#I loved this series so much when I first watched it in 2010

[floaromaxtowns]

TY for sharing your story! :0

I'm happy to see that you managed to turn your distaste towards NFCV, into an opportunity to get to learn more about the actual franchise that anime is making a mockery out of! :)

I can asure you that the reason DoS' story feels off is due to it literally being, the last game that takes place in the timeline of events! Funnily enough, I personally never enjoyed any of the Soma Cruz's games, BUT they are definetely amongst the best ones of the Metroidvania style games we got.

And GOD Order of Ecclesia, that has to be one of the worst beginner-friendly games in the franchise :( . I own it, and as much as I love its art, especially its OST (Shame it was our last proper game entry to the franchise). You summed it pretty well: It's way too grindy and unnecessarily punishing if you don't have EXACTLY what it asks for.

Here's hoping you find a way to try more Castlevania entries, I'd also recommend you to try:

Symphony of the night (the ogTM that started out the whole exploration + RPG elements genre. It was my entrypoint to the franchise, and to this day it's still one of my favorite games <3);

Portrait of Ruin (Another great title from the NDS era).

I have never played any of the 3d console games (outside of the Lords of Shadow game, which I personally don't recommend [it was an attempt at a reboot of the franchise in the 2010s. It failed miserably]), or even the classic platformers. BUT!! I'm sure you can also find some hidden gems there.

Also, I believe there are some mangas out there that expand on the games lore, with gorgeous art to boot. And we even have a radio drama (Nocturne of recollection, highly recommend it <3).

It's genuinely fascinating to hear this perspective. Because as I mentioned in my original post, it sure feels like only people who were already fans of the series, that disliked the anime (I'm going to pretend those alt righter grifters who scream woke at anything, don't exist). So, reading this is VERY refreshing.

Speaking as a CV fan, I felt thoroughly disappointed with the show as it went on. I wasn't angry at it just, really disappointed with the direction they took with one of my most beloved franchises (and it stings knowing that for now this is the "most popular face" of the franchise). I'm sure that if I were in my edgy, antsy and asshole teenager phase NFCV could have been my shit. But alas, all it did was push me away. I tried watching Nocturne-- but I somehow, only made it past the first episode. And then I swore to nevermore touch it.

Also, I'm sorry-- but it's actually really funny to know that the series somehow looks best when it's exclusively in gif format. No audio, no dialogue.

The joke wrote on its own.

@pinkdamascus responded to your post

I was about to say how Netflixvania only really works, if you don't even know it's supposed to be an ADAPTATION of a VIDEO GAMES franchise. But like

You're literally the Second ever non-CV fan to say this.

Holy SHIT.

For context: I'm not a Vivziepop fan, I didn't check out either of her series.

I bring this up bc

I'm convinced it's all about the optics at this point. Those people can't be actually watching these shows.

People blatantly ignore the fact that HH and HB are supposedly meant to be, in the same package as goddamn Family guy/South Park/etc (and even then it feels MILES tamer in comparison). And yet, there are motherfuckers looking at them, as if they are children's MEDIA!!!

Netflixvania's more mature/edgier aesthetic, while actively trying its hardest to be serious & big brain, with its shallowest takes (It shows the people on this show clearly wanted to be working on something original. And instead, they are stuck doing IP stuff). People who are always throwing themselves at discourse are that fucking shallow, and they resonate with this show. If anything, it tells a lot more about the people flocking to the shows rather than the product itself.

Don't forget that the lead director used his own father's passing as a meatshield from criticism c: That's always a good sign, and not at all a red flag, right?

[infizero]

just finished watching the og scott pilgrim movie for the first time fucking loved it

[ryanguzmansource]

September 27, 2024

Ryan Guzman is currently filming his next thriller: Midnight and, in his talk with Xmag, he takes a tour of his professional career. Despite his current international projection as an actor, Ryan Guzman did not plan to dedicate himself to acting at first. The American actor and model began to get interested in mixed martial arts when he was only seven years old and, after winning his first black belt when he was ten, he was a mixed martial arts fighter in Sacramento until 2010. A shoulder injury prevented him from continuing with his dream and he redirected his career working as a model in various magazines and brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Affliction and Reebok. Everything completely changed when he got his first starring role in Step Up: Revolution. “It changed the direction of my life. It was as if I was launching myself into a world that I had only seen in the distance.” The dance franchise was an international success and Ryan tells us about the process he followed for the films, which, according to him, has always been the same over the years. “I try hard at something new without fear of failure. I do it this way because I know that I can fail at the beginning of anything I try. The goal is to learn from my failures and be open to new ideas when it comes to acquiring and perfecting a skill.”

His career as an actor continued in 2015 with the psychological thriller The Boy Next Door, which as Ryan explains, gave him "an invaluable perspective on the business side of the entertainment industry.” In the film, he shared the limelight with Jennifer Lopez and Ryan tells us about his experience working on the film and what it was like working with her. "Jennifer's life is something that most people won't be able to comprehend because it involves A LOT. She's a superstar. He has a million things going on at the same time. I had a great time collaborating with her and the director, Rob. They both made me feel very comfortable. It was so much fun playing the bad boy!” From a psychological drama about a woman who falls in love with her younger neighbor, Ryan jumped to play Eddie Diaz in the police drama series 9-1-1, which tells the story of a Los Angeles rescue group willing to attend to any emergency. The series underwent a big change after its transition from the FOX network to ABC and Ryan explains how that has affected his character. "Eddie's character has evolved a lot since his introduction into the 9-1-1 universe. As in any great evolution, destruction must occur in order to rebuild something new. The transition from FOX to ABC came at a perfect time for my character and I was able to represent that evolution through destruction just before another defining event in Eddie's life. Season eight is about Eddie making peace with his demons and finding self-love.” Being a series that deals with extreme and challenging situations, Ryan describes how he prepared physically and psychologically for those moments. "Empathy is the key. I draw from what I've experienced and my understanding of it; then I use the truth of those encounters to connect with the character. As for my physical fitness, I keep practicing martial arts." Recently, one of his latest projects has been the fictional comedy The Present, starring Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear. Ryan explains that the possibility of working with these two actors was one of the reasons I chose this film. “The moment I saw that Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear were involved in the film, I joined the project. These are two actors I've always wanted to collaborate with. Working with Isla was a dream, she gave me a lot of love and knowledge and Greg is someone who I have always enjoyed watching perform. Also, the theme resonated deeply with me, as I was going through a divorce at the time, which made the story especially relatable.”

Right now, the American actor is involved in the filming of the thriller Midnight. "I received the script from writer Lamont Magee and when he asked me if I would be interested in one of the roles opposite Rosario Dawson, he didn't have to say much more to capture my interest. 'Midnight' was an opportunity to show action in a way that I haven't been able to do as much as I would like as an actor.” According to Ryan, the thriller promises to be an intriguing story and one that will surprise the spectators. "I think seeing Rosario Dawson come face to face with Mila Jovovich is intriguing enough, but then you add the layers of her sister's character, played by Alexandra Shipp and the truth is that the audience is about to discover a lot of twists and surprises.” As immersed as he is in his work, Ryan ends the interview by expressing how grateful he feels to have a community of fans and followers who have always been supporting him. “I cannot fully express the depth of my gratitude to those who have found my work entertaining and have continued to support my career over the years. THANK YOU!”

[imahgined]

the rosy blog project - episode 1:

꒰ঌ intro + pt. 1 on how we made 2024 actually feel like 2014 ໒꒱

hiiii sweethearts! ໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১

welcome to the first episode of the rosy blog project! i’m andrea, but you can call me roseate. i'll be your host to this dreamy corner of the internet, where we celebrate all things feminine and inspiring.

this project is my way of reviving the iconic rosy blog era here on tumblr. in the 2010s, life felt slower, filled with hobbies, fashion, beauty tips, boybands, fandoms, iconic tv shows, and bubbly playlists. here, we'll savor the little things that made us feel connected, feminine and creative!

༊࿐ ⊹ ˚. part 1: what was the rosy blog era?

just in case you weren't around on tumblr in the early 2010s, rosy blog content focused on the years we spent hours reading glossy magazines like teen vogue, watching our fave youtubers, and scrolling through dreamy blogs. the rosy blog style was unapologetically girly. it embraced soft pinks, cream tones, and everything feminine. it was all about finding joy in the little things, like curating playlists, buying self-care products, and creating a space that felt uniquely yours.

༊࿐ ⊹ ˚. part 2: my take on how we made 2024 really feel like 2014

from the beggining of the year, i saw so much content on ig and tiktok from people begging to bring back 2014 vibes in 2024. i definitely believe that, collectively, we made it happen. this will be a series of a few blog posts breaking down this year's best moments and how everything felt like the rosy blog era.

section 1: music and pop culture

ariana grande in her wicked & eternal sunshine era: she literally embraced everything we loved from her yours truly era and reinvented it to fit her glinda role. the looks we got from her were super feminine, elegant and classy. seeing her like this reminded me so much of her gorgeous 2010s aesthetic. also, her eternal sunshine album was insanely good. the dreamy vocals felt like a new era that revisited her feminine side from her first album. last year, we even had her yours truly live sessions. inmaculate vibes!

madison beer slowly becoming viral again: i've been a fan of madison ever since i discovered her. this year, i got so excited when her song make you mine went viral. the techno style and her beautiful voice reminded me of some of her earlier songs, even a bit of i won't let you walk away. she’s so talented, and back in 2014, she was all over tumblr. i hope she finally gets the recognition she deserves!

fangirl nostalgia: during the 2010s, you were either a 1d, 5sos, jb or btr fangirl (or all of them at once!). so much has happened this year with our faves—jb having his first child, btr touring again—it’s been a beautiful revisit of the memories we made in those fandoms. and the best part? we continue to create new ones by supporting them into their adulthood. (except for the tragic passing of liam—may he rest in peace).

lana in coachella: nothing felt more 2014 than our beautiful lana headlining coachella this year. her ethereal voice revided her most iconic songs, and the vibes were simply the dreamiest. i completely adored the setlist, and her styling was too cute! classic lana, yet timelessly fresh.

girly pop revival: from sabrina carpenter's short n' sweet tour to taylor swift's eras tour, 2024 absolutely brought girly pop back to the mainstream. we had amazing albums from artists like charli xcx (the most 2014 revival ever) and rising stars like tate mcrae, addison rae and many more. my personal favorite? FLO's debut album, access all areas. their vocals and y2k style are a must hear i'm sure you'll adore.

.mp3 by emilia: if you haven’t heard of emilia i'll be GLAD to introduce you. she's an insanely talented argentinian singer, composer, actress and model (also, the most stunning girl ever). last year, she released her second studio album, .mp3, with a 2000s-inspired sound and vibe. it's the girliest, most empowering, and fun album from a latin artist. this album served girly vibes with genres like pop, urban, dance pop, and contemporary r&b. even though this project and tour leaned into a y2k aesthetic, it also gave me major 2010 vibes with its sounds, looks and visuals. i'll dedicate a whole post to her and the album soon because, genuinely, the art direction is INSANE, and it's my favorite thing ever

for now, that’s it for this first section. i have so much to share with you—from lifestyle to fashion and so much more! i hope you enjoyed reading this 2024 recap, pt. 2 will be up soon.

i'd love to hear your thoughts on this post! let me know what you’d add or want to chat about, my dms are always open lovelies! have a magical and dreamy day ೀ ׅ ۫ . ㅇ

[localplaguenurse]

I am so in fucking love with the stairway to heaven animation and the only ways I can express that is to either say I am bricked the FUCK up, or I give in to the uber instincts of my uber autism and write an essay on what I THINK are some of the references/inspirations used in the animation. I chose the essay because I need people to know why I am "bricked up."

I am fully willing to accept if I am wrong/reaching for some of these but even then, I think it's cool that I can still connect certain moments with things I enjoy. With that out of the way, behold my analysis/breakdown of Stairway to Heaven!

Spoilers below the cut not just for the animation, but also minor spoilers for Kane Pixel's backrooms series, Liminal Land, Skinamarink, and Mandela Catalogue. Also just a warning for the incoherent ramblings of a guy who's abnormal about analog/indie horror. Please please please please PLEASE go watch the animation if you haven't.

First, "subject 087" is in reference to SCP-087, the never ending staircase SCP. I actually didn't even catch that the first time until I scrolled down to the comments lmao. In my defense, when SCP was blowing up in the mid 2010s I wasn't really old enough to appreciate it or find the format interesting (and honestly it is still hard for me to really get into it, but that's more of a me thing. Conceptually a clinical approach to horror like with SCPs or in All Tomorrows is fascinating, but it can be a bit of a slog for me), so I only knew the main three's numbers. (173, 096, and 682).

"Motion detected" has been used in just about every analog horror series now, but Mandela Catalogue is probably the main series that popularized the trope when analog horror first started getting popular.

The backrooms is, obviously, the backrooms. You can probably assume it's Kane Pixels' backrooms because his version really blew up but it feels more like early days backrooms before we got all those monsters and almond water stuff. (Which btw it's so funny we got "almond water" from whoever the first person to say the air smells like almonds was. For reference, almonds smell like cyanide. OP was trying to say the air smells toxic, not that almonds are the safest thing to consume in the backrooms.)

This shot just reminded me of The Oldest View, ALSO from Kane Pixels. Tbh that's probably just me but I thought it was neat.

Next up, the door. Aside from the obvious 333 angel numbers which also appear very prominently in Mandela Catalogue (this series is going to pop up a lot, I'm sorry), but for some reason it reminded me of the Silent Hill 4 door. Again, that's just the tism probably.

Skinamarink ahh shot, was honestly expecting the door to just poof, disappear.

Next, the shot with all the houses. While KP's Backrooms do have that creepy neighbourhood, this exact shot and set up feels closer to H.O.M.E. from Liminal Land.

And then our most darling biblically accurate horror icon Columbina would make False Gabriel proud, and just... she is so fucking cool and creepy in this and I love her so much.

This whole sequence was for one absolutely horrifying and beautiful, but what caught MY attention were the settings and locations shown. These are standard creepy liminal spaces and analog horror gore censorship, yes, but they also reminded me of the locations Trevor Henderson uses in his art pieces, so suffice to say I think Columbina looks RIGHT AT HOME regardless of how you wanna look at these shots. And the animation on her face opening up into wings and eyes is just an absolute chef's kiss moment. Props to the animators, man.

This trope, the whole main character monologue overlaying the screen moment, very common in analog horror but for me, again popularized by its use in the Mandela Catalogue.

The smudged picture is a reference to one of the ending shots in Skinamarink, where it pans over the childhood photos only for their heads and faces to now be missing, which most agree is the movie's way of saying these kids were trapped her for so long they eventually just stopped existing/faded into nothingness.

And finally, the classic ending scene of KP's first Backrooms video.

I know for a fact there are probably other references to liminal spaces/analog horror that I either missed or they're like general concepts/tropes used in analog horror. I did almost mention the mill in petscop because of Columbina's "two in the mill, one taken, one left" because that phrasing felt really specific, but it doesn't quite fit the vibes of all the other references. Also her only being seen in the camera is a trope used in all manner of horror media. My first thought was the forest scene in VHS (2012) where the murderer could only be seen in the film static.

I just wanted to get the especially cool/unique moments out there. I didn't even touch on the storyline but that's because it seems pretty straightforward. I'm also aware not many people are gonna read my red string corkboard ramblings, which I'm fine with. I just needed to get this out of my system, but I do appreciate those who did take the time to indulge my ramblings!

That's all for now, back to whatever the hell I had planned for today.

[cassiebones]

Please Chill

Please, I am begging you all to chill out. I'm speaking specifically to my wlw Agatha fans right now. Even more specifically to the ones who are angry that the last episode revolved around Teen/Billy.

He is a main fucking character. His backstory is important to the plot. We only get nine episodes in this series and the plot needs to move forward. We cannot do that without revealing who he is and what his motivations are, from a storytelling standpoint.

I studied creative writing in college. I worked really fucking hard to get into my program, too. I took classes on novel writing, mainly, but also in screenwriting and playwriting. I took classes on TV writing in the mid 2010's at a time where the trend was shifting to streaming services putting out entire fucking seasons at a time.

But I remember having to wait a week for an episode of a show I loved. I remember what happened to my favorite wlw characters. I remember being absolutely devastated by Lexa's death in The 100. I know you're scared of it happening again, but there is so much evidence on the contrary to prove that it's not going to happen here.

Firstly, I don't think for a second that some of the actresses who signed up for this would have done so if they thought they were going to pull the same shit. I don't think Jac or Kathryn or fucking Aubrey, who legit said that she signed up because it's a queer show, would do that.

But i don't know. Because the show isn't over. We have three episodes left over the next two weeks. I, like you all, am praying that they're not about to pull some bullshit, especially considering the majority of their current fanbase is comprised of queer people.

But you can't just call them lesbophobic because they focused on a canonically gay character rather than your favorite lesbian ship for one(1) episode. They have confirmed that Rio and Agatha are estranged exes. They showed us so much flirting and yearning and longing. From a storytelling standpoint, they are building that tension for a great payoff. Its's gonna happen. Please, just be patient.

I was upset, too. I did not want them to shift focus to Billy. When I saw that that was going to be the majority of the episode, I was upset. I made a couple posts about it. But I still watched and it was honestly a pretty good, important episode. And fucking funny as all hell. We truly saw the aftermath of Wanda's actions. Wanda, who wasn't trying to be malicious or harmful, but she still caused so much harm.

As much as I would have loved to see Rio, I understand why she wasn't in this episode just yet, but she'll likely be in the next one. It was probably only like 2 minutes after he threw them into the mud that Agatha crawled out. Also we see Lilia and Jen in future promos, so they'll be fine.

I predict that the next three episodes are going to be longer and more plot heavy moving forward. I really hope we see more of Agatha's delusions from the POV of Rio, because Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey are fucking hilarious and I know it's going to be just as funny as last night's Teen POV.

I want to see people theorizing about the next three episodes and what's going to happen and how they're going to rectify anything, but I'm seeing so many negative posts about why your favorite lesbians didn't kiss or fuck yet on this Disney show. Please, just be fucking patient. It's coming.

That being said, if I am wrong, I will be the first to admit it and be super salty about it. I hope I'm not, but who knows? I'm not going to make a snap decision either way. You shouldn't either.

[mia-ugly]

In honour of Good Omens Season 2

HAVE A SLOW SHOW FICLET with thanks to @weatheredlaw for the amazing graphic ❤️❤️❤️ how we doing fam

It’s a kid on set that first tells him. 

Not really a kid, but anyone less than thirty seems a kid to him these days (ugh, that’s a loathsome thought.) Jiyana’s a queer and pink-haired punk type, rainbow pin on their jacket, trans-pride flag tattooed on their inner wrist. The first time he met them, the whole wirey confident glittery thing made his gut clench with - what was it - joy and gratitude but also envy? Maybe? (because what must it be like to be that young and that certain of yourself? What must it be like to have the whole world open in front of you? Not that there still isn’t a lot of shit to deal with, and in Merry Old fucking England there is More Shit than Otherwise, but. Still. It’s something Crowley thinks about. Sometimes. When he hasn’t had enough sleep or when he’s had too much of it.)

The kid came up to him Day One to mumble about “being a big fan” and once they wore a Warlock t-shirt to an afterparty (“Vintage!” they said cheerily, and Crowley wanted to swallow his own face at the thought of something from the 2010s being considered vintage, good Christ.)

Anyway, Jiyana tells him first.

“Congrats on the new season!” They’re beside him in the makeup trailer. Crowley doesn’t realise they’re talking to him, assumes they’re wearing AirPods or something, until George gives him a nudge with the powder puff.

“Er, yeah, cheers.” It’s too early to talk to anyone this perky. Then his exhausted, coffee-less brain takes a moment to catch up with his exhausted, coffee-less mouth. “Er, wait, what?”

“Warlock. Heard it’s coming back. Did I tell you I wrote a paper on it in, like, Grade 10? So cool, the GSA at my highschool used to have watch parties, I can’t wait to see what they do with your -“

“Wait -“ Warlock? It’s been bloody years. “Where’d you hear this?”

The kid starts to list off some sites or social media whatsits that Crowley has never heard of, so he just nods and pretends to understand, the same way he does when Az’s niece tries to explain some show called “Jojo’s Big Adventure” or something. Validate, validate, empathise. Just like Pepper taught him.

It’s probably nothing right? A rumour.

But it’s a rumour Az has heard too.

When Crowley gets home that night (they’ve rented a house in Buckinghamshire, even though the studio’s not two hours from their cottage) Az is on him immediately. Heard about it from his sister apparently, who got the news from one of the kids.

“Isn’t that exciting?” His face is all lit up and his hair is wet, bathrobe snugly belted around his waist. The house has an indoor pool, and there are little indents on Avery’s nose where his extremely attractive and sexy swimming-goggles must have been resting.

Crowley presses his lips to each mark.

“Not that we’ve been going hungry or wanting for work –” Az continues.

“You work too bloody much,” Crowley murmurs into his cheekbone.

“But I do love those characters. The whole thing wrapped up so nicely though – what more is there to tell?  I wonder what the arc could possibly be.”

“I wonder what you’ve got on under this robe –”

“Anthony!” Az laughs in fake protest, tilting his head back so that Crowley can get his mouth on his throat. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Az tastes like chlorine, and maybe Crowley should join him in the shower after this. After a day in the studio, he could probably use it.

“Would you really want to do a series again?” Crowley asks after he’s finally let his husband go, turned to hang up his coat and thrown his bag on the nearest chair. “Awful lot of commitment. And you’ve that whole run at the Globe coming up, don’t rehearsals start in the spring?”

“We’ll have to see if Helen can mind the goats again while we’re in London.” Az has wandered into the kitchen, turned on the kettle. Crowley looks at the back of his neck (Crowley always looks at the back of his neck. Sometimes he dreams about it.) “If she’s free. I called her this morning to check in, Elmyra’s eating, so her anxiety must be getting better.”

“Cool, yeah,” Crowley says, casual and nonchalant and no big deal. As if Elmyra isn’t his favourite of the bunch and he doesn’t have a song that he made up and no one knows that he sings just to her. As if he didn’t hand feed her all night once because she wasn’t sleeping or eating and neither was he because he was so afraid this tiny rescue goat was going to starve to death, anyway whatever, super cool, who cares. “Is it weird that no one’s reached out to us, though? Do you think?”

“About the goats? Helen has my number –”

“No love, the Warlock thing.”

Az blinks at him, flutters his pretty blond lashes in an attractive, aggrieved sort of way. “You mean you haven’t heard from Beez?”

“I haven’t heard from anyone.”

“Oh.” Az thinks it over. “Well. Neither have I, actually. Do you – is that odd?”

“Maybe they’ve recast us with younger models.”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

“Gotta up the sex appeal of the whole thing. Jawlines. Cheekbones. Sexy results.”

“I –” Az goes a bit pink. Glances at Crowley and then away. “Fail to see how they could improve upon perfection.”

Crowley looks at his husband’s bathrobe and the slight scattering of silver chest hair and his hand on his tea cup and fuck off, his neck. His neck, his neck, who gives a shit about Warlock actually?

 “Come over here and say that to my mouth.”

Avery smiles, and sighs, and he does.

ONE YEAR LATER:

Crowley opens the email from Beez.

He fuckin' closes it.

[vinelark]

With the exciting news of Kon being in MAWS season 3 (!!!!!), do you have an specific recs for him when it comes to comics? (I know Young Justice is good for him, but not much outside of that)

hello! exciting news indeed!!! and hell yeah, here are some kon-centric comics outside of yj that i’ve enjoyed reading:

Reign of the Supermen arc (1993)

this arc has kon’s intro, well before he even had the name kon, and it’s worth a read if you haven’t already because of the way he shows up and is peak annoying immediately (said with love). especially Adventures of Superman #501! (the storyline spans a number of titles, reading order here)

(and for a related rec, the reign of the superman (2019) animated movie blends aspects of the original comic arc with the “kon is made with lex luthor’s dna” reveal/retcon; it’s a fun watch! left me with Much To Think About pang-wise, too.)

Superboy (1994)

the most concentrated amount of og jacket and glasses superboy you’ll find in one series; there’s a lot going on here, most of it so very 90s (both in the plot/world and on a more meta level) and also so many adorable kons. special shoutout to my favorite side character, krypto in his “tiny white terrier with a giant attitude” form. (and for a more specific rec i’ll point to issues #60 - 61, in which kon is hopping through multiple realities and we see, among others, robin!kon and “supergrrrl” kon.)

Batgirl (200) #41

this is the issue where cass goes “hmm, i should try to do A Romance” and shows up outside kon’s window to see what all the fuss is about, and they proceed to have the most lavender date of all lavender dates. i adore kon’s inability to shut up here, and also for obvious reasons need to give it a special shoutout for kon taking a “bat-babe” on a date in the clouds.

Adventure Comics (Vol 2) #1 - 6 (2009)

this arc serves to re-settle kon into the world (and smallville) after the whole [waves hand] dying and coming back to life thing. (technically it’s 12 issues, but you’re asking for specific recs so my specific recs are the first six!) this is about kon starting life in smallville and having a prolonged identity crisis re: the superman + lex luthor of it all. cassie, bart, and tim all show up as significant guest stars (one of my fav tim & kon issues of all time is in here) but it’s very kon-centric! i also really enjoy the art, especially when it does wide/landscape shots.

Superboy (2010)

this is a pretty direct continuation from the adventure comics arc, once again feat. kon’s 21st century black t-shirt (sigh) and also kon wearing the tiniest, goofiest pair of Disguise Glasses. that said, it’s a fun, classic “teen superhero juggles school and crushes and a statistically high number of supervillains for a small town (seriously, what the hell was poison ivy even doing in kansas?)” series. also if there were any justice in the world simon valentine would’ve been one of those crushes, but alas.

Convergence: Superboy (2015) #1 - 2

i’ll be honest, i’m not super familiar with the overarching convergence storyline, but i really enjoyed this two-shot featuring a kon who has been stuck in metropolis without his powers, only to suddenly gain them back and immediately start brawling with alternate versions of heroes he knows. i also like the art in this one, and the character designs overall—leather jacket kon my beloved!

Action Comics (2016) #1020 - 1028 (“House of Kent” arc)

this sequence brings kon back into the kent family fold after the timeline fuckery (and i think follows from the young justice (2019) gemworld arc where they re-find kon?)—so basically it’s kon’s re-introduction to clark, and to lois and jon (who’s visiting from his own future adventure) and kara and martha and jonathan. despite spelling conner’s name two different ways in the span of a few issues, it’s a neat speedrun of different kon+superfam interactions, and also a fun time for anyone who’s a fan of kon being solidly part of the kent family. also: jacket kon is back 🙏

this is not at all an exhaustive list, just some of my favs--happy reading!

[synergysilhouette]

"Batman: Caped Crusader" review

Binge-watched this show, and I wanted to be one of many people to share my thoughts on this--plus I was spurred on by getting a wish of mine granted from the show. Make sure to check out the show if you can!

The animation is beautiful--I know this is a weird comparison, but soemthing about the animation reminds me of 2010s Scooby Doo animated films, and I kind of adore that.

The voice acting was...fine--I can't tell if it was poor performances or poor direction; Hamish's Bruce Wayne sounds too raspy/rugged some of the time, like he's still playing Batman, and many of the other actors felt like they were just reading lines rather than performing lines, not enough emotion. IDK if they're more used to live-action work, but voice-acting is a different ballgame, since your voice is all you have to convey the character. A lot of performances fell flat for me, but it wasn't 100% unbearable, just underwhelming. I have some people I'd recommend instead (both familiar to the role and otherwise), but I don't wanna start anything.

LOVED Harley (but not her costume)--Jamie Chung had one of the better performances in the group, and I really LOVED the angle they did for Harley; I feel like the media often flanderizes her as the goofy crazy chick, so seeing her actually utilize her psychology skills (like I've been asking for!) is so satisfying. That said, the outfit has GOT TO GO. Gold and black is gorgeous, but it ples in comparison to her black and red look. And a weird nit-pick; when I first saw the stills, I was under the impression she was wearing a carnival-esque mask rather than face paint, and I find that idea a lot creepier. I wish we'd gotten more of Harley's antics--and even seeing her get close to Bruce in the way she did with Barbara and Renee--before revealing her as a big bad to the public. And I appreciate that she isn't 100% evil; she is doing what she believes is a noble cause, just doing it in an illegal and unethical way. I needed a backstory!

Not enough Batman--Maybe it's just me, but it definitely felt like there were some episodes where Bruce and Batman were supporting characters and more focus was on the GCPD. While I don't mind it too much, I enjoy superhero shows for the superheroes, not the heroes; this is why I had a love/hate relationship with "Gotham."

Batman (and Bruce) isn't quite likeable enough--In earlier incarnations, Batman was more kind and caring before becoming more emotionally closed off with time, but here he's that way from the get-go. Not to mention that Bruce Wayne puts on a facade around everyone, even people he trusts (he probably did that anyway; I can't remember), and his session with Harleen really frustrated me because I don't expect his walls to come down immediately, I don't expect them to be this high this early. I wanted him to be a bit warmer and transparent, rather than curt and cold like he's usually seen in the show. I feel like this is an issue often seen in comics, too; people prioritize Batman's "coolness" and thus push his feelings to the wayside.

Using underrated and familiar villains--I'm sure the real experts are gonna chew me out for this one, but as someone who got into comics in the 2010s and didn't catch up on the acclaimed 90s series, it was fun to see villains I loved and villains I didn't know; one of the best things a popular property can do is use underrated characters, since it helps the show feel original and fresh (thus why "Teen Titans" is so enjoyable; the whole franchise is underrated).

Too modern for the 1940s--I can't put my fingers on it exactly, but the vibes feel too modern; I assume the 1940s was for aesthetics, but since everything else feels updated (from the way people talk to Harley and Renee seemingly being open about their feelings for each other), I don't think it was a wise choice to have it both ways. I see no reason not to have it in modern-day, but I suppose you'd have to get more creative with technology.

Barbara and the Robins--First off, I should've gambled with someone that Jason would be a redhead; I'd have made SO MUCH money. Secondly, I'm not crazy about how all four kids are orphans; If I recall correctly, both Carrie and Stephanie's parents were alive when they joined the Batfamily. In any case, I'm confused on why Barbara is significantly older than them when they're all supposed to be within the same age bracket (I think; someone has told me otherwise since posting this, so I could be wrong). Not to mention, a part of me worries that because of the quartet's young ages and Barbara getting so much screentime as a lawyer, we won't get any of them as Robins or Batgirls unless something drastic happens, and/or we get a time jump.

Overall, I think my biggest gripes are the voice acting and how Batman/Bruce Wayne is written. That said, I enjoyed the show overall. IDK why HBO Max dropped it. Hopefully season 2 will introduce Poison Ivy, Catman, Tim Drake, Ghostmaker, and Gardener, since the finale already showed us a certain someone who IS coming to Gotham.

[stackslip]

I thought Scar was supposed to be Ainu and not middle-eastern? My only knowledge of the series is watching it once seven years ago.

yeah don't think so, really. arakawa has said that she partially based the conflict "between the state and scar" (what a way to put it) on her own background in hokkaido, where japanese settlers stole ainu land, but she also makes it clear in that same interview that this isn't the sole influence. besides it wouldn't fit 1:1, as the ainu went through a cultural genocide but were never round up and suffered large scale massacres in the same way--from what i've found it seems to be closer to a slow burn genocide that favoured "assimilation" above all. and searching any images of the ainu, researching their clothings and practices, very little seems to fit even visually with ishbalans. i'm sure they WERE a source of inspiration for arakawa writing the war, and i'm sure her own admission that her ancestors and family are descendents of settlers on ainu land, and some of her relatives have ainu blood (she never claims herself directly as ainu, despite what i've seen being said online) also informs the way she wrote the soldiers and settlers who help destroy ishbal. she calls that war an "allegory" and she kinda seems to have thrown a lot of different groups and tropes in to make up ishbal

obviously some stuff is directly inspired by ww2, she herself said she interviewed ww2 veterans (only veterans.... would have loved to hear the pov of the victims) to write about the war. considering the history of japan during ww2, and how the torture and experiments in ishbal obviously parallel japanese human experimentation on the people they deemed as sub-human (and possibly nazi experimentation) then these populations under japanese occupations can also be an inspiration

but really, ishbalans themselves seem to be a melting pot of different orientalist tropes, some inspired by real life groups--the basics about how ishbalans themselves are depicted in the manga are these: they are a desert-based indigenous people with dark skin, who worship a single god (something that is apparently pretty mock worthy for hugues and others tbh; one could see some mixing up of jews and muslims in there too with the talk of ishbal as the "holy land") and who see alchemy and a lot of what amestrians bring as "blasphemy"; furthermore their women (from the little we see of them) wear hoods or veils that cover their hair, and wear golden bracelets and jewelry. despite arakawa's utter refusal to give ishbalans much of a spotlight on their culture and life altogether, it's kinda hard to not read ishbalans' visual appearance as being "inspired" by SWANA muslims from their appearance and dark skin, the little we see of their religious values, and their clothing. all in a very orientalist way tbh

most importantly, fma ran from 2001 to 2010 and the iraq war WAS very present in japanese political consciousness. (fma 03 makes that parallel a lot more evident, but arakawa wrote/drew the bulk of her version of the genocide after 03 aired and it's p obvious that the iraq war is also a direct inspiration.) the japanese public was aware enough of the iraq war that when the then prime minister decided, for the first time since ww2, to send SDF troops to iraq to aid the USA his approval rates dropped dramatically. this was part of a larger political debate around japan's remilitarization. it would be very hard to imagine that arakawa, writing about war as she was, was not at the very least influenced by these concurrent events.

so: by her own admission, the situation of the ainu is one of several inspirations for ishbalans and scar. but that does not make ishbalans or scar ainu (and for the billionth time, arakawa is not ainu or indigenous herself! she has never claimed to be!), and it is very obvious that their culture is far more visually coded through orientalist depictions of SWANA people and muslims than the ainu themselves.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Richard R John’s “Network Nation”

THIS SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

The telegraph and the telephone have a special place in the history and future of competition and Big Tech. After all, they were the original tech monopolists. Every discussion of tech and monopoly takes place in their shadow.

Back in 2010, Tim Wu published The Master Switch, his bestselling, wildly influential history of "The Bell System" and the struggle to de-monopolize America from its first telecoms barons:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/11/01/the-master-switch-tim-net-neutrality-wu-explains-whats-at-stake-in-the-battle-for-net-freedom/

Wu is a brilliant writer and theoretician. Best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality," Wu went on to serve in both the Obama and Biden administrations as a tech trustbuster. He accomplished much in those years. Most notably, Wu wrote the 2021 executive order on competition, laying out a 72-point program for using existing powers vested in the administrative agencies to break up corporate power and get the monopolist's boot off Americans' necks:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

The Competition EO is basically a checklist, and Biden's agency heads have been racing down it, ticking off box after box on or ahead of schedule, making meaningful technical changes in how companies are allowed to operate, each one designed to make material improvements to the lives of Americans.

A decade and a half after its initial publication, Wu's Master Switch is still considered a canonical account of how the phone monopoly was built – and dismantled.

But somewhat lost in the shadow of The Master Switch is another book, written by the accomplished telecoms historian Richard R John: "Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications," published a year after The Master Switch:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088139

Network Nation flew under my radar until earlier this year, when I found myself speaking at an antitrust conference where both John and Wu were also on the bill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VNivXjrU3A

During John's panel – "Case Studies: AT&T & IBM" – he took a good-natured dig at Wu's book, claiming that Wu, not being an historian, had been taken in by AT&T's own self-serving lies about its history. Wu – also on the panel – didn't dispute it, either. That was enough to prick my interest. I ordered a copy of Network Nation and put it on my suitcase during my vacation earlier this month.

Network Nation is an extremely important, brilliantly researched, deep history of America's love/hate affair with not just the telephone, but also the telegraph. It is unmistakably as history book, one that aims at a definitive takedown of various neat stories about the history of American telecommunications. As Wu writes in his New Republic review of John's book:

Generally he describes the failure of competition not so much as a failure of a theory, but rather as the more concrete failure of the men running the competitors, many of whom turned out to be incompetent or unlucky. His story is more like a blow-by-blow account of why Germany lost World War II than a grand theory of why democracy is better than fascism.

https://newrepublic.com/article/88640/review-network-nation-richard-john-tim-wu

In other words, John thinks that the monopolies that emerged in the telegraph and then the telephone weren't down to grand forces that made them inevitable, but rather, to the errors made by regulators and the successful gambits of the telecoms barons. At many junctures, things could have gone another way.

So this is a very complicated story, one that uses a series of contrasts to make the point that history is contingent and owes much to a mix of random chance and the actions of flawed human beings, and not merely great economic or historical laws. For example, John contrasts the telegraph with the telephone, posing them against one another as a kind of natural experiment in different business strategies and regulatory responses.

The telegraph's early promoters, including Samuel Morse (as in "Morse code") believed that the natural way to roll out telegraph was via selling the patents to the federal government and having an agency like the post office operate it. There was a widespread view that the post office as a paragon of excellent technical management and a necessity for knitting together the large American nation. Moreover, everyone could see that when the post office partnered with private sector tech companies (like the railroads that became essential to the postal system), the private sector inevitably figured out how to gouge the American public, leading regulators to ever-more extreme measures to rein in the ripoffs.

The telegraph skated close to federalization on several occasions, but kept getting snatched back from the brink, ending up instead as a privately operated system that primarily served deep-pocketed business customers. This meant that telegraph companies were forever jostling to get the right to string wires along railroad tracks and public roads, creating a "political economy" that tried to balance out highway regulators and rail barons (or play them off against each other).

But the leaders of the telegraph companies were largely uninterested in "popularizing" the telegraph – that is, figuring out how ordinary people could use telegraphs in place of the hand-written letters that were the dominant form of long-distance communications at the time. By turning their backs on "popularization," telegraph companies largely freed themselves from municipal oversight, because they didn't need to get permission to string wires into every home in every major city.

When the telephone emerged, its inventors and investors initially conceived of it as a tool for business as well. But while the telegraph had ushered in a boom in instantaneous, long-distance communications (for example, by joining ports and distant cities where financiers bought and sold the ports' cargo), the telephone proved far more popular as a way of linking businesses within a city limits. Brokers and financiers and businesses that were only a few blocks from one another found the telephone to be vastly superior to the system of dispatching young boys to race around urban downtowns with slips bearing messages.

So from the start, the phone was much more bound up in city politics, and that only deepened with popularization, as phones worked their ways into the homes of affluent families and local merchants like druggists, who offered free phone calls to customers as a way of bringing trade through the door. That created a great number of local phone carriers, who had to fend off Bell's federally enforced patents and aldermen and city councilors who solicited bribes and favors.

To make things even more complex, municipal phone companies had to fight with other sectors that wanted to fill the skies over urban streets with their own wires: streetcar lines and electrical lines. The unregulated, breakneck race to install overhead wires led to an epidemic of electrocutions and fires, and also degraded service, with rival wires interfering with phone calls.

City politicians eventually demanded that lines be buried, creating another source of woe for telephone operators, who had to contend with private or quasi-private operators who acquired a monopoly over the "subways" – tunnels where all these wires eventually ended up.

The telegraph system and the telephone system were very different, but both tended to monopoly, often from opposite directions. Regulations that created some competition in telegraphs extinguished competition when applied to telephones. For example, Canada federalized the regulation of telephones, with the perverse effect that everyday telephone users in cities like Toronto had much less chance of influencing telephone service than Chicagoans, whose phone carrier had to keep local politicians happy.

Nominally, the Canadian Members of Parliament who oversaw Toronto's phone network were big leaguers who understood prudent regulation and were insulated from the daily corruption of municipal politics. And Chicago's aldermen were pretty goddamned corrupt. But Bell starved Toronto of phone network upgrades for years, while Chicago's gladhanding political bosses forced Chicago's phone company to build and build, until Chicago had more phone lines than all of France. Canadian MPs might have been more remote from rough-and-tumble politics, but that made them much less responsive to a random Torontonian's bitter complaint about their inability to get a phone installed.

As the Toronto/Chicago story illustrates, the fact that there were so many different approaches to phone service tried in the US and Canada gives John more opportunities to contrast different business-strategies and regulations. Again, we see how there was never one rule that governments could have used if they wanted to ensure that telecoms were well-run, widely accessible, and reasonably priced. Instead, it was always "horses for courses" – different rules to counter different circumstances and gambits from telecoms operators.

As John traces through the decades during which the telegraph and telephone were established in America, he draws heavily on primary sources to trace the ebb and flow of public and elite sentiment towards public ownership, regulation, and trustbusting. In John's hands, we see some of the most spectacular failures as more than a mismatch of regulatory strategy to corporate gambit – but rather as a mismatch of political will and corporate gambit. If a company's power would be best reined in by public ownership, but the political vogue is for regulation, then lawmakers end up trying to make rules for a company they should simply be buying giving to the post office to buy.

This makes John's history into a history of the Gilded Age and trustbusters. Notorious vulture capitalists like Jay Gould shocked the American conscience by declaring that businesses had no allegiance to the public good, and were put on this Earth to make as much money as possible no matter what the consequences. Gould repeated "raided" Western Union, acquiring shares and forcing the company to buy him out at a premium to end his harassment of the board and the company's managers.

By the time the feds were ready to buy out Western Union, Gould was a massive shareholder, meaning that any buyout of the telegraph would make Gould infinitely wealthier, at public expense, in a move that would have been electoral poison for the lawmakers who presided over it. In this highly contingent way, Western Union lived on as a private company.

Americans – including prominent businesspeople who would be considered "conservatives" by today's standards, were deeply divided on the question of monopoly. The big, successful networks of national telegraph lines and urban telephone lines were marvels, and it was easy to see how they benefited from coordinated management. Monopolists and their apologists weaponized this public excitement about telecoms to defend their monopolies, insisting that their achievement owed its existence to the absence of "wasteful competition."

The economics of monopoly were still nascent. Ideas like "network effects" (where the value of a service increases as it adds users) were still controversial, and the bottlenecks posed by telephone switching and human operators meant that the cost of adding new subscribers sometimes went up as the networks grew, in a weird diseconomy of scale.

Patent rights were controversial, especially patents related to natural phenomena like magnetism and electricity, which were viewed as "natural forces" and not "inventions." Business leaders and rabble-rousers alike decried patents as a federal grant of privilege, leading to monopoly and its ills.

Telecoms monopolists – telephone and telegraph alike – had different ways to address this sentiment at different times (for example, the Bell System's much-vaunted commitment to "universal service" was part of a campaign to normalize the idea of federally protected, privately owned monopolies).

Most striking about this book were the parallels to contemporary fights over Big Tech trustbusting, in our new Gilded Age. Many of the apologies offered for Western Union or AT&T's monopoly could have been uttered by the Renfields who carry water for Facebook, Apple and Google. John's book is a powerful and engrossing reminder that variations on these fights have occurred in the not-so-distant past, and that there's much we can learn from them.

Wu isn't wrong to say that John is engaging with a lot of minutae, and that this makes Network Nation a far less breezy read than Master Switch. I get the impression that John is writing first for other historians, and writers of popular history like Wu, in a bid to create the definitive record of all the complexity that is elided when we create tidy narratives of telecoms monopolies, and tech monopolies in general. Bringing Network Nation on my vacation as a beach-read wasn't the best choice – it demands a lot of serious attention. But it amply rewards that attention, too, and makes an indelible mark on the reader.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

[littleroaes]

To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, tbz [ TEASER ]

FULL FIC

Y/n's stale love life gets a catalyst at the start of the autumn semester when two weeks earlier; her younger brother got egged on by his friend to post the box of secret love letters she has collected during 12 years. how does she handle the end of summer and five leaked love letters?

PAIRING ( 3rd pov, she/ her ) fem!reader x lee hyunjae, lee juyeon, ji changmin, kim sunwoo, eric sohn

GENRE, WARNINGS fluff, university!au, humor, to all the boys i loved before!au, 2000s and 2010s au, summer!au, sprinkle of angst, sporty people, nerdy people, parties, friends2lovers, childhood friends, bickering, slice of life, coming of age ( more info in full fic ! )

RELEASE DATE end of may / beginning of june

ESTIMATED WORD COUNT 10 - 17 k

TEASER WORD COUNT : about 500

this will be my fic for the @deoboyznet love letter collective event! ( idk if i should use the dbn tag since it’s just a teaser ) i've wanted to write a "to all the boys..." fic for so long and i'm finally doing it! if someone wants to be tagged for the full fic lmk!

like and reblog are highly encouraged!

THERE'S A THING YOU DO–OR SHE DOES AT LEAST–WHEN SOMETHING'S BEEN OCCUPYING YOUR MIND.

Dad told her once after an argument with a best friend to take a paper and a pen; then, let it out. Fold the paper, lay it in a box, and shelter under your bed. 

It’s inherently the same concept as a diary she suppose. Though, somewhat more effective. 

Nonetheless, from that first letter a series of what one can only describe as an uncontrolled teenage angst ensemble of love letters emerged over the course of twelve years.

...

There are five of them. 

The first one is Lee Jaehyun, a three year older popular student who she had a trivial crush on in middle school (together with everyone else). In all honesty she didn’t know much about him; just that he was cute looking. There’s a sort of emotional torment in recalling her one sided adoration while leaned out the school window to see him play football. Even his name haunts her still in uni as her roommate had a crush on the shining hockey player the entire two semesters.

In short, everyone liked Lee Jaehyun. 

Next is Eric Sohn, her childhood friend, the boy next door, her first love? He has many titles she realize. He lived in an impressive house north from hers, one that hosts many parties every time his parents take the trip to their summer resort. At some point, it felt like he knew every kid in town. Luckily for her; Y/n has never been the jealous type. Despite being each other’s ride or die since ten, Y/n has never confessed the secret ways she looked at him back in the sandbox.  

Third is Sunwoo–just Sunwoo; she never got his last name–from summer camp who she even (jokingly) got married to. Her first summer at thirteen, away from her parents, with kids her age. When recalling it all back, that summer feels as if taken right out of a movie, and she fell head first, three meters deep with the boy. Sunwoo always stood in the center (bad and good…mostly bad tbh). They got paired up for the kayak; it pissed rained and their coordination couldn’t take them ten meters. But she remembers every word he said as butterfly inducing nonetheless. After that, at night they snuck out of their cabin’s to watch the stars. And when that summer too ended, she swore her heart shattered into million pieces.

The fourth is Lee Juyeon, a boy she had never seen before until his cat got pregnant by her own. Scuba Steve (long story) had been gone for some days until another family came up to their door with him. For half a year, it felt like she saw Lee Juyeon everyday. He was just as enchanted by kittens as her (if not more) and they would visit each other just to cuddle with them. Her teenage heart used to rush with the mere presence of him and they together named all the kittens–until they were sold off. Then they eventually stopped seeing each other. Though he still lurks around as a poet’s ghost around campus (source: Eric). 

The last one, Ji Changmin, the son of her mother’s friend. He teached her calculus for a while in high school. To be fully transparent, she didn’t learn much from him that year because all she did was leaning on the kitchen table while adoring him until the rims of his glasses slipped. He always scolded her endearingly when she didn’t listen (which was the majority of the time). Ji Changmin always wore cute polos with neat pants–now when thinking about it, her mother might have approved if they got together. But it’s too late. He went to uni; and simply left her with a newfound thing for glasses (still wearing cute polos in uni). 

And that's all five. She sometimes wonders if it was a mere symptom of youth that resulted in those letters. Since uni–outside a campus crush or two-–that compelling yearning for someone has never come back to her. 

to be continued

© littleroaes, written and all

[stablersolivia]

Thoughts on Caryl/MMB/TWDCaryl

First things first, I'm super new to the fandom stuff involving anything The Walking Dead... but I've been through this before.

So--- I began The Walking Dead in 2018, which is around when Season 8 was about to premiere I believe (correct me if I'm wrong). Nevermind the fact I watched the premiere episode all the way back in 2010 and for some reason, never watched again, lol. All I remember is binge watching the first 7 seasons and waiting for the new season to air. But something came up, and I somehow lost track of the new episodes. Fast forward 6ish years and I decided to rewatch from the beginning ...on election night .... to distract from the chaos. I ended up watching the entire series (plus two seasons of #TWDCaryl) in 3 weeks.

Similar to many other fans, I loved the whole cast, but something drew me to Carol and Daryl the most. I remember loving them the first time, but I never really "delved" into it. I liked the idea of them, but I wasn't super... shippy if that makes sense. But---and this is important--- I was already fully immersed in a long-term ship already in EO. Yeah, that EO. The 25 year long slow burn ship from Law and Order SVU. I guess you can say I didn't have the brain function to obsess over two different ships... at least not back 6ish years ago, which is still about 2 years before news broke Chris Meloni/Elliot was coming back to the franchise after 10 YEARS away. SO--- if you're familiar at all with that and/or EO and the drama with the ship itself, the other ships within the show, and the fans --then we're on the same page.

Which brings me back to Caryl/TWD spinoff. I can't say I'm super surprised at the drama surrounding the new spinoff ---which I was insanely excited about years ago when it was first announced even though I hadn't watched the show in a couple of years. Plus, I was a Caryl fan from the beginning too. But then the news broke that Melissa wasn't going to be on the spinoff after all and I remember thinking --- I'm kind of glad I didn't get as invested in them as I have EO (which is ridiculously invested ---17 years worth of fanfic, fanart, twitter, tumblr friends, etc). But after rewatching the series in its entirety this past November-- I've lost that battle. While I didn't hardcore ship Caryl the first time around (even though I really liked the idea) ---I'm down bad now. Especially after watching seasons 9/10/11 and now the spinoff. My twitter bookmarks, tumblr queue and tags are a Caryl mess right now and I wouldn't want it any other way.

I absolutely adore Melissa and Norman, and their friendship mirrors Chris and Mariska's on SVU's as well (Elliot and Olivia) in a lot of ways -- but that's for another time. (Also-- if you haven't watched Norman's ep of SVU -- highly recommend -- it's in Season 7). I truly think the friendships behind these characters truly drive the effectiveness of duos and ships. If the actors don't get along and/or truly love each other in real life-- it's just not the same. The love truly bleeds onto the screen when it's organic. It really makes everything "earned' like Mariska and Norman have both said about the relationships.

So--- it's disheartening to see that even though Melissa is back in the TWD world after all, and appeared at the end of S1 of the spinoff and all of Season 2, that she's -- from what I've seen tweeted/posted on tumblr --- not getting the respect she deserves, or so it seems. Being a part of a duo comes with all kinds of peaks and valleys. So, one half not getting what they deserve is something I hope sincerely isn't the case. She is literally my favorite female character on this show. I truly think MMB, is a gifted actress who is light years ahead in talent. And again, I love pretty much every character.

With MMB being a woman of a certain age leading a long running show--- I can't help go back to SVU with Mariska. Being leading women on high profile tv shows in your late 50's, early 60's is something to celebrate and be super careful with to be quite frank. MH has been lead/Co-lead on her show for 26 seasons now and an executive producer. If she's getting the respect over at nbc, then Melissa certainly should be getting the same over at amc. (Don't get me wrong, there is still BS behind the scenes on SVU too, but in different ways). Especially if she's also now an EP on TWD. ESPECIALLY by being a part of this for 15 years which is nothing to sneer at. Carol has got to be amongst the longest running female characters on television right now.

I certainly don't know much about what is going on behind the scenes in this case, and I don't really want to knowing what I've known and heard with SVU over the years. Sometimes it's better to NOT know. That's totally ignoring what the showrunner is saying in interviews and what not. I've definitely heard about him. Ugh. With that being said, hopefully things are not what they seem and that there's a lot to be excited and surprised about when Season 3 comes out I'm assuming later this year. There's a thin line between toxic positivity and just having been around the block a few times with previous shows and trying to wait it out. This means taking into consideration what is being filmed elsewhere and indoors.

I'm rooting for Caryl (big time) and for good writing for them. In regards to MMB not being seen on set much, hopefully it's purely her decision for it being that way, or because they're doing what SVU/OC have been doing and trying to keep storylines under wraps so they aren't spoiled --since the whole S2 got released prematurely for the Caryl Spinoff. Maybe it's wishful thinking. Maybe it's seen through rose-colored lenses because I'm not used to this type of fandom discourse like I am with SVU.

It's 2025, and I'm just rooting for my ships to finally receive the writing/canon they deserve. I must be a glutton for punishment because why in the frick do I ship these two??? LOL.

Anyways, I just wanted to get this off my chest because I hate seeing the downside to something I love so much and I'm sure that's true for everyone who comes across this.

I'll certainly be over on twitter expressing my love for Melissa/Carol and Caryl. (I do love Norman as well -- but wanted to focus this on what's important and that's giving Melissa her flowers.) Give that woman an EMMY. Anyways.

Thanks for reading my thoughts even as discombobulated as they may be. Caryl is endgame! BOOM.

[angel-princess-anna]

Hugh Bonneville promises 'new elements' and 'thrills and spills' in Downton Abbey 3

The actor tells Yahoo UK that he thinks the new film is the "best" of the franchise

Downton Abbey made some big changes on the big screen with 2022's A New Era, but Robert Crawley star Hugh Bonneville assures Yahoo UK that the upcoming third film will be even bigger and better than anything that has come before it.

Speaking with Yahoo UK for a Role Recall interview, the actor shares that the film feels like a "lovely coming together of people". Fans will be rivetted by what is to come for Robert and the Crawley family because the film is full of "spills and thrills" according to Bonneville, who took a break from production to promote his new ITV series Douglas is Cancelled.

"For my character, I think the usual [can be expected], which is that he's a sort of dinosaur trying to be led into the future reluctantly, and then eventually he stumbles forward a bit," Bonneville teases.

"So as always, there's that rhythm of things changing with glacial slowness, and Robert finally accepting that things [are changing] — it's time to move the story on, so to speak. It's got the usual tropes, if you like, of thrills and spills in a very Downtown [sic] way, which means spilling a tea cup pretty much!

"People who've watched the show over the years and have loved it will miss Maggie Smith's presence. She doesn't step out of the shower and it's all been a dream, she is gone.

"But, I think there's so much warmth and fun to enjoy, and new elements as well — which I won't spoil — that I think it'll certainly be the best iteration of the film versions yet."

The third Downton Abbey film will see the original cast return including Michelle Dockery, Elizabeth McGovern, Jim Carter and Laura Carmichael, while A New Era's Dominic West will also reprise his role as Guy Dexter. They will be joined by a host of new characters played by Paul Giamatti, Joely Richardson, Simon Russell Beale, and Alessandro Nivola.

Details of the story have not yet been revealed, but Bonneville's positivity about it seems like a good sign. The actor also spoke of how it still surprises him that the franchise has become as beloved as it has since the show first premiered in 2010 because it didn't originally seem like it would.

"It never ceases to amaze me, it did when it first started in 2010 and here we are, 14 years later, we're making a third movie," he explains. "At least one of our producers said, 'well, it's never gonna last beyond seven episodes anyway so don't lose too much sleep about this', and here we are all those years later still together.

"What's been really interesting is there's a whole new generation of people watching it and still finding it engaging, and also what's been rather touching, particularly over the pandemic, [was] when people were stuck at home and they revisited a show that had finished five years before.

"Each of us have had lots of letters from people saying: 'I used to watch it with my Gran', or 'my son who is now married', or 'my husband, who's now passed on', or whatever. It had an emotional resonance for the period of time that it was on, and people find comfort in it, and revisited it like a warm bath.

"I'm not complaining because it's been a wonderful part of my life and we're filming the third film at the moment, it's a lovely coming together of people I care deeply about, and that's just the fictional characters."

[imahgined]

the rosy blog project - episode 2:

꒰ঌ pt. 2 on how we made 2024 actually feel like 2014 ໒꒱

hey there, honeybear! ໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১

i loved doing this series so much, i literally couldn't end the year without writing even more ways our beloved rosy blog era got its way into 2024. you can check out part one here!

༊࿐ ⊹ ˚. my take on how we made 2024 really feel like 2014, part 2

| section 2: movies, trends, and nostalgia

ig dumps feeling like the og instagram posting style: omg, literally all i see on ig nowadays are people's photo dumps in so many different ways. this feels so much like the carefree vibe we had for posting when we first opened our ig accounts. i love the way it is slowly turning into a more relaxed and casual app.

reading and bookstagram came BACK: even though this has always been around, 2024 really brought back reading as an it girl hobby, like it was back in 2014. i feel like booktok blew up—there's a creator for every type of genre and style! i have been watching recommendations nonstop and started buying so many books, secondhand or new, to fill my shelves.

book-to-movie/tv show adaptations: also, there were so many book adaptations coming to the cinema, from it ends with us to uglies and the idea of you. i love that we're going to the movies again, dressing up, and being excited to see our favorite stories on screen. last year, we had the ballad of songbirds and snakes in theaters, that was the IT comeback from 2013 in 2023. we also had a teen wolf movie??? that is actually my fav show ever.

the sofia coppola obsession: there is literally nothing better than watching a sofia coppola movie. in 2024, i saw people all over pinterest and tiktok acclaiming her (which is absolutely necessary). and can we talk about the bling ring? it's THE most 2013-2014 movie i've seen. the story is crazy—i was so invested in it, i kept reading about it weeks after i saw the movie! also, not related to coppola, but i would recommend watching spring breakers if you like the 2010s look and feel in movies. it's not much of a good story, but i promise the visuals are insaneee.

actual romcoms slowly becoming a thing again: we had movies this year like we live in time, one day, and turtles all the way down (a john green novel adaptation, so 2014!). i think the industry is trying to bring back those romantic movies we girlies love so much. last year, we even had anyone but you, which became really popular!

substack being the go-to platform for bloggers: this is actually SO cool. everyone these days is writing articles, reflections and overall just sharing their thoughts on substack. this is such a cool way to bring back the blogger era from the 2010s in a modern way. let me know what you like to read on the app! i personally love twirl magazine by @i-miss-2013, go check her out!

girly content trending everywhere: this year, it felt like everyone was posting aesthetic cute vlogs, pink hauls, girly fashion, and beauty tips! i'm SO here for that. i feel like girls are becoming more confident and comfortable embracing their femininity on social media, and i love that for us. so much like the rosy blog days!

quizzes on tiktok: i don't know about you guys, but i LOVED taking quizzes on books, magazines or even buzzfeed back in the day. this year, i saw so many tiktoks with these type of relaxing and cutesy tests, but in a more much visual way, with themes such as "plan your dream wedding" or "plan your dream vacation". this is so 2014 girly magazine coded—i loved it when these popped on my feed!

source: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMkSuhfyN/

"challenges" on social media: this is what i mean when i say that social media is getting back on track with actually being fun and giving us a good laugh! we had such funny "challenges" like the hear me out cake trend, the we listen but we don't judge videos, and even the pretending our DOG got into harvard for no reason trend. ugh, i loved these so much—they were giving the same feel as the challenges we did back in the day in 2014 on social media.

i hope you liked the second post from the series! part 3 will be up tomorrow as my closing for 2024  ೀ hope you're having the lovelist day/night, sending you warm wishes! xx

[burning-academia-if]

Hello and welcome to me yapping about BA. I know this is late, but better late than never! (I have been sick since the end of November, so I also didn't get anything done during December fasdfja). This is pretty long, and I mostly wrote it for myself, since I like giving myself something to look back on in the future + reflect on my work. Feel free to skip this, especially because it is over 2k words LMAO

Brief content warning, there will be a very brief mentioning of health at the end. It won't go in to any detail since it is personal, but it is present! There will be a warning right before I talk about it, but I just wanted to give a head's up! Now onwards, to my 2024 look back: Burning Academia edition.

But first 14 years ago

It's the summer of 2011 (or 2010), and you've just discovered the Persona series for the first time. One day, at the mall, you see a copy of Persona 3 Portable on the shelf in the store, and you beg your very Christian mother to buy it for you, watching as she gives a very hard stare at the blatant "M" rating on the case. By some miracle, you manage to convince her to buy it for you, and then proceed to binge and finish the game in 5 days. Your mom promptly takes away your PSP, which is fair enough in hindsight. You'd played at least ten hours of it each day.

It's the summer of 2011 (or 2010, my memory is Bad), and you also discovered flash dating sims on DeviantArt, which also led to your discovery of otome games in general. Both this and P3P merge together into a story idea. One that you note down in a document full of other story ideas. The notes look like this:

Back then, thirteen year old me imagined an otome game mixed with the classic turn based RPG combat system, but made at a much smaller scale. There were 7 boys, and whoever you romanced changed what the final boss looked like.

It was also centered in a high school, and MC was a lot more of a blank slate sort of character, with no real background. They just happened to find a Weird Book at their private high school and got dragged into nonsense. There were still Wraiths (originally called Night Specters) who you fought during the three month span of the game. Said Night Specters were also controlled by the Resident Voice, who was not a love interest in the original.

Baby Em daydreamed about this idea a lot, for most of summer and throughout eight grade honestly. But it fell to the wayside for things I could actually do (basically, just my writing) and that was pretty much the end of that.

Until it wasn't

Flash forward to 2023, where I was having a rough time and unemployed and to give myself joy I went back through a lot of old files on my Google Drive. I'm not really someone that's ever been ashamed of my creative work, and questionable stories and art I drew are things I'm more fond of than anything. When I stumbled upon this, my brain latched on to it, so I took it, and ripped out it's guts to create the current version of Burning Academia.

Rook and Beck are the only "original" ROs from all that time ago. But even then, they've been changed A Lot, to the point where the two of them are completely different from what they used to be. Rhea was always a character (originally named Wish), who acted as the Best Friend/Guide for MC. She also completely changed to the point of being unrecognizable to the original. And Zoe was a random NPC who worked at the library. I took them, reworked them, and decided on these four as the love interests. Four was a perfectly manageable number, and BA had also changed a lot storywise that romance wasn't even the point anymore.

Of course, there clearly isn't four ROs LMAO

So, the Voice. They were also in the OG as the Villain controlling the Specters and manipulating your heart as a means to get whatever they were after. I'll be honest, I don't remember what they were originally after. But I've always liked villains whose connection to the hero is one where they dig their claws deep into them. It's how I got the idea of making them essentially 'haunt' MC. Then, the more I developed that, the more it just made sense for them to be an LI to me. The reason they're the only gender selectable one is because they're the one most reflective of MC (and the one who would change the least regardless of gender). And then that was it! We had five, I was done.

Which leads to Lars, I guess.

He ended up becoming a RO at the last minute, as in, a week before the launch of the blog last minute. He was kind of just this antagonist asshole whose primary job was to make sure you didn't do anything too stupid and who hated your guts. I'm going to be honest, I'm not that big of a fan of the asshole archetype, especially as a romance option. But then I got to chapter 5 in the outline of the story and it objectively just made sense. I can't say why because of spoilers, but I think I've mentioned all the ROs and MC are interconnected with each other and are meant to reflect certain aspects of each other in some way. With Lars, it would have felt off to me not to add him in, considering the type of character he'd grown into. So, with a sense of reluctance, I threw him in.

I think Lars is the funniest RO to me, because there was a point in time where he was the most popular on the blog, and I was like 'woah, him.' asldfakjldfjka. Over the past year, he's definitely grown on me in ways I haven't expected, and I think I almost find his awfulness endearing somehow. (To be honest, I think writing the scene of punching him in the face did wonders for my own perception of him).

As for the story changes, this clearly isn't set in a private boarding school ft teens. The original idea was just Persona 3 Portable all over again, because 13 year old me had a problem (I would proceed to replay the game over a dozen times over the years, so I still have a problem). And while I love the themes in P3P, I also feel like some of the things I wanted to write about just made a lot more sense with people within the college age range. I also decided to tie it in to a long standing world of mine, so that way I already had a solid basis of world building and lore. Placing it in what I dub the 'World of Fairytales' really anchored the story in my brain. I looked at all the other stories I'd written or developed that took place here, and I realized I'd yet to write one about death. And that's the focal point of BA:

It's a fairytale about death.

The Reception

I'm going to be honest, when I released BA I just expected it to get the same reception as anything else I'd written up to this point. I think when the demo dropped back in October 2023, I'd released two games, a game demo, and I think my novella and short story collection were out at the time. I'm terrible at marketing myself because I'd much rather vibe and make things than have to talk about it online, which is definitely part of the reason most of my work didn't even hit five hundred plays, save for one which had hit a thousand at that point. But you know, that does make it easy to keep making things when you don't feel like you have a bunch of eyes watching. (At least, for me. I know a lot of creatives feel the weight of loneliness of creation, especially when you pour so much into something only for no one to pick it up. I personally tend to release things on a whim though lol there's plenty of finished works I have laying around that I have no intention on sharing.)

Anyway, I thought Burning Academia was going to be much the same. So imagine my surprise when I post the intro post and I got eight hundred followers in a week.

My immediate thought was "I'm deleting the blog." After a year of making things no one paid attention to, eight hundred followers in a week for something was an overwhelming jump. At the time I'm writing this, we have apparently just crossed two thousand followers(???), which again, I was not expecting lol

I've been reading IFs for years now, dating back to about 2015. I was aware of the general community and vibes, although I wasn't fully in the community and just followed authors I liked. Still, I didn't realize how quick word gets around for a new IF. Especially when all I had was an intro post. Granted, I'd at least already had most of the prologue written and just needed to figure out Twine to code it in, so there was a sense of relief there that I wouldn't keep people waiting. But I did genuinely want to close up shop as quickly as I started.

Part of me is still a bit surprised I'm at where I'm at. I don't really care about numbers, be it mine or others, but I think at this point I'm closer to a mid sized author(?), which I can't comprehend. BA is more of a vibes story, with heavy themes that aren't for everyone. I also know there are certain aspects of BA that just aren't appealing to the overall IF community (it not really focusing much on romance, or the RO options being what they are, or just how bleak the first few chapters are).

I don't necessarily think it's like a niche idea, since it's just a fantasy dark academia, but I just assumed some of the details would make BA not noticed.

Anyway, clearly I'm normal about it now and my blog still exists. I do think if I knew where I'd land at, I might have waited longer to post everything, so I had a bit of backlog and more for people to play in the long run and it would have felt like a shorter wait on the player side. But also, in my defense, I did not expect 2024 to go the way it did.

What I wanted to achieve vs what I actually achieved

So, I wanted to have chapter 3 done before the end of 2024, and maybe even have chapter 4 started. It was a perfectly reasonable goal for me, in any other year where my body was better at being a body. I won't go into detail with health since I know it's a heavy topic for some, but I will briefly mention it since it was a major component to my creative output. Just skip the next paragraph if you don't feel like reading.

//

I got sick pretty much every month in 2024, with multiple of them being pretty bad infections. The second half of the year was a lot worse than the first half of the year, and that's why if it seems like everything slowed down after June/July, it's because of that. From November to now, I've been sick to varying degrees. It's why I did nothing in December because I spent it split between working still, the holidays, renewing various certifications for work, and trying to get some degree of rest between it all. My sister in law is a nurse, and she said I probably have an auto immune deficiency. Whether it's that or not, I'm going to get some tests done, and hopefully 2025 is a better year for me health wise!

//

Of course, I'm not upset with myself. Perhaps a little annoyed because I could have hit the goal I wanted if I hadn't been feeling awful for so much of the year, but I'm not annoyed with myself. Just the circumstances. I'll always be the type of person to take care of myself instead of forcing myself to do anything. Especially with something like this, which would just last to potential burn out.

So, I released 2 chapters of BA, a handful of the RO backstories, and a little short about MC's sister Marlowe. Including the unreleased chapter 3, I managed to write over 150k last year for BA. Which is a pretty solid number, honestly.

Depending on how life goes, I'll be aiming for up to chapter 4 this year. It'll also be a shorter(?) chapter than 3, or at least a little more manageable since chapter 3 just ended up having a decent chunk of branching. I won't give any estimates for chapter 3 since when I did, I missed all of them LMAO It'll release when it's ready, and I'll be chipping away at it during the times I feel alright.

Final Thoughts

This is already pretty long, so I'll bring it to a close here. If you read this far, thank you for listening to my yapping. And also just thank you to anyone whose played BA and decided to follow along for the ride!! I love BA a lot, and its both very fun and amazing and weird to see others enjoy it with me. The fact I've gotten so many asks, or fanart (please know if you drew fanart, it has been imprinted in my brain forever and also saved in a little folder on my desktop lol) is still a little surreal. So uh yeah, thanks for being here.

For my last trick, since you made it this far you can have an assortment of mindless doodles I have made of BA in questionable quality because I'm bad at photographing my art LOL

(Some of the few digital art doodles I haven't shown. Ft. mirrored Rooks and an unfinished comic page of Rhea)

The Rook pages

The scribbles ft Beck and Lars

The kinda mirrors ft Beck and Rhea

Aaaand that is all because I hit file limit (sorryyyy to Zoe I think I've already shared all the doodles of them I liked throughout the year sjsjsk)