable. If you recognize this trend, let's talk! Were most ladybashing fics ones for juggernaut pairings in megafandoms, or were they everywhere? What's causing the change: more women in leading roles/ensemble casts, fic writers being more conscious to avoid bashing ladies even if they're not their favorites, more willingness to blame show writers' bad writing (instead of the character being just bad/evil/stupid) for bad female characters, or something else entirely?)

2015 - Fifty Shades of Fandom (Fifty Shades of Grey has become the representation of fan fiction in mainstream culture. It’s bad fan fiction, and it’s being used to ridicule women while making millions off women readers and viewers. Can we connect with these women: proto-fans who would love to read, and maybe write, great fan fiction if they found it? Can we use the FSoG phenomenon to expand our community? Does keeping our doors closed and our mouths shut perpetuate both monetization of our fan culture and misogynist scorn?)

2016 - Who Are We? (How do we define ourselves in this age of so many OT3s and team orgy pairings? Does m/m/f count as "slash"? Is slash-only space slipping away? (And would that be bad?) Do m/m and f/f belong together more than they do with m/f? Is "Media Fandom" a valid term any longer? Who are we if we start shipping het?)

2016 - Ladies Loving Ladies. (There would seem to be enough queer women in fandom to write/want more f/f. Do lesbians write f/f, m/m? Both? Do straight women? Or are we still missing the iconic female characters and relationships that create a great slash fandom? Did they figure out the answer to this question at TGIF/F and if so, what is it?)

2016 - By Us For Us (Fic, even kinky slash, is practically mainstream these days. The ebook revolution puts publishing within reach of almost anyone. Sundance hits have been filmed on iPhones. So why aren't fangirls making more media? Or is it happening right under our noses? Is this a place where our women's gift economy does our community a disservice? Discuss what's out there, what we'd like to see, and what's holding us back.)

2017 - LGBTQIA+ in Slash Fandom (Queer fans have always been here. In a subculture often defined as "for" straight women, what do we as fans have to say about non-straight, non-cis, and non-conventional sexuality and gender in fanfiction, in fandom, and in the larger culture?)

2018 - Confronting the Tensions Between Slash and Queer Representation (Slash fandom thrives on homoerotic subtext. Many queer fans are unwilling to settle for this quasi-representation. Part of every slash fandom seems loudly invested in their ship becoming canon. Some are queer fans who want actual textual representation in their favorite shows, and some are fans using queer politics to fight ship wars. Then the “slash is not activism” posts make the rounds. Is slash activism? Is advocating for slash ships in canon the same thing as advocating for queer representation?)

2018 - Representing Slashers (What does "representation" in the media mean to us? We know what more gay or POC representation means, but what about slash fandom, which is largely female and focused on bodies that don't resemble our own? Would better female characters in media better represent us? Or male characters written for a female audience? Come talk about the intersection of slash, personal identity, and media representation.)

2018 - Anonymity in Slash Fandom: Choosing to Hide (Why do the majority of slash fans hide their hobby? Is it fear of blackmail? Embarrassment? Fear of losing employment? How does this affect your happiness? How does this affect your security? What would an ideal world look like? Who would/have you told about your interest in slash? Who would you never, ever, tell?)

2019 - Fandom Post-Slash? (In an era of "ships" and #pairing #tags on Tumblr and AO3, has the "slash" label lost its meaning? Same-gender pairings are as popular as ever and fans still ID pairings with a virgule between the names, but how many fans still call m/m and f/f slash or femslash? How many fans identify as "slashers?" Het and slash were opposing binaries which few fans crossed. Are these barriers breaking down? What purpose has the term "slash" served? Has fandom moved

past it and, if so, what does that mean?)

[introvertguide]

Famous Movie Goofs

Alfred Hitchcock was very well known for being a perfectionist and often liked to control all aspects of his movies. He would even personally hire and direct his extras. For his film North by Northwest (1959), however, he partnered with MGM and had less control than his standard. This was the only time that he would partner with the studio giant and some little things that escaped Hitchcock’s scrutiny can tell you that he did not enjoy the experience. Very famously, there is a scene where Eva Marie Saint’s character shoots at Cary Grant and you can tell she is going to shoot because the boy in blue on the right of the screen plugs his ears about 3 seconds before the gun goes off. This is in the theatrical release of the film and it is very unlike Alfred Hitchcock. It goes to show that Hitchcock wasn’t perfect, but it also made me think that it had to have happened in other big movies if it could happen to Hitch. Here are some examples:

Stormtrooper head bump in Star Wars (1977)

Check out that trooper on the right...did he just smack his head? Yes he did. This happened when the troopers break into the control room but most people did not notice it. I guess that it is a statement for the quality of the movie. Do take note that this trooper is particularly tall so they were not likely thinking of his height when shooting. It is kind of sad because it seems that the only thing that a stormtrooper can hit is a low overhang. 

Where did that drop come from in Jurassic Park (1993)

So I have seen many forums that explain how this could have possibly happened and also how this strange juxtaposition was explained in the book. This explanation was not in the film so I have to go by what is there. When the jeeps pull up next to the T-Rex paddock and stop, there are low trees and shrubs right next to the wall. Both cars were dead so they did not move much except by pushing of the dinosaur. However, when the dramatic escape occurs, they have to repel down a 50 foot drop. There was a goat and a T-Rex that were right next to the fence and there is no drop there. I guess it is a moat...but how did the T-Rex walk right up to the fence and break it if there was a giant moat there. I was so engrossed in the drama as a kid that I didn’t notice, but this seems pretty blatant looking back on it. 

Nice cowboy hat in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)

In American football, there is constant movement of people coming on and off the field and there are many penalties for having people in the group that shouldn’t be there. The same can be said for movies with the crew, make-up, actors, and extras all constantly milling around. Unlike American football, the crew and the actors are not all wearing the same uniform and it is blatantly obvious when somebody is in shot that shouldn’t be. If you look to the left side of this shot from Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, you will see a crew member with a white t-shirt, sunglasses, and a cowboy hat. That outfit does not seem very authentic. Somebody probably should have spotted that.

There is a cameraman at Hogwarts in Harry Potter (2002)

Far be it from be to judge others, but I would have thought that wizards would not have much use for movie cameras. Also, I know that they wanted to get video of the kids in their first wizarding duel, but you need permission to photograph or film children and I expect to see some permission slips. However you account for it, I don’t think this cameraman is supposed to be in the shot behind Tom Felton in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. All the students are wearing black robes making it hard to see and it is a very quick flash, but it is definitely there. It doesn’t make me love the movie any less, though. 

There are thousands of movies that are made up of millions (if not billions) of shots so there are bound to be mistakes. These are examples from famous films that have been viewed and scrutinized innumerable times and the mistakes that were left in the final cut are few...but they are still there. Imagine how many mistakes like this show up in B-movies since there is less concern for the final product? What are some of the best movie mistakes not mentioned above?