#Leonard fiasco

[gorebonk]

Some more of my loser squad rogue designs hehe love them

[why-i-love-comics]

DC Horror Presents… #4 - "The Diamond That Steals Back" (2025)

written by Patton Oswalt & Jordan Blum art by Danny Earls & Jao Canola

[3lizab3t]

bro where do these losers keep coming from

[koreanriddler]

Does anyone else hate the design for The Eraser in Harley Quinn in Paradise? Why does he look like he was made in a webtoon boyfriend generator?

[dootplusone]

(OG post has Reblogs turned off. You can find it here!)

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(If the OP would prefer this post not link back to the OG post or is otherwise is not okay w/ this post in reference to theirs, please let me know in some form so I can delete/edit it as needed.)

Thinking. Abt this but with Bones. Like. Post-Tholian Web? Post-Mirror Mirror?

For AOS, could be after Into Darkness and/or Beyond.

A Bones who's just. So anxious. So stressed. So overwhelmed that it starts taking a toll on his health. Maybe he doesn't even realise - or maybe he does and tries his best to push through it until it knocks him on his ass. Kind of in the vein of "You don't actually know how tired you are until you stop. And then you just physically cannot start again." It becomes his new baseline, a problem that just brews and storms in the distance.

And he just carries on. And keeps going and going and going until one day he realises that 'Oh fuck, I'm not okay' and has about 5 seconds of warning before he straight up collapses, doesn't matter if it's on the bridge, in the madbay, on a planet - he's going down. (Maybe a repeat of Tholian Web where he just straight up faints into Spock's arms? Full whammy, why not)

Maybe it's a high-tension situation getting resolved that does it. The pure relief of it reminds him of how tired he is. How tired he's been for a while. His body sees that momentary rest and goes "More of that, please. And I'm not asking."

And he's so rendered by it that he doesn't grumble about being coddled like he normally would when he wakes up. He knows not to fuck with the medbay staff - they're just as firm as he is on recovery, and that's not by accident - and he knows that Spock and Kirk will be hovering, because they see any problem as something they, too, should shoulder the burden of.

...And because they're some of the most protective people in the damned universe. And that goes for pretty much all the people on board the Enterprise.

In some scenarios, it's just a case of letting his body and mind rest properly. In others, there's a lot more recovery involved than anyone initially expects. Luckily for him, he has a found family who are determined to be there with him at every step. It just takes a couple reminders, every once in a while.

[dustykneed]

for context: star trek into darkness (specifically, my take on the implications of bones doing what he had to do and the emotional fallout of those missing scenes) (not that ive seen it!! but ive read enough fic to know the gist of it LMAO) (can you believe this started as an impulse draw to see if i could use pastels to convey heavy emotions and now im writing a very very long headcanon in my notes app.)

...

Leonard goes and he plays god, and injects Jim with that godforsaken blood, and then there is nothing left to do but wait.

He sinks into the chair at his desk, and steeples his fingers together. It occurs to him that these circumstances are the sort that would drive any religious man to bow his head and clasp his hands together, like so, and pray.

--but he is a doctor, and he has never been religious, and he has a duty to do, and he has broken his oath, and there is blood on his hands and flecking his shirt.

Leonard sits very still at his desk and weeps, and he does not pray.

...

sorry to all of y'all who had to find out i was an angst goblin this way <///3 but basically the hc/rough fic is an extension of the angst potential of that one scene where jim wakes up and fixates on spock (and his lack of response towards bones is never addressed afterwards i think? not sure but it's an interesting premise imo)

brief summary: bones never gets closure from jim after he wakes up because jim and spock get together immediately after and it just slips their minds, so bones is stuck in "oh god jim's dying" mode and feels absolutely terrible, but the bridge crew helps a bit by being there for him to hang out with, but still bones does overwork while trying to work through the sense of wrongness of not being able to have his emotional needs met after the whole jim dying fiasco and feeling like his best friend has forgotten him. he admittedly makes good progress (by which i mean he's able to take really big overwhelming feelings and put them away well enough in his daily life to function relatively normally) but the crushing grief is always in the background. about a month or so after spirk gets together, spock accidentally brushes bones' arm and is absolutely slammed by a wave of unexpected exhaustion and emotional pain and is like ??????!!!????????? long story short he drags bones to jim and bones cries for the first time since jim "died" and it is immensely cathartic and then jim blurts out a confession because he has horrible timing and asks bones to join him and spock and obviously bones cries harder and spock is about to smack jim upside the head lmao (bones says its way too much to process and he needs time but hes not exactly opposed, and they all start spending more time together, and then eventually bones is like fuck it and asks for a kiss and they finally get together !!!!!!)

as a treat for reading all of my mildly insane word vomit y'all get a soft bittersweet aos mcspirk scribble<33

gotta love aos jim's majestic eyebrows and aos spock's general sort of >:[ expression!! really growin on me tbh

[midchelle]

Northern Songs & NEMS in 1969

I wrote this up to get my head around the business side of things surrounding the breakup and I thought I'd throw it up here for all you people who don't feel like wading through You Never Give Me Your Money/The Love You Make.

Brian had managed The Beatles via NEMS, which is to say that their contract was with NEMS and not Brian himself. The group didn't want to be managed by Clive Epstein and didn't care for Robert Stigwood (who had become partners with Brian, which the Beatles didn't learn till August '67) because he'd rejected them in '62. After the contract expired in September 1967, the group decided to manage themselves. NEMS was jointly managed by Clive Epstein and Robert Stigwood for a while until they split fairly amicably. Clive retained NEMS. The inheritance tax for the holding was due on March 31, 1969, and he did not have the money to pay it.

In early 1969, Clive informed The Beatles that he was looking to sell NEMS*. Paul asked the Eastmans for advice, who told him they should borrow money from EMI to buy NEMS outright. The reasoning being: after Brian's death, it came to light that NEMS was entitled to 25% of the record sales for the next nine years. Owning NEMS would mean the company could no longer claim commission from them. However, Allen Klein advised the group not to go ahead with the purchase, pointing out that the loan they took out from EMI would be difficult to repay.

Paul favoured the Eastmans as the group's managers, while the other three preferred Klein. The Eastmans had several things going against them:

They were Paul's brother and father-in-law and would therefore be biased in his favour.

They were more 'class-conscious' people, which means they owned Picassos and wore suits all the time. Paul was attracted to this kind of thing while John and George were repelled by it.

They made several tactical errors while dealing with Klein and the rest of the group.

When John Eastman, Klein and The Beatles all met for the first time to discuss the acquisition of NEMS, Eastman went in on Klein for all his crooked dealings (he had been accused of insider trading** with a company he owned and had been in trouble with the IRS for failing to file tax returns.) He must've expected Klein to fire back at him in the same fashion but, as per Peter Doggette's book, he 'calmly defused the row,' making Eastman look like a psycho and Klein a reasonable, victimised man. This basically only served to solidify the other three's (John's) support for Klein, but for the time being, they were going to try to work together: Klein was to produce a statement of The Beatles' financial situation, and the Eastmans were appointed legal advisors to Apple Corps.

The arrangement was doomed from the start because Klein wasn't exactly being cooperative with the Eastmans, sending them bundles of documents of no importance whatsoever. Things only got worse after Lee Eastman wrote Clive Epstein to suggest a meeting where they could discuss, among other things, the 'propriety' of the negotiations that Brian carried out with EMI on the group's behalf in '66. This incensed Clive, because what do you mean propriety? Are you calling my dead brother a crook? And he went off and sold Queenie Epstein's 70% stake in NEMS to a Leonard Richenberg of Triumph Investments.

As a reminder, NEMS took a 25% commission on The Beatles royalties. That company is now majority owned by Some Guy. A quarter of The Beatles' earnings are lining the pockets of Some Guy. This was a huge blow to the Eastmans. The Beatles told EMI that all their royalties (including NEMS' 25%) should be sent to their own bankers, but, confused, EMI threw up their hands and decided to withhold the money until they sorted out the issue.

We're up to about February/March 1969 now. Apple is still haemorrhaging money and The Beatles' main revenue source has been blocked off. And we haven't even gotten into the Northern Songs fiasco yet.

Note - pie charts NOT to scale!

Northern Songs went public in February 1965 to reduce its income tax burden and the 1,250,000 shares on offer sold out in sixty seconds. At the time of flotation, John, Paul, Dick James, and Charles Silver (partner of Dick James - no not that way) all had 15% stakes in the company. Dick James Music and NEMS both held 7.5% stakes, and George and Ringo each had 1.6% stakes. In June 1968, George got rid of his shares entirely which, like Ringo's, had by then whittled down to 0.8%.

The situation by 1969 was basically what you see above. As you all know, Dick James and Charles Silver sold their shares to ATV in March 1969, giving them 35% of the company and the majority stake. The Beatles and Co. could only cobble together 30%. But if they could get Consortium, a group that held a 14% stake in Northern Songs, to sell its shares to them, they could take back control of the company.

At the same time, relations within the group continued to deteriorate. The Eastmans advised Paul to not add his block of shares to John's as collateral for the loan they needed for their takeover bid and Klein offered his £750,000 worth of shares in MGM to make up for it. He also informed John that Paul had been buying more shares in Northern Songs. As things stood, John had 644,000 and Paul had 751,000.

While it was true that Paul had increased his standing in Northern Songs on advice of the Eastmans, he couldn't have bought much more than 1,000 extra shares. The real reason for the discrepancy was that part of John's stake, roughly 100,000 shares and 2% of the company in total, had been put aside for Cyn and Julian. Roughly the same distribution in shares had existed since at least 1966*** and Cyn had been allowed to retain the 2% after the divorce. But, if you take that fact out of the equation and just present the massive difference in their stakes and the fact that Paul had been buying more shares, it looks quite damning. After this meeting, John, George, and Ringo effectively banished the Eastmans from Apple.

Meanwhile, since The Beatles had already fulfilled their 1967 deal with EMI, Klein got to work on negotiating a new deal for the group with the blessings of all four Beatles.**** He also got permission from the group to go into Apple and start cutting redundancies. By the end of April, he had drawn up a three-year management contract for The Beatles to sign. The terms were:

ABKCO (company run by Allen and Betty Klein) is appointed exclusive business manager to Apple Corps on behalf of The Beatles and their companies

ABKCO recieves 20% of Apple's income before tax. The percentage would continue for any deals signed while the contract was in force, with a few exceptions. • He would not receive any percentage of The Beatles' royalties until he negotiates a new deal for the group. • He would only receive 20% of the increase royalty, not the full rate. • He could only claim 10% of the income generated by Apple Records

Apple would pay the expenses of Klein and any other ABKCO staff working on their behalf.

The four of them initially agreed to the deal. Loony Toons-type hijinks occurred when the group attempted to sign the contract. It was first brought to John. The version he signed had last minute clause added in by the group's advisors that made the document into a basis for further discussion instead of a binding deal. John showed off the signed contract to Klein, who wanted the clause removed. By this point, the guy who brought the contract to John, lawyer Peter Howard, was already on the way to George's house and discovered that he had left behind the document George needed to sign. George also wanted to phone Paul before he did, but Paul had changed his number and hadn't told anyone, so he couldn't reach him. The lawyer got George to sign a carbon copy, which was then brought to Ringo, then to John and Klein, who added their signatures.

The deal now had to be ratified by Apple's board of directors. When the Beatles later met, Paul was upset because the deal had been signed without him being notified and he thought Klein's percentage was too big. Klein told the board that ABKCO's insisted he got The Beatles' approval that day so there was no time for further negotiations.***** Paul wanted them to wait until his lawyers had drafted another agreement. However, only three directors were required to agree, so John, George, and Neil Aspinall went ahead and ratified the deal. Klein was officially the manager of John, George, and Ringo, but not Paul.

On a brighter note, the NEMS situation was finally resolved in July 1969. The arrangement was:

NEMS drops all claims of representing The Beatles.

The Beatles sell their 10% stake in NEMS.

NEMS was paid a lump sum of £750, 000 as compensation for all the money they might've made managing The Beatles up to 1972.

NEMS took 5% of The Beatles' royalties between 1972 and 1976 - the 5% of North American royalties (which comprised 75% of their global revenue) would come from Klein's commission.

Paul attempted to stage a weak protest against Klein's rule by threatening to pull out of the deal unless Klein agreed to not take any payments for negotiating the deal over the past five months. Klein confronted him at Abbey Road where he, George, and Ringo were working (John had crashed his car in Scotland) and called his bluff. Paul backed down; the deal was signed and the £1.3 million on hold from EMI was finally released.

A few months later, it looked like all the Beatles' business woes would soon be resolved: Consortium were willing to sell their shares. The Beatles sans George (missing because of Louise's brain tumour diagnosis, I assume) and Klein met on September 19 to discuss how the board of Northern Songs would look when they took control. Linda took photos to assure Consortium that The Beatles were all speaking with one voice. I assume these are the pictures:

John Eastman pushed for Paul to have the same number of votes as the other three combined, which baffled everyone - including Paul. However, it all turned out to be for nought when Consortium threw in their stake with ATV. Northern Songs was lost. The next day, the group reconvened to sign The Beatles' new contract with Capitol****** and John Lennon left The Beatles.

* Clive or someone had renamed NEMS Nemperor Holdings at this point, but I’m going to keep using NEMS because this is tedious enough without companies changing names.

** Insider trading is buying or selling a company's stock in accordance with information that is not publically available. For example:

My friends and I are betting on how many hot dogs my cousin David can eat within twenty minutes. Everyone else has to place bets based on guesses, but I know from growing up with him that Dave gets sick after eating seven hot dogs at once, and I bet accordingly.

*** Why didn't John know this? Aside from because he was paranoid, already suspicious of Paul and the Eastmans, and probably on a ridiculous cocktail of drugs, I think he might genuinely not have remembered. It's possible that his accountant called him at some point, said hey, do you want to put some shares aside for your family? And he just said yeah, went straight back to sleep, and it had slipped entirely from his mind by the time he woke up.

**** Per Klein, in the middle of negotiations John Eastman sent a message to Capitol saying that Klein does not represent Paul in any way, which was not true.

***** ABKCO was singlehandedly controlled by Allen Klein

****** A very lucrative deal. It gave them 25% of the wholesale price, a higher royalty rate than any other recording group.

[chrispineofficial]

i don’t love a lot of the phrasing going around in the posts about the leonard cohen biopic fiasco so i’m avoiding reblogging but please know i hope bradley cooper dies. badly.

[gorebonk]

Little watercolour The Eraser :]

[boricuacherry-blog]

Marvin was ingesting larger and larger quantities of cocaine, turning love into hate, purity into perversion, trust into jealousy. In spite of it all, he held out hope. "Once my man wins the crown," said Gaye, "everything's going to be all right." He was referring to his fighter, Andy Price, who, on September 28, 1979, in front of a national ABC TV audience, took on welterweight champion Sugar Ray Leonard.

Marvin had Big John drive Mother, Marvin III, and him to Las Vegas on the bus. Diana Ross was headlining at Caesar's Palace, the same locale as the fight. Berry Gordy flew in for the festivities. Gaye viewed the proceedings as a moment of personal triumph; this was his comeback.

"I'd trained two other fighters," the singer said, his left eye still puffy from the cop's punch on the beach, "and they both got whipped bad. Each time I'd put my heart into them - they were really me up there fighting - but now I was sure that with Andy I'd found a winner." The night before the bout, Marvin and Mother attended Diana's show, which was taped for a TV special. Ross introduced Marvin and Mrs. Gay and, during the audience sing-along section of 'Reach Out and Touch,' Diana asked Marvin to croon a couple of lines. He did so reluctantly. "Actually," he told me later, "I was dying for her to ask me on stage and do a duet on 'All for One,' my all-time favorite Ashford and Simpson song. But Diana's funny about sharing the spotlight, especially with me." Considering the trouble they had recording duets, Diana had good reason to be cautious with Marvin.

Minutes before the fight the next night, Howard Cosell told a nationwide audience that expectations for Marvin Gaye's fighter were high. This could be the surprise upset of Sugar Ray's otherwise remarkable career. Marvin was feeling anxious, confident but concerned about sitting in the front row next to Berry, an ex-boxer who had proven himself in the ring, and Diana, a fight fan herself - they, the very people, who needed to know that Marvin Gaye was still a champ.

Beyond ego, it was also a question of money. "If Price could win," said Gaye, "I was looking at millions of dollars in future revenues. With one blow, I could win the world's respect and clean up my whole financial mess. People said I couldn't do it; well, that night I was going to show them I could. This was going to be my knock-out punch."

The punch came, but from Sugar Ray, not Price. "Andy was lost out there," said Dave Simmons, who as Marvin's guest, sat next to Price's mother during the fight. "All the lights and glitter and glamour of Vegas got to him. He was in shock. Sugar came out there and hit him and hit him and hit him and kept hitting him until he crumbled." Leonard made it look easy, knocking out Price in two minutes and fifty-four seconds in the first round. Marvin absorbed every last punishing punch. He was devastated, depressed beyond hope. The $40,000 purse for Price - as 0pposed to Sugar Ray's $300,000 - didn't come close to solving Marvin's financial problems. It was hardly compensation for the blow to his ego. In the midst of this mood, he had to perform. He had promised to sing before the main event - the Ernie Shavers-Larry Holmes heavyweight championship fight - which followed Leonard-Price. On national television, his dress shirt open at the collar, his tie pulled down, his sloped eyes half-closed and filled with disappointment and hurt, he delivered a soul-searching rendition of the national anthem, turning a hymn of hope into a cry of despair.

Cosell complimented Marvin's pipes, but no praise could mitigate Gaye's blues. His best bet had been beaten down. This was to be the turning point, the miracle. Instead, in Marvin's mind he had experienced the most visible and spectacular fiasco of his public life. The final blow, though, didn't come from a boxer, but from a singer. "Jan ran off with Teddy Pendergrass," Marvin told me. "I set myself up for it, just like I set myself up for getting beat by Sugar Ray. But I didn't realize what it would do to me. I couldn't take it. I became sick, seriously sick. This was supposed to be the end of a long, bad period, but it was just the beginning."

-David Ritz

[3lizab3t]

✏️ he’s still my dearest most irrelevant silly ✏️

[blue-opossum]

Dreams as Delusions: Another King Street Fallacy

        Dreams as Delusions: Another King Street Fallacy

        Wednesday morning, 17 April 2024

        My King Street dreams have had an incredible variation of astounding falsehoods regarding the natural virtual amnesia of the dream state (to prevent associations with waking life to avoid memory corruption). I last saw the King Street house in 1994 (though I had not lived there that year).

        In this one, I have a current real-world recall of my family but not the recollection that they never lived in America. In this dream, I also do not recall, at any point, my former landlady being deceased.

        Although I recall my former landlady, I do not have a viable recollection of my friend Leonard living here as in similar dreams.

        An unusual scenario unfolds with a security guard entering "my" second-floor room where I lived in real life years ago (the middle room of the east side of the mansion). He says I can no longer live here because I owe rent. Even so, I explain how Zsuzsanna and our children also live in the house (though down the hall). Zsuzsanna can pay their rent because she works in La Crosse. This aspect seems to be justification for me living here even though she and our children live in different rooms, that is, that the rent equates to being for all rooms, not just one. So, she would be paying the same rent with or without me living in “my” room or our older son and daughter in theirs.

        Supposedly, my landlady had hired the security guard but did not tell him to kick me out. I see her for a short time in the outcome.

        This dream had a completely different set of false associations and false recollections than my later dream - "Another Amnesic King Street Fiasco" on 19 April 2024. The only similar part of the two narratives implies that I should not be living in the King Street mansion. This factor is true (as I have lived in Australia since February 1994), but I have also had dreams without this attribute. Ultimately, it is a factor in my depth of sleep and dreaming mode.

        Which memory patterns are active (though always wrong in detail) and which are missing (which is often most of them), has incredible variation from dream to dream, even in the same sleep cycle.

        Dreams are as wrong as possible (sans transpersonal liminal space - which is technically not originating from the dream state) to an extent to which I have always been amazed, even in high levels of lucidness. The loss of real-world memories and cognizance has presented even in light sleep, but not in every dream.

        This dream had no vivification factor regarding my otherwise predictable vestibular response to R.E.M. atonia with that incredibly realistic but imaginary physical essence. In this dream, protoconsciousness was a type of formal authority, but this attribute of protoconsciousness has (to my memory) not appeared in any of the thousands of previous phony King Street narratives - not in this specific way.

[izzysarchivedblogs]

[ tiles ] one muse finds the other sitting on the floor and joins them.

@crisispider // star trek verse, but clint barton is still unhinged about john walker

DRY DOCK ⸻ The Enterprise was is need of repairs, and while they were stationed there was SOMETHING he hadn't been listening all that much as it would not apply to him, being a rank below WHATEVER. All he knew was that he would be at the helm while work was being done on the ship assisting with that.

WORKING ⸻ Long and draining day, that doesn't feel like it was coming to an end until the senior officers are back. He should be relieved soon, possibly within in the next two hour or three hours. THE PROBLEM THAT ARISES is that as more bodies enter the bridge there's additional voice mixed in with the nebulous sound coming from somewhere in the room.

IT'S A VOICE THAT HE WOULD RECOGNIZE ANYWHERE.

Vision getting dark, lungs losing all their air, and he vaguely remembers SOMETHING TIGHT AND CRUSHING AROUND HIS THROAT. Clint's reaching a hand up to his neck to try to pull at invisible hand. . . . That can't be right, must be a different person and similar voice.

The voice talks again, LAUGHS int good humor to something THE CAPTAIN has said. HE CAN'T BE THAT FUNNY. ⸻ Just a similar sounding voice is enough to IRK HIM TO HIGH HELL AND BACK. His hearing wasn't ever good anyways, so he is trying to give the benefit of the doubt but IT TALKS AGAIN.

His head turn to see ⸻ HIS VISION GOES RED. . . . Up on his feet in no time flat, there is no logic or reason. No preamble or warning, blue eyes would recognize that face anywhere, that voice anywhere. . . . HIS FIST MAKES CONTACT WITH JOHN WALKER'S JAW BEFORE ANYONE HAS ANYTIME TO REACT.

Full force thrown into the punch, and the everyone on the bridge is an uproar. CLINT KNOWS WHAT HE DID ⸻ A hand goes up, than he's ducking on pure instinct to avoid being grabbed.

❝ DON'T ⸻ I FUCKING KNOW ! ⸻ I'M OUT! ⸻ SULU, I'LL COVER DOUBLE LATER! ❞ He knows the trouble he was in, but that had felt good and gratifying to punch of the son of the bitch. Clint knew the second he was any sort of disorderly he'd be thrown out and ordered off.

He's a STORM OF FURY, pure filtered rage and he makes for a menace down the halls. . . . and DAMMIT, HE WANTS A DRINK. It's the first time that he has seen JOHN WALKER THE FUCKING DICK since his days at the Academy.

IT IS STILL FRESH IN HIS MIND ⸻ THE MAN ALMOST KILLS HIM (and he was sure he had been trying) and Clint ends up the more in trouble for the whole FIASCO as it got called? IT BOILS BILE IN STOMACH.

He ends up in his shared quarters with Peter, and the RAGE SEES RED IN HIS EYES. Clint's destruction, more destructive that he had been at meeting face-to-face with his attempted murderer again (one of a few in his life ⸻ see he did not need the vastness of space insanity and danger when his life on earth had been plenty).

LEONARD'S CABINET WAS EASY TO ACCESS ⸻ The urge is too strong, but he swallows it down. His throat dry. TOO DRY. Clint was wanting, needing, jonesing, just one drink, but he can't drink. . . .

No alcohol to drown the violence, so their quarters get wrecked. Pillows through, fist to things , and his hand hurts. Cut on something. ALL THAT ANGER AND THE PAIN. Least he didn't drink, took it somewhere safe.

Eventually it does subside, and he just sits on the floor. STEWING BITTERLY. What the hell was he doing aboard and how did he get rid of him? Clint's propped his arms up on his knees and he tries to breathe, wait out of the PANIC that came up as well.

His life had already been a wreck and John Walker had been the number one cause he almost didn't make it through the Academy, almost wasn't alive. That feeling doesn't simply go away.

Ignores about any and all comms to himself, until Peter comes in and Clint's gone time blind in his uproar of emotions. THIS WAS BAD FUCKING NEWS. He knew he needed to control himself better, and that this was going to cause him a lot of noise and trouble.

PETER'S FACE HURTS HIS HEART ⸻ That look of worry and panic on his features, and Peter knows only that John Walker had been a goddamn shit-stain on his life, almost got him kicked out multiple times but he didn't say a damn thing about being being choked out by him.

❝ I'm sorry for all the trouble I cause. ❞ He tells him, and he moves as Peter comes to crouch next to him to just lean into him, rest his head into his shoulder and sigh. WORST DAY. And he's not looking forward to explaining himself and not being believed again.

[regina-bithyniae]

Sort of yes, but there has also been a pretty steady drumbeat of bad news through the last years, with submarines sailing into underwater mountains, a collision or two, an important ship nearly burning down while in dock, multiple procurement fiascos (including the ship in question above!) and insufficient funding to pursue next-generation weapons. And the Fat Leonard affair.

The USN would be the leading service in a future war with China, and therefore is the main deterrent, so it's very disturbing to see constant signs of decline.

[bardockarts]

I have a thing for really obscure / loser-adjacent villains, so I am more than happy to give this little guy some love

[skullman2033]

A while back i had an idea about a DC version of the superior foes of spiderman about a bunch of Z-list gotham rogues teaming up to be more of a threat and becoming a found family of misfits, and i finally pushed myself to make summaries of the cast. Thanks @roolsilver for encouraging and helping with the idea

They’re called Z-List and they’re comprised of

Mary Louise Dahl. AKA Baby Doll. Former Child Actress diagnosed with Systemic Hypoplasia, making her have the appearance of an 8-10 year old even though she’s in her early thirties. Has suffered Two psychotic breaks involving her fallen stardom and treatment due to her condition but is now a sane if somewhat temperamental individual . Possesses keen planning skills and owns an apartment complex that she rents out as safehouses for criminals. Also dabbles as a voice actor.

Mitchell Mayo AKA (rather Begrudgingly) Condiment King. Contract killer that specializes in killing people via poisoned foods after salvaging a botched hit by drowning a target in hot sauce. Considers himself cursed with what criminal underworld calls “The Gothams”. Described as “When the stars align so terribly perfect that your entire life seems to point to you being a supervillain” often seen wearing a pickle Green Beanie and black Lennon shades. Also a professional food critic

Leonard “Lenny” Fiasco AKA Eraser. A perfectionist with obsessive compulsive disorder, Lenny grew up heavily bullied by his peers for constantly deliberating over small mistakes in his work to the point that he carried several erasers everywhere he went. Eventually Lenny would fall into crime and become a cleaner. Offering to remove evidence from criminal escapades for 20% of the take using a specialized helmet and pair of gloves inspired by his beloved erasers. He dresses like a goddamn number 2 pencil.

Drury Walker. AKA Cameron Van Cleer. AAKA Killer Moth. Devoted and loving single father to teenager/Spoiled Brat/social media “Villaingilante” Katherine “Kitten” Walker, Alias Pink X. Former long suffering Firefly henchman, and all around blundering criminal oaf. Still has a knack for invention (he invented most of his own gear. Including functioning wings. ) and an unintentional encounter with the occult giving him a “Were-moth” form whenever he’s under extreme stress.

And finally Delbert Billings Kieth Sherwood. AKA Spellbinder. Spellbinder WOULD find immense Success as one of the many villains to Employ mind control. If it werent for a few things. thing. He still has his morals, is emotionally open, and REALLY doesnt want the stigma that comes with the common things you associate with Mind control villains. Still, provided he isnt handicapped by his fear of being seen as a super-Creep he can be quite effective. Armed with custom made projectors in his gloves, mask, and a collection of orange and black spiral eye themed drones. This former school counselor (again, we must restate, he is NOT A CREEP.) is a formidable member of the team, though he often delegates himself to being the moral and emotional core of the group. He also hates teen titans villain Mad Mod. Like, he really. Really. Really hates Mad Mod. So much.

Other characters Include Kite-Man(hell yeah.) AKA Charles Brown. Who used to be a part of the friend group. But Semi-Ditched them when a Clerical Error put him into the Suicide Squad.

Harley Quinn, (because of course.) Big time Villain turned Vigilante (of which almost no one blames her. Nor holds any ill will.) who, while not part of the team is still friendly to them, because Harley is everyones friend TBH.

And really, any other Dc characters i think would be cool for this.