#and Luke is from 2004 or 2005

[haystarlight]

Okay but if the show takes place in 2024 then, depending on when he was born, Grover might've been a smol baby goat during 9/11

You guys think one of the Gods caused 9/11 in this universe or

[david-talks-sw]

hey david! Do you have any George quotes regarding the final Vader vs Obi wan fight? Like did obi wan deliberately throw that fight and let vader kill him or did vader win the duel and obi wan did the Force ghost thing as a last resort?

Here's the quotes I could find that are relevant to the subject:

"A particular case is the confrontation between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. You know there's something, some relationship they have to each other, 'cause they talk about meeting again ‘and now I'm going to get you’ and all this kind of stuff."

"So there's some kind of old battle going on that we don't know anything about that works amazingly well considering that all it is, is ultimately this one scene between him and Tarkin where he says, “He's here. He's come for me. And it's our destinies to meet up again. And I'm gonna handle this myself. I have to."

"This confrontation with Obi-Wan and Vader— it works just as a confrontation between the good guy and the bad guy. I mean, he’s— Obi-Wan's, at this point, the strongest good guy. He’s the one that has the most knowledge— the father figure that has taken on Luke. Then you have the bad father figure who is the evil father."

"And the subtext of this, which is that this is the culmination of a larger issue… has never really played, I think, for people. It's really just the confrontation between bad and good. Then the surprise at the end of this, is that: Vader doesn't kill him… but that he's able to join the Force, and by being one with the Force, influence things in a more powerful way than he can just being a Jedi." - A New Hope, Commentary Track, Special Edition DVD, 2004

"When he loses Ben, [Luke] freaks out. He’s depressed and all the things that you would be. But Ben has put that idea in him that things happen naturally and there’s also this other thing that’s never explained, which is that he allowed himself to be killed. He didn’t really die. He disappeared. There’s more to this than just a death. Later on in the movie, Luke hears Ben say, “Use the Force!” It mitigates that loss a little bit, because he knows Ben’s somewhere and that something’s going on." - The Star Wars Archives: 1977-1983, 2018

So there you have it.

In a destined confrontation between good and evil, good triumphs not by defeating evil but by ascending and growing beyond it.

So it feels to me that it's a "when in Rome" kind of decision on Obi-Wan's part, wherein he realizes he won't win this fight, and so he decides to make his end meaningful, so that he can show Luke that death is not the end of the journey... he's joining the Force.

Now, if we're talking power-scaling...

... you could argue that Ben might have put up more of a fight, had it been necessary.

George acknowledges that Ben's an old man when explaining the more dynamic fights in the Prequels... but back in the early days, he ranked him as more powerful than Vader/equal to the Emperor.

"Maybe we should set up some kind of levels of achievement. Ben can say that Luke is now a level 2 and Vader is a 4; ‘‘I was a 6 and the Emperor is a 6, and he’s on his way to becoming a 10, which will be a force so powerful in the universe that nothing can stop him. You must stop the Emperor before he achieves the level 10.’’" - Story converence, 1977, as transcribed in The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, 2010

"[Vader] ended up losing his arms and a leg and became partly a robot. So a lot of his ability to use the Force, a lot of his powers, are curbed at this point, because, as a living form, there’s not that much of him left. So his ability to be twice as good as the Emperor disappeared, and now he’s maybe 20 percent less than the Emperor. So that isn’t what the Emperor had in mind." - Vanity Fair, 2005

Now, the first one is an old quote from the development of Empire Strikes Back, when the story was very different; it's take it or leave it, if you ask me. Power-scaling is invented to justify storytelling, so if the story changes, it's not guaranteed the power-scale remains.

But if you're going by "everything Lucas said is canon!" rules then you could make the argument that, in terms of power...

If Ben = Emperor and Emperor > Vader then Ben > Vader.

And thus can argue that Ben might've beaten Vader if this confrontation was/turned into more of a Force-based contest than a physical one.

[irish-dress-history]

Irish dress history sources online:

A list of sources for Irish dress history research that free to access on the internet:

Primary and period sources:

Text Sources:

Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT): a database of historical texts from or about Ireland. Most have both their original text and, where applicable, an English translation. Authors include: Francisco de Cuellar, Luke Gernon, John Dymmok, Thomas Gainsford, Fynes Moryson, Edmund Spenser, Laurent Vital, Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn

Images:

The Edwin Rae Collection: A collection of photographs of Irish carvings dating 1300-1600 taken by art historian Edwin Rae in the mid-20th c. Includes tomb effigies and other figural art.

National Library of Ireland: Has a nice collection of 18th-20th c. Irish art and photographs. Search their catalog or browse their flickr.

Irish Script on Screen: A collection of scans of medieval Irish manuscripts, including The Book of Ballymote.

The Book of Kells: Scans of the whole thing.

The Image of Irelande, with a Discoverie of Woodkarne by John Derricke published 1581. A piece of anti-Irish propaganda that should be used with caution. Illustrations. Complete text.

Secondary sources:

Irish History from Contemporary Sources (1509-1610) by Constantia Maxwell published 1923. Contains a nice collection of primary source quotes, but it sometimes modernizes the 16th c. English in ways that are detrimental to the accuracy, like changing 'cote' to 'coat'. The original text for many of them can be found on CELT, archive.org, or google books.

An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish By Joseph Cooper Walker published 1788. Makes admirable use of primary sources, but because of Walker's assumption that Irish dress didn't change for the entirety of the Middle Ages, it is significantly flawed in a lot of its conclusions. Mostly only useful now for historiography. I discussed the images in this book here.

Chapter 18: Dress and Personal Adornment from A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland by P. W. Joyce published 1906. Suffers from similar problems to An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and Modern Irish.

Consumption and Material Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland Susan Flavin's 2011 doctoral thesis. A valuable source on the kinds of materials that were available in 16th c Ireland.

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy Volumes 1 and 2 by William Wilde, published 1863. Obviously outdated, and some of Wilde's conclusions are wrong, because archaeologists didn't know how to date things in the 19th century, but his descriptions of the individual artifacts are worthwhile. Frustratingly, this is still the best catalog available to the public for the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology. Idk why the NMI doesn't have an online catalog, a lot museums do nowadays.

Volume I: Articles of stone, earthen, vegetable and animal materials; and of copper and bronze

Volume 2: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Antiquities of Gold in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy

A Horsehair Woven Band from County Antrim, Ireland: Clues to the Past from a Later Bronze Age Masterwork by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 1998

Jewellery, art and symbolism in Medieval Irish society by Mary Deevy in Art and Symbolism in Medieval Europe- Papers of the 'Medieval Europe Brugge 1997' Conference (page 77 of PDF)

Looking the part: dress and civic status and ethnicity in early-modern Ireland by Brid McGrath 2018

Irish Mantles, English Nationalism: Apparel and National Identity in Early Modern English and Irish Texts by John R Ziegler 2013

Dress and ornament in early medieval Ireland - exploring the evidence by Maureen Doyle 2014

Dress and accessories in the early Irish tale, ‘The Wooing of Becfhola’ by Niamh Whitfield 2006

A tenth century cloth from Bogstown Co. Meath by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett 2004

Tertiary Sources:

Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia edited by Sean Duffy published 2005

Re-Examining the Evidence: A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress from 750 to 900 CE by Alexandra McConnell

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Luke Mullins at Politico:

FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump.

“We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon. “It’s effective immediately.” FreedomWorks’ board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to dissolve the organization, Brandon said. Wednesday will be the last workday for the group’s roughly 25 employees, though staffers will continue to receive paychecks and health care benefits for the next few months. The development brings to a close a period of turmoil for the organization. FreedomWorks laid off 40 percent of its staff in March of 2023, and as a result of a drop in fundraising, its total revenue has declined by roughly half, to about $8 million, since 2022, Brandon said. In an exclusive interview with POLITICO Magazine, Brandon said the decision to shut down was driven by the ideological upheaval of the Trump era.

After Trump took control of the conservative movement, Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt. “A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist,” Brandon said. “So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted.” This same split was creating headaches in other parts of the organization as well. “Our staff became divided into MAGA and Never Trump factions,” Brandon said in an internal document reviewed by POLITICO Magazine. It also impacted fundraising. [...]

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine last September, an ex-FreedomWorks employee claimed that the organization under Brandon’s leadership had turned its back on its values while Trump was in office; during this period, for example, the organization issued tweets spreading election conspiracies and deflecting criticism of the Florida legislation that came to be known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. “He let a bunch of right-wing nutjobs turn FreedomWorks into a MAGA mouthpiece,” the former FreedomWorks staffer said.

Brandon said he “did my best to balance the two competing ideologies.” In the midst of this turmoil, FreedomWorks launched an effort last fall to rebrand itself as a more centrist organization, one that could target the independent voters that its leaders believe would be more receptive to libertarian ideals. But the effort failed to get traction, Brandon said, largely because the independent voters viewed FreedomWorks as a right-wing group. As a result, Brandon and the board began discussing the possibility of shutting down FreedomWorks altogether. “This has been my life for so long and to turn the lights off, it’s a real emotional thing,” said Brandon, who joined FreedomWorks in 2005 and has been president for about a decade. “The problem is that it’s just not the best vehicle for our [libertarian] principles and values set.” FreedomWorks, which was founded in 1984, grew out of the Koch-funded group Citizens for Sound Economy. FreedomWorks split apart from the Koch political network in 2004.

Right-wing libertarian-flavored organization FreedomWorks closes it doors. The organization rose to stardom during the Tea Party era and faded as Trumpism took over the party.

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Bengiyo's Queer Cinema Syllabus

Not to sound repetitive but, I had a busy couple weeks, but finally had a second to return to @bengiyo’s queer cinema syllabus. I am currently working my way through Unit 4: Heartbreak Alley, the totally light-hearted, definitely not agonizing section of the syllabus where I get to watch countless acts of violence be committed against queer people. Thank fuck I have Lesbians waiting for me at the end of this unit. The films in Unit 4 are: Bent (1997), Strange Fruit (2004),Boys Don’t Cry (1999), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Parting Glances (1986), Philadelphia (1993), The Living End (1992), Holding the Man (2015), Jeffery (1995), and Boys on the Side (1995).

Today I will be talking about

The Living End (1992) dir. Gregg Akari

Summary: Luke is a gay hustler. Jon is a movie critic. Both are HIV positive. They go on a hedonistic, dangerous journey, their motto "Fuck the world".

Content Warning: gun violence, sexual assault, suicidality, self harm, homophobia

Cast:

Mike Dytri as Luke

Craig Gilmore as Jon

___

If there is one thing I feel confident in saying about The Living End, it’s that it is very very very good at visual storytelling. Even though Luke gives the thesis statement near the end of the movie (“It’s living inside me, but I can’t see it. Can you? This just looks like regular boring old blood to me.”), I don’t even know that it is necessary because the imagery has been so strong up through that point that I picked up on the pattern Gregg Akari was giving immediately. 

My main focus when watching this film ended up being all of the symbolism that the production crew put in to the set, the wardrobe, the makeup. Blood is the name of the game. Violence is the name of the game. Red is the name of the game. When we start the film we meet Jon, who has just been diagnosed with AIDS and Luke who seems to have had his diagnosis for a while. And it becomes clear very quickly that they are on two opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to their relationship with AIDS and their relationship with life. 

The first thing we get in the film is the sound of spray paint over a black screen. When we cut to the opening scene, we see Luke spray painting Fuck the World with red spray paint, in a shirt that is covered in red. We see him with a cigarette in his mouth, we see him chugging whiskey, music blasting through his headsets. When we cut to Jon there is silence, he turns his car on, he drives away, and we see the Choose Death bumper sticker on the back of his car. His opening monologue is like any other early 90’s movie, “Journal entry of April 13th. Day like any other. The first day of the rest of my life.” Except that Jon’s journal entry ends with his AIDS diagnosis. 

I kind of see this as Jon and Luke’s approaches to the world. Jon trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, status quo, to fit in to society as much as possible whereas Luke is going against society’s grain (and he literally says as much not too long after this when he graffiti’s the words I hate society on a wall). What I found so interesting about this film was these constant reminders of death that just floated around the scenery, the structure of the film. Jon says “death is weird” and immediately after that we hear a line from the song on the radio that says “I want to go to hell” 

We see Luke hitch a ride with two women, one who just is constantly talking about his dick, and giving off very creepy vibes. We establish immediately where Luke stands in his relationship to life and living when these women pull a gun on him and hold it straight to his face, and he looks…thoroughly unimpressed, bored even. There is not an ounce of fear in his face whatsoever, because he has already accepted that his AIDS diagnosis means he will die. So what if it happens a little bit faster than anticipated? Luke doesn’t give a fuck. 

Luke ends up driving away with this stolen red car and this gun, gets a flat tire, and hitches a ride with a man who wants to fuck him. Luke is then witness to a murder, and he is splattered with blood. And that is where things started to become striking for me. Because we get a close up of the murdered man’s arm, with blood running down it. We see a dog licking blood off the arm, we see Luke with blood on him. Blood borne pathogen prevention would say to treat all blood like it has something that can infect you. But what do we assume here? 

I know that for me, I defaulted to the assumption that this man’s blood did not have any infectious pathogen in it. I know I made that assumption for all of the blood we see in the film, with two notable exceptions. Within fifteen minutes of the film, Luke has had two women confess to committing at least two brutal murders, then watched a man be murdered himself. And when you’d think the night would be over, he gets threatened with a violent beating by three men with baseball bats looking for a faggot to bludgeon. 

And this is where things start to unravel, because Luke is dying, right? He knows he is dying, he doesn’t know where, he doesn’t know when, but in his mind he has literally nothing to lose. And so there is no going quietly in to that good night for him. He shoots all three men to death with the gun he stole from the women who wanted to kill him. We get a closeup of blood spatter across a white t-shirt that reads Sex, Lies, and Videotape. 

When Luke runs away from the scene, in to Jon’s car, and eventually in to Jon’s apartment, we get to see all these other little looming reminders of death that to me function similarly to the way that the backing track in Parting Glances functioned. Luke opens a closet door in Jon’s apartment and the first thing we see is a plastic skeleton hanging from the door. A literal skeleton in the closet. I don’t have the energy to type out the multiple metaphors that I can draw from that imagery, but trust there actually are multiple. 

Death looms. Jon has a movie poster on his wall called My Degeneration. Death looms. Jon says he is writing an article about “the death…

…of cinema” 

Death looms. Luke complains about how the past generation got to have all the fun, and our generation has to deal with the consequences. I am content and yet saddened by the fact that that seems to be the plight of many generations. They fucked up, we are paying the price. We are seeing that right now…

Anyway! Death looms. A man outside a store tells Jon and Luke he will kill them, tells them AIDS stands for Adios, Idiot Dick Suckers. They are all standing in front of a storefront with flames spray painted up the side. Jon, who has just been diagnosed with AIDS and is reckoning with what happens when you a poor decision just wants to keep everything calm. This dude is harassing them, but he isn’t actually a physical threat. He’s talking a big game, but he will not follow through. Luke however is going to die. We don’t know much about Luke before his AIDS diagnosis, but he sure as shit is firmly rooted in the “fuck the consequences, I’m dying anyway” camp. Luke beats that man to death. 

Jon, rightfully, freaks out and send Luke off. Jon and Darcy go out for a meal, with a piece of burnt toast above them the whole time. Darcy talks to her partner in their kitchen, with a cross-sectional sculpture of a rooster behind her, all it’s internal organs on display. Jon wakes up to Luke covered, once again, in blood and holding the pistol in his mouth. Luke has killed a cop, Luke convinces Jon to go on the run with him. In Jon’s car. With the Choose Death sticker on the back. 

Luke and Jon fuck a lot. They fuck in the back of the car, they fuck in the motel, they fuck on the road. And they don’t have to be careful if they don’t want to, because they are both positive. Luke lays on the trunk of the car with a cross necklace in one hand and a gun in the other.  What a beautiful visual metaphor. They talk about how they are animals, we cut to a video of surgery, the internal organs on display. All the insides visible. If Luke is not shirtless, he is wearing something with red in it. His t-shirts have red in them, his swim trunks have red in them. The conversations he has with Jon have red in them, behind them on the wall in posters, in graffiti, in signage. 

Just all these constant, little reminders of blood, of AIDS, of death. Luke and Jon talk about death: 

“I hear death is a lot like coming. The same chemicals get released in the bloodstream.” I am reminded that orgasms can be referred to as ‘the little death.’ It makes sense why Jon and Luke are fucking so much in this movie. Things continue to spiral, Jon continues to lose his grip on the situation, Luke continues to act as reckless as he wants to, he shoots that gun as freely as he wants to. He cuts himself when he wants to, and we see the blood on his wrist. And it is the first time I know for a fact the blood is infectious. 

Jon wants to go home. Luke does not want Jon to go home. Luke wants to drag Jon down with him. And he does literally drag him after pistol whipping him in the forehead, and making him bleed. Once again, Luke is covered in blood. This blood also infectious. Luke drags an unconscious Jon somewhere in the sand. Luke puts the gun in his own mouth and fucks Jon in what I personally would consider sexual assault, but could be a contentious consensual endeavor. Luke pulls the trigger and the gun does not go off. No death for Luke today, and so we shall not know when death will come. 

When all is said and done, Jon punches Luke in the face and walks away. But just as Luke walked away from the man who said he would kill them, the one who had a shitty little standin for the acronym AIDS and then returned after a moment, Jon returns to Luke’s side after a moment. Jon and Luke sit next to each other, facing opposite directions. Something else I consider a pretty decent visual metaphor for how Jon and Luke view the world after their diagnoses. 

They sit and they do not watch the sunset over the water. We fade to black with the sound of the waves paralleling the sound of the spray paint. Maybe Jon and Luke will die, maybe they will live. We will never know, because we leave them there on the beach, with the sunset. 

Favorite Moment 

My favorite moment is not in the film itself but at the end of the credits. A dedication of The Living End from Gregg Akari: 

Dedicated to craig lee (1954-1991) and the hundreds of thousands who’ve died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big white house full of republican fuckheads

Gregg clearly had a mission and a message with this film. I think it is something truly beautiful to dedicate a piece of yourself, work that is hard, work that is intentional, to someone you love. Even if they aren’t around to see it. I think there is something too in the fight Luke had, to give immediate and deadly consequences to the people who tried to hurt him, who wanted him dead, who harassed him and the man he was falling in love with. We try to fight back against oppression with peace, but sometimes it is violence that we need, and it is almost always violence that we are met with from those who want to silence us. 

Favorite Quote

“It’s living inside me, but I can’t see it. Can you? This just looks like regular boring old blood to me. What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen somebody bleed before?”

It’s the central theme of the movie, in my opinion and I think having Luke say this, while he is actively bleeding, while he is spiraling towards the end of whatever rope he is clinging to is vitally important to making sure the audience understands what it is that is driving Luke to act the way he is acting. Luke killed at least five people, that reckless, violent, wild anger needs to be contextualized around the point that Luke is grieving his life. The life he had, the life he could have had, the life he can no longer plan too far ahead for. 

Score 

I think I am going to give this a

7.5/10 

I think Gregg Akari had a very clear vision, I think he did what he came here to do with this film and yet it was hard for me to get too in to. The emotional impact wasn’t there for me, I didn’t connect well to the characters, I was sometimes confused about what was happening or what had happened. The film wasn’t bad, but there wasn’t any scene memorable enough for me to pull out as a favorite. It was however very fun for the technical theater/minute detail oriented parts of my brain to come out of hibernation and analyze the set dressing for film commentary. 

[asunsetgrace16]

☾ ◇ ｊｅｎｎａ ｍａｄｄｅｎ ‣ 𝒸𝒽𝒶𝓇𝒶𝒸𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝓅𝓇𝑜𝒻𝒾𝓁𝑒

au masterlist⎥ navigation

[𝟶𝟷] ___ 𝙱𝙰𝚂𝙸𝙲𝚂

Name(s): Jenna Amber Madden

Nickname(s): Jen, Jennie, Jens

Age: 19

Birthday: September 5, 2005

Birthplace: Rosetown, Saskatchewan

Allergies: rabbits, dust, and pollen

Conditions/Illnesses: none

Occupation: works at Sephora part-time, will be a Chemical engineer after university

Education: high school diploma, half-done her BSc of Physics

Current Residence: Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Hobbies: sudoku puzzles, crosswords, playing guitar and piano

Pets: Lily - German Shephard/Husky cross, several barn cats; Momo and Juice are the deck/house cats

Sports: volleyball in high school, plays in a rec league now, running

Ethnicity: German, Ukrainian, British

Nationality: Canadian

[𝟶𝟸]  ___  𝙰𝙿𝙿𝙴𝙰𝚁𝙰𝙽𝙲𝙴

Height: 5'5

Eye Colour: Brown

Hair Colour: Dark Brown

Birthmarks: none

Scars: one on her ankle from when she broke it two years ago and had surgery to fix it

Tattoos: none

Style: country, jeans and boots with cute sweaters, leggings with old Carhartt hoodies, oversized shirts from her brothers (and Fraser), both gold and silver jewelry

Piercings/Accessories: simple ear lobe piercings, one helix, always wears the ring her grandma gave her

[𝟶𝟹]  ___  𝙿𝙴𝚁𝚂𝙾𝙽𝙰𝙻𝙸𝚃𝚈

Introvert or Extrovert: both and it depends on where she is, how much sleep she got, and who she's around

Mood/Temper: she is intense and driven, always looking for a challenge. She loves her siblings (now that they are older), and will go to bat for any of them. She's also very stubborn.

Dreams/Goals: travel, road trip across Canada, run in the Boston Marathon

Strengths: her work ethic, she's always prepared for anything

Weaknesses: she calls it being realistic, Andrew calls it pessimism

Quirks: usually leaves the house with her shoes untied, mixes up the different-coloured pen caps

Habits: stands and watches the horizon/clouds/weather like a middle-aged dad and/or every farmer ever

Fears: heights, balloons

[𝟶𝟺]  ___  𝙻𝙸𝙺𝙴𝚂 & 𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙻𝙸𝙺𝙴𝚂

Likes: being outside, frogs, sunsets, meals in the field, horseback riding, running

Dislikes: mosquitoes, ranch dressing, writing essays, early mornings

[𝟶𝟻] ___ 𝙰𝙴𝚂𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚃𝙸𝙲

[𝟶𝟼] ___ 𝙵𝚄𝙽 𝙵𝙰𝙲𝚃𝚂

[𝟶𝟽] ___ 𝙵𝙰𝚅𝙾𝚄𝚁𝙸𝚃𝙴𝚂

Food: chicken noodle soup

Music: country. classic rock

Songs: Blown Away by Carrie Underwood. Getting There by Terri Clark. Cornelia Street by Taylor Swift. Strong by One Direction.

Movies: The Other Woman. Ocean's 8. Talledaga Nights.

Shows: Suits. Manifest. Brooklyn 99.

Colour: purple

Place: Vancouver Island, BC

[𝟶𝟾] ___ 𝙵𝙰𝙼𝙸𝙻𝚈 & 𝚁𝙴𝙻𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂𝙷𝙸𝙿𝚂

Family: Jenna is the middle child, a twin to John. She has two older brothers and two younger sisters

Mom: Anna Madden (nee Travis), b. december 18, 1968

Dad: Josh Madden, b. march 24, 1963

Sibling(s): Brothers - Liam, Andrew, and John, Sisters - Melissa and Charlotte

➪ Liam Madden: b. november 2, 2000. engaged to fiancee Cara. works in crop technology and will keep helping to farm.

➪ Andrew Madden: b. june 21, 2001. single. recently graduated from U of S with a degree in Agribusiness and will take over the main farm.

➪ John Madden: b. september 5, 2004. gay. dating boyfriend Luke. attending UBC and getting a degree in Mathematical Sciences.

➪ Melissa (Lis) Madden: b. june 18, 2006. bisexual. single. just graduated high school and is attending U of S to become a vet.

➪ Charlotte (Charlie) Madden: b. may 5, 2009. single. starting high school. an excellent hockey player who has been offered scholarships in the States.

Relationship Status: almost taken. Fraser Minten (october 2024)

Past Relationships: Jenna was in two relationships prior to getting with Fraser

➪ Luke: (July 2020 - June 2022) he was her high school relationship. they were together for two years before going their separate ways after graduating. it was a mutual decision as their life plans were taking them in different directions.

➪ Sam: (December 2022 - March 2023) he was a fun relationship. he was a known party boy and wasn't looking for serious which was good with Jenna. they had fun but ultimately decided they were better off as friends.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Christopher F. Rufo and Luke Rosiak

Published: Apr 22, 2024

Recent headlines about UCLA School of Medicine suggest that the institution has lost its focus. Instead of brushing up on organic chemistry, its students were subjected to lessons on “Indigenous womxn” and “two-spirits.” Future doctors had to take a class on “structural racism” and were led in a “Free Palestine” chant by a Hamas-praising guest speaker. The school made plans to segregate students by race for courses on left-wing ideology, and two of its psychiatry residents championed “revolutionary suicide.” 

Why has the school charted this course? One reason is its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology. UCLA has a DEI program called “Cultural North Star,” and at the medical school, it is led by Natalie J. Perry, whose official title is Cultural North Star Lead. Her UCLA biography says that her job is to “embed our aspirational Cultural North Stars [sic] value [sic] in our organizational DNA.” UCLA honored Perry last month for teaching students to “do what’s right,” saying her “empathy and radical listening” are to thank for her “success as an educator and a leader.”

According to a Daily Wire and City Journal investigation, however, Perry’s academic career is based on fraud. Perry published her Ph.D. dissertation in 2014 at the University of Virginia about college diversity programs. An analysis of the paper found it ridden with the worst sort of plagiarism, reproducing large swaths of text directly from several other authors, without proper citations. The scale of the plagiarism suggests that Perry lacks both ethics and competence and raises questions about academic programs that push DEI.

Perry’s dissertation lifted passages from ten other papers. In key portions of her text, she copied almost every paragraph from other sources without attribution. She fails even to mention at least four of the ten plagiarized papers anywhere in her dissertation.

Let’s review some examples.

The first three pages of Perry’s paper, “Faculty Perceptions of Diversity at a Highly Selective Research-Intensive University,” suggest that she did not even bother to read beyond the first page of papers from which she stole. Her dissertation’s second sentence reproduces verbatim part of a sentence on the first page of a paper by Adrianna Kezar, Peter Eckel, Melissa Contreras-McGavin, and Stephen John Quaye. Her third paragraph, without citation, lifts more than 100 words from the first page of a paper by Angela Locks, Sylvia Hurtado, Nicholas Bowman, and Leticia Oseguera.

Each colored portion of the below text was taken from a different author:

In some cases when Perry did include parenthetical citations, she wasn’t citing the papers whose text she had lifted. Instead, she simply reproduced the citations included in those stolen excerpts.

Take the above paragraph, which ends with “(Bernard, 2005; Bollag, 2005; Munoz, Jasis, Young, and McLaren, 2004; Williams, Nakashima, Kich, and Reginald, 1996).” Perry was not synthesizing those authors. Instead, the citation was part of Adalberto Aguirre and Ruben Martinez’s paper, from which she apparently copied and pasted, without attribution.

A core part of Perry’s dissertation involved summarizing work done by professors Robert Quinn and John Rohrbaugh. Instead of citing them directly, however, Perry cribbed summaries from other academics. Perry copied and pasted almost all of a nearly thousand-word passage from a paper by Chad Hartnell, Amy Yi Ou, and Angelo Kinicki, without quoting the authors.

Consider, for example, the following excerpt from Perry’s dissertation. The italicized portions were taken verbatim from Hartnell, Yi Ou, and Kinicki’s paper:

The CVF is widely used in organizational literature (Ostroff et al., 2003). Measures of organizational culture that directly or indirectly assess the CVF have been administered in over 10,000 organizations globally (Cameron et al., 2006) within the following academic disciplines: management, marketing, supply-chain management, accounting, social services, hospitality, and health care. Further, the reliability and content validity of Cameron and Ettington's (1988) measure of the CVF has been empirically supported in studies utilizing multitrait-multimethod analysis (Quinn & Spreitzer, 1991), multidimensional scaling (Howard, 1998), and structural equation modeling (Kalliath, Bluedorn, & Gillespie, 1999). Surprisingly, prior to 2011, there had been limited assessment of the theoretical foundation of the CVF despite its reported content validity and widespread use in research and practice.

The rest of Perry’s analysis of Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s work is largely copied, unquoted and unattributed, from a 2003 paper by John Smart. Below are pages 13 and 14 of Perry’s paper, outlining its “Theoretical Framework,” with the italicized text coming directly from Smart:

To develop this theory Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983) asked a panel of distinguished organizational theorists to evaluate the similarity between every possible pair of 39 indexes of organizational effectiveness derived from Campbell’s (1977) exhaustive synthesis of criteria used to assess the performance of organizations. The results of this analysis revealed three basic dimensions underlying the judgments of respondents. The first dimension is organizational focus, which distinguishes organizations that have an internal emphasis on the development of people from those that have an external focus on the development of the organization. The second dimension is organizational structure, which distinguishes between organizations that have an emphasis on stability and control from those that have an emphasis on flexibility and innovation. The third dimension is organizational means and ends, which distinguish between organizations that emphasize processes such as planning and establishing goals from those that emphasize resulting outcomes such as productivity and efficiency.

In a section titled “Positioning Diversity Leadership in Higher Education,” Perry copies almost every sentence from one of several other papers. In no case does she credit the actual source:

Finally, in a section on organizational culture, Perry duplicates language from a variety of other authors:

Perry presented her paper as “qualitative” research because she chatted with what appear to be ten members of her colleagues at the University of Virginia who sat on the faculty-retention taskforce and counted their musings as “data.” But when the paper gets to this section, where plagiarism wasn’t possible, Perry includes the following jumbled passage that includes a glaring spelling error:

The positionality of the participants informed the perspective on the origins of the commission. /in response to the needs of the varios [sic] stakeholders within the university, the commission addressed issues of diversity on the faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and university level.

The section of original text suggests that her plagiarism could be used to mask glaring academic deficiencies. Moreover, Perry in her references section fails to list some of the papers that she cites parenthetically in the body of the dissertation—a telltale sign that she had simply copied those citations from somewhere else. Legitimate academic inquiry would not excuse such shoddy work.

Perry and UCLA did not return requests for comment.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban recently argued that DEI policies don’t necessarily lower an organization’s expectations. But for Harvard, UVA, and UCLA Medical School—where Perry earned her master’s, Ph.D., and DEI position, respectively—this is evidently not the case. These institutions have dramatically lowered expectations for favored groups and pushed a cohort of “scholars” through the system without enforcing basic standards of academic integrity.

Ultimately, Natalie Perry is to blame for her misconduct. But these institutions of higher learning share some fault for permitting such shoddiness to stand unchallenged.

==

These are the same people who want to lecture us how much more morally enlightened they are than we are.

[lilsoupboiii]

Marvel in Timeline Order

(To be updated as necessary)

Not currently included (for various reasons): X-men, Deadpool, Inhumans, Cloak and Dagger, Runaways, Agents of Shield, Morbius, Madame Web, Fantastic Four

- Captain America: The First Avenger (1943)

- One Shot: Agent Carter (1944)

- Agent Carter s1 (1946)

- Agent Carter s2 (1947)

- Captain Marvel (1995)

- Spider-man (2002)

- Daredevil (2003)

- Spider-man 2 (2004)

- Spider-man 3 (2005)

- Iron Man (2008)

- Iron Man 2 (2010)

- The Incredible Hulk (2010)

- One Shot: The Consultant (2010)

- One Shot: A Funny Thing That Happened on the Way to Thors Hammer (2010)

- Thor (2010)

- Avengers (2012)

- One Shot: Item 47 (2012)

- The Amazing Spider-man (2012)

- Thor: The Dark World (2013)

- Iron Man 3 (2013)

- One Shot: All Hail the King (2013)

- The Amazing Spider-man 2 (2014)

- Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

- Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2 (2014)

- I am Groot (2014)

- Daredevil s1 (2014)

- Jessica Jones s1 (2015)

- Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

- Antman (2015)

- Daredevil s2 (2015)

- Luke Cage s1 (2015)

- Iron Fist s1 (2016)

- Defenders (2016)

- Captain America: Civil War (2016)

- Team Thor (2016) (not canon)

- Team Thor: Part 2 (2016) (not canon)

- Black Widow (2016)

- Black Panther (2016)

- Spider-man: Homecoming (2016)

- The Punisher s1 (2016)

- Doctor Strange (2016/2017)

- Jessica Jones s2 (2017)

- Inhumans s1 (2017)

- Luke Cage s2 (2017)

- Daredevil s3 (2017)

- The Punisher s2 (2017)

- Jessica Jones s3 (2017)

- Venom (2018)

- Thor: Ragnorak (2018)

- Team Darryl (2018) (not canon)

- Antman and the Wasp (2018)

- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

- Avengers: Endgame (2023)

- Loki (2012/2024/always?)

- Wandavision (2023)

- Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2024)

- Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)

- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2024)

- Spider-man: Far From Home (2024)

- Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2019/2024)

- Spider-man: No Way Home (2024)

- Eternals (2024)

- Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness (2024)

- Hawkeye (2024)

- Moonknight (2025)

- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2025)

- Echo (2025)

- She-Hulk (2025)

- Ms Marvel (2025)

- Thor: Love and Thunder (2025)

- Werewolf by Night (2025)

- Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special (2025)

- Antman and the Wasp: Quantumania (2026)

- Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (2026)

- Secret Invasion (2026)

- The Marvels (2026)

- Agatha All Along (2026)

[luke-hughes43]

General Things to Know | eden's world!

~just things to know and keep in the back our minds when reading each au~

Eden’s World

Eden and Cutter

Eden Nicole Hughes

from canton, michigan

born july 24, 2004

younger sister of quinn, jack, and luke

5’8

instagram is @_edenhughes_

starts dating cutter january 2, 2022

has cutter in her phone as cut🩶

plays soccer, wears number 6

plays forward

goes to the university of california, irvine

majors in criminal justice

best friends with danielle duke

keeps a tight circle

close with a few teammates bc she lives with 2 of them and is very close to cutter’s little sister isla

has a shitty relationship with jack, she goes no contact for her entire freshman year at uc irvine

gets into a fight with luke for like a month but they make up

her brothers call her tigger from winnie the pooh

helps isla go low/no contact with her family

cutter calls her angel, issues baby and my beautiful eden pretty often too

Cutter Gauthier

from scottsdale, arizona

born january 19, 2004

younger brother of kennedy and older brother to isla

6’3

instagram is @cuttergauthier_

starts dating eden january 2, 2022

has eden in his phone as angel🩶

plays hockey, wears number 19

plays forward

goes to boston college

majors in communications

best friends with rutger mcgroarty

has a good circle of guys from bc and the ntdp

very very very close to isla

eden often calls him cut or babe, will use superstar, handsome, and william sometimes

Dani and Will

Danielle “Dani” Catherine Duke

from strongsville, ohio

born july 19, 2004

younger sister of alyssa and dylan, twin sister of tyler

5’6

instagram is @danielleduke15

started dating will on march 23, 2024

has will in her phone as william smith🩷

plays lacrosse, wears number 15

plays forward

goes to boston college

majors in political science (pre-law)

best friends with eden hughes

very anti-social, black cat/grumpy energy

keeps very tight circle

only really likes eden, cutter, cutter’s sister isla, and will

is close with like one teammate who she lives with freshman year

very good relationship with all of her siblings

waits until after bc vs umich to tell her brothers about will

will usually calls her baby and dani, sometimes he uses superstar after a particularly good game or even danielle when he really means something

William “Will” Smith

from lexington, massachusetts

born march 17, 2005

younger brother of grace

6’0

instagram is @_willsmith2

started dating dani on march 23, 2024

has dani in his phone as dani duke🩷

plays hockey, normally wears number 2 but wears 6 at bc

plays forward

goes to boston college

majors in communications

best friends with gabe perreault and ryan leonard

very social, golden retriever/sunshine energy

talks to everyone everywhere

great relationship with grace who goes to bc

dani often calls him babe, also uses william in a very endearing way

Isla and Ryan

Isla Renee Gauthier

from scottsdale, arizona

born january 18, 2005

younger sister of kennedy and cutter

5’9

instagram is @isla.gauthier

stats dating ryan may 15, 2023

has ryan in her phone as ry leonard💜

plays hockey, wears number 18

goes to boston college

roommates and best friends with kelsey white

is wicked close with eden hughes and dani duke

very anti-social, black cat/grumpy energy

keeps very tight circle

only really likes eden, cutter, dani, will, ryan, gabe, and jacob

very very very private relationship with ryan

very little pda

but is very head over heels in love with ryan

ryan calls her sparky, pretty girl, and baby

loves being called pretty girl, makes her giddy

Ryan Leonard 

from amherst, massachusetts

born january 21, 2005

has an older brother and older sister

6’0

instagram is @ryan.leno_4

stats dating isla may 15, 2023 

has isla in his phone as sparky💜

plays hockey, wears number 9

is a forwards

goes to boston college

majors in communications

best friends with gabe perreault and will smith

very grumpy kind of person

very stoic in the face

very very very private relationship with isla

very little pda

head over heels for isla and lets isla lead everything in the relationship

isla often calls him babe or ry. sometimes handsome but usually just babe and ry.

Kelsey and Gabe

Kelsey Anne White

born june 30, 2005

from sandwich, massachusetts

only child.

5’6

starts dating gabe january 7, 2024

instagram is @kelseyyywhite

has gabe in her phone as gabe perreault🤍

runs track, is a sprinter

goes to boston college

majors in secondary education

roommates and best friends with isla gauthier

grows close with dani through isla

her and gabe are always touching

loves hugs

gabe is at every single home meet that he can be at

goes to all his games that he can

enjoys being around gabe’s friends

is really only friends with the track kids and isla bc she spends most of her time running or studying

gabe calls her baby, kels, and soleil (which is french for sunshine)

massive sucker for hugs and forehead kisses

steals gabe’s shirts all the time

Gabriel “Gabe” Perreault

born may 7, 2005

from hinsdale, illinois

has older brother and older sister

5’11

starts dating kelsey january 7, 2024

instagram is @gabeperreault44

has kelsey in his phone as kelsey white🤍

plays hockey, wears number 34

plays forward

goes to boston college

majors in communications

best friends with ryan leonard and will smith

very smiley person

always has a smile, especially when he’s with kelsey

is always at her home meets

she comes to all the games that she can

loves hugging her and giving her forehead kisses

kels calls him babe, sweet boy, and gabe. sometimes drops a gabriel when she’s having a rough day

loves to cuddle with her

Some other things to know:

these girls definitely have a group chat

i might come up with a cute nickname for the group chat but idk

they refer to eden has mom even though her and dani are the same age

dani, isla, and kelsey go everywhere that they can on campus but it's probably because their boyfriends are best friends

they obviously hang out with their teammates for team bonding but at the end of long days and in need of girls nights, they go to each other

[frazzledsoul]

So let's talk about my favorite arcane subject... historical TV ratings! In this case, historical Gilmore Girls ratings in the aughts.

As a reminder, everything discussed here will be in the 18-49 demo preferred by advertisers. Also, the WB/CW were less universally available than the other networks, so their numbers were lower.

2000-2001

In the debut season of Gilmore Girls, the highest rated show was Survivor, with a demo rating of 16.9.

As you can see, all WB shows are towards the bottom of the chart. Gilmore Girls had a 2.5 demo rating, 8th in the network and 127th total out of 157 shows. The top rated show on the WB was 7th Heaven, with a demo rating of 4.4.

So respectable but not a smash hit.

Why was the show on several times a week? Well, it originally aired on Thursday, during the same time slot as Friends (5th ranked with a 12.6 demo rating) so the network wanted to give it another shot. During that first season, they used to air a recap after the first half of the show in case people switched over after watching Friends.

2001-2002

The highest rated show overall was Friends, with a 15.0 demo rating.

Ah, season 2. Jess Mariano enters the scene and the show starts to develop its core identity as Love Triangle Central. It rises to third ranked on the network (bested by 7th Heaven and Smallville) and 115th overall and goes up to a 3.23 demo rating.

Oh, the power of a bad boy who can read. He will transfix many for decades to come.

2002-2003

The highest ranked show overall was CSI with a 16.1 demo rating.

Season 3 is the last season we have Jess full-time and the only Literati season. We also briefly enjoy the company of Twilight Dad. The show maintains it's popularity but nothing much changes: it's still outranked by 7th Heaven and Smallville, goes a little lower in rank overall to 121th overall, and maintains a 3.23 demo rating.

Gilmore Girls: Beginnings was a time slot where they aired episodes from S1 on Sunday nights. The show was not yet syndicated and streaming didn't exist yet: you couldn't buy DVDS until 2004. This was the only way to see old episodes. Even so, it wasn't that popular.

We lose the boyfriends at the end of the season, and things take a turn for the worse.

2003-2004

American Idol was the top rated show with a 10.7 demo rating.

Season 4 is the season of Single Rory, who ASP tells us we should adore more than the boyfriends.

Unfortunately, ASP also chose to give her scintillating plotlines about urine mints, arguing over a study tree, and begging for attention from a guy she meets in the laundry room. Lorelai's time is mostly taken up by Jason Stiles and his fascinating insurance saga. The viewers were bored. The show slipped to 6th in rank on the network and 128th overall, lost almost half of its viewers, and went down to a 1.7 in the demo rating.

ASP regrouped, brought the boyfriends back in, got rid of Jason, and finally hooked Luke and Lorelai up. The episodes near the end of the season are considered some of the best of the series. The show allegedly was close to getting canceled.

Quality wise, I think there are a lot of nice episodes here and there, but overall the season drags because there are far more interesting things going on with the supporting characters than the mains. Jess is as emo as he ever is and his hair is fabulous.

2004-2005

The top rated show for the year was American Idol with an 11.1 demo rating.

The show was on an upswing in season 5. We have to put up with Dean for a while, but Rory's attention strays (again) to yet another bad boy who can read and Logan brings a lot more energy and more interesting storylines to the show. We also have the glory days of Luke and Lorelai as a couple.

The show rises to #1 on the WB, finally outranking 7th Heaven and Smallville. It ranks 120th overall and the demo rating goes up to 2.0. The show's ratings will never be as high as they were during the Jess seasons.

Jess is not in season 5, as he was busy moving to Philly and becoming awesome. Milo shows up on American Dreams as yet another bad boy, yet his fresh-faced love interest in that show seizes the moment and not only fucks him but runs away with him, too. Meg Pryor at least knows how to take advantage of her opportunities.

American Dreams had slightly better ratings than Gilmore Girls but because it was a network show (and had insanely expensive music rights) it was canceled.

2005-2006

The top rated show (again) was American Idol with a demo rating of 12.9

Oh, season 6. The season of disappointment, thwarted dreams, and Jess Mariano reinventing himself as a hipster dreamboat.

The show remained popular, tying for first place in the network with Smallville and Beauty and the Geek (the reality show version of The Big Bang Theory). The demo rating stayed at 2.0 and the show ranked 110th overall.

Supernatural (the show Jared is most known for) debuts in 5th with a 1.6 demo rating. It will become quite the phenomenon over the next 15 years and spawn many stans of its own.

Milo's show The Bedford Diaries isn't too popular, but he also films the Rocky sequel and is cast in Heroes. He's on to bigger and better things, as is Jess, who is now a stable, successful author and business owner and hotter than ever, while Rory is stuck in a holding pattern of indecisiveness and bad decisions. Oh, well. The population of Philly awaits, son. Start your slut era in style.

2006-2007

Y'all will be shocked to find out that the top rated show of the year again was American Idol again with a 12.3 demo rating.

Oh, season 7. The new writers tried, I guess. ASP had pretty much destroyed Luke and Lorelai as a couple and also set her sights on almost every other character, too. So we're left with a devastated Luke, the specter of Christopher on the horizon, and Rory once again embroiled in love triangle drama.

The WB and UPN had combined into a single network, so the show has more competition, but I think a lot of people just gave up.

The show went down to its S4 series low of 1.7, ranked 4th behind America's Next Top Model and Beauty and the Geek. It ranked 122nd for the year and was canceled. There were negotiations for a 13-episode season 8 (with Matt Czuchry as a regular cast member) but they fell through. I think if that season had happened, Luke and Lorelai would have gotten married/had a baby and Rory and Logan would have been endgame. We would not have seen Jess again, because Milo was too busy elsewhere.

Heroes was the 7th ranked show overall that year and the top rated show on NBC. It has a demo rating of 6.4, over three times as high as Gilmore Girls and almost twice as high as Gilmore Girls at its height. There was a ton of water-cooler chat about the show during that time: it was pretty much everywhere.

There's been a lot of chatter on this site about ASP having big plans for Jess in S7, that she was going to have Rory cheat on Logan with Jess again and Milo only said no because he hated the new writers. There's never been any indication any of that is true because why wouldn't he move on to another job with more money, prestige, and attention? It was wise of him to leave and better for both Milo and Jess in the end.

So what have we learned here, other than that Frazzled has weird hobbies? Well, mainly that season 4 almost killed the show, the show's glory days truly were the first three seasons, and that I was not alone in rage quitting the show in 2006. All good lessons to keep in mind.

[delightfullysubatomic]

An unfinished and not fully accurate timeline of the NMJ Lads 2000-2012 (Tim-centred tbh)

Summer 2000: Alex goes to Edinburgh with 'How To Avoid Huge Ships'

Academic year 2000-2001: Mark in year ? of uni, Alex in his final year of uni year of uni, Tim has just graduated. Tim decides to do a play because he didn't do one in his final year at uni.

Alex was also doing stand up in another strand of Footlights (I think, idk how it works)

2000 (Cambridge, term 1)- Alex writes a panto of Treasure Island, Tim auditions and gets a role. Performances are late Nov-early Dec. Tim also auditioned for Bouncers by John Godber. He got both roles and fortuitously decided to do the panto.

(I don't think Alex and Tim became close yet)

2001 (Cambridge, term 2) - Tim does the Spring Review (sketch show) and starts to write a bit (was Mark in this??)

2001 (Cambridge, term 3) - Tim and Mark audition to be in the Footlights Summer Tour, which is what Emma Thompson, High Laurie et al did. They perform at Edinburgh and are nominated for Best Newcomer. It's directed by [friend who still directs plays w Tom Basden]

I don't know if the Spring and Summer sketch show / team are/were the same as each other but Tim conflates the whole year into one when telling any stories about it. Not sure either if they figured out about Tim not being a student during the Spring or the Summer.

2002: Tim and Dinky Donk contribute to an EP of Concrete Cow sketch show on Radio 4

Tim and Mark move to London. IIRC Tim moved back to Cambridge after a bit (maybe after losing his job at Hamley’s?), not sure when he moved back to London - suspect 2003/2004 as he’s still doing stuff in Cambridge at that point.

2002: Mark wins the Telegraph Open Mic Award. Tim's stand up career starts and ends in the space of 10 ok to terrible gigs

2003: Making Fish Laugh - Alex’s first solo show (Tim as assistant). Nominated for Best Newcomer

2003: Alex is on Brain Candy on BBC3 (stand up variety show)

2003: Mark and Tim direct the Footlights tour show(?) Starring some future Inbetweeners

2004: Mark's first 24 hour show (Tim as assistant). Mark gets engaged. Mark also does a show with Rhod Gilbert.

2004: Alex's second show Every Body Talks (Tim as assistant)

2004: Tim performs Luke and Stella at Edinburgh

2004: Mark's first novel is published

2004ish: Tim starts writing poems

2005: Alex gets married

2005: Mark does his first solo show and another 24 hour show

2005: Mark is nominated for Best Newcomer

2005: Alex’s third show When in Rome (Tim as assistant)

At some point Tim lives with Alex (and wife?)

2005-2007 (?): Tim performs in Cowards in Edinburgh (they also did it in London and in early days Alex, Mark and Rick Edwards were involved)

2006: Mark wins the inaugural Edinburgh Panel Prize and Time Out Critics Choice Award. He is nommed for the Barry Award (Melbourne)

2006: Mark starts appearing on Mock the Week and other panel shows

2006-2008 (+Xmas 2009): Tim adapts All Bar Luke for Radio 4

2006-2007 Alex and Dinky Donk try to meet someone from every nationality. I don't know if they get a show out of this!

2006: Mark and Tim are in Time Trumpet

2007: Mark writes 2 pilots. One stars Tom Basden and the summary sounds suspiciously like Tim's life at that time

207: Mark starts his Radio 4 show with Tim and Basden

2007: We Need Answers at Edinburgh

2007: Alex's fourth show Birdwatching at Edinburgh

2007: Tim’s first solo show Slut In The Hut in Edinburgh. It is produced by new comedy company The Invisible Dot, which is Tim’s comedy home until 2016ish.

2007: Herb McGwyer (nominated for Best Short Film BAFTA in 2008)

2007: Tim lives with his brother

2007ish: Cowards on the radio

2008: We Need Answers (2) at Edinburgh

2008: Alex's fifth show Wordwatching at Edinburgh

2009: Tim’s second solo the Slutcracker show in Edinburgh. He wins the Edinburgh Comedy Award.

2009: Mark does The Hotel immersive (hey there recent Taskmaster Ep)

2009: We Need Answers on TV

2009: Birdwatchingwatching by Alex and Tim's first poetry book are published

2009: Cowards on BBC4

2010: Taskmaster in Edinburgh (1)

2010: The Horne Section begins

2010ish: Tim joins the Alan Partridge world

2010: Tim is in Party by Tom Basden on Radio 4

2011: Taskmaster in Edinburgh (2)

2012: Tom start Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme

2008-2012(ish): Tim lives in a box room in Limehouse. During this time he wins the Edinburgh Comedy Award and is on TV quite a bit. He said during ep 1 of Taskmaster that he had no space for anything but kept the lintel(?) From his Edinburgh show. In the Taskmaster podcast Josh said Tim implied he was homeless but he would have been referencing the fact that he had a box room’s worth of living space (I included this because Josh thought Tim was lying in the show but i’m pretty sure he wasn’t).

[milkydraws8]

Hey milky!!! I just wanna say two things: firstly, I love, love, LOVE you're work. My sister and I practically worship it. Secondly, do u have any reading recs for marvel? I'm a big DC girly and wanna get my toes wet with thst sweet Stan Lee goodness... OKAY THANKS LOVE U BYE!!!!!!!!!!!!

:3

jumps around yaayyyyy!!! TY! YOU AND UR SISTER HAVE MY OFFICIAL DUCAL BLESSING... NO HARM SHALL BEFALL U FOR 8 MOONS...

also forewarning, im not a marvel head but some reccs under the cut

THINGS TO KNOW

Unlike DC, Marvel doesn't reset their timeline, they scale it. The Avengers you see in 1963 are the exact same Avengers you see in 2024, but every so often events are pushed around to keep the characters modern.

There's a few major events/storylines that shake up the status quo both in and out of universe

Kree-Skrull War (1971) Secret Wars (1984-1985) Infinity Trilogy (1991-1993) Introduction of Marvel 2099 (1992) MC2 (1998) Introduction of Ultimate Marvel (2000) House of M (2005) Civil War (2006) Secret Invasion (2008) Fear Itself (2011) Avengers v. X-Men (2012) Age of Ultron (2013) Secret Wars (2015) Civil War II (2016)

---

INTRODUCTIONS These cover the origins for many of Marvel's big dogs. They're just fantastic introductions to various teams and characters, as well as the general feel for the world.

Mythos Six issues that serve as introductions to The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Captain America, Ghost Rider, and Spider-Man.

MARVELS 4 Issues chronicling Marvel's history, from their 'Golden Age' to the 90's.

Avengers Origins Five issues that serve as introductions to The Vision, Thor, Luke Cage, Ant-Man & The Wasp, and Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver

---

STATUS QUO Now that you're familiar with the big shots, here's some stuff you can jump into. Don't be afraid to skip as many issues as you'd like. Hell, skip years at a time if you wish.

Fantastic Four (1961)

Uncanny X-Men (1963)

Avengers (1963)

Daredevil (1964)

New Mutants (1983)

The Sensational She-Hulk by John Byrne (1984)

Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith (1993)

Alias By Brian Michael Bendis (2001)

She-Hulk (2004)

New Avengers (2004)

She-Hulk (2005)

House of M

Age of Ultron

Astonishing X-Men

Fantastic Four by Waid and Wieringo

Hickman's Fantastic Four

Uncanny Avengers (2012)

Ms. Marvel (2014)

Spider-Woman (2020)

Wasp (2023)

These are just all the guys I like off the top of my head, I'm sure I'm forgetting even a lot of my darlings. I'm also very much a Marvel noob, so try looking up omnibuses for characters/teams you're interested in or just can't get enough of. Half of my faves I locked in on because of something I learned in passing dialogue, or just cause I liked their costume.

---

OTHER These guys are off-shoots of 616 and best enjoyed after you've got a solid grasp on the world/universe

MC2 Marvel Comics 2 was a series of comics in the 90s that take place in an alternate future of the Marvel Universe

Spider-Man 2099 (1992)

Spider-Girl (1998)

Old Man Logan

What-Ifs (Literally just look up Marvel What Ifs and read whatever)

The 'The End' Series Kinda the opposite of Mythos, gives various endings to different characters/teams. Pretty wild at times

Spider-Man Noir (2009)

---

A few names I never really called out but ought to put out there Carol Danvers, Hank Pym, The Defenders, Doctor Strange, The Illuminati, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Patsy Walker, Venom, and SHIELD. Also Deadpool's fun!

[unfortunate-arrow]

@endlessly-cursed’s HP Next Gen Appreciation Week | Day 1: Favorite OCs

⤷ DECLAN RYAN O’DONNELL-LEE was the first of my next gen ocs. born on september 1, 2001 as the eldest son of sara o’donnell and barnaby lee, declan has had many iterations before his current form came to be. he is obsessed with quidditch (and really, all sports), which makes him an outlier in his creature-obsessed family. well, that’s not completely true, ‘cause declan’s mother is a healer and not as into creatures as his father and siblings. that doesn’t do much to change declan’s feelings of being an outsider, though.

⤷ LUKE PERCIVAL BATTERSEA & SOPHIA JOSEPHINE “SOPHIE” PEMBROKE came about together, a packaged deal more or less. born on july 21, 2000 as a descendant of simon battersea and edmund kennedy, luke’s a strong kid with a tragic backstory. he’s going to find out who killed his family… and be the one to solve a centuries old mystery of the kennedy family. born on january 7, 2000 as a descendant of william devlin and max pembroke, sophie’s also a strong kid with an air of tragedy. being a primary person her family relies on after her father’s stroke, sophie is doing her best to hold everything together. this also means befriending and falling in love with luke.

⤷ QUINN ACHILLES POWER was another recent creation. another kennedy descendant, this time from minerva, quinn has a difficult backstory. born on december 1, 2004 as the middle of five children, quinn was bitten by a werewolf at the age of 6. it’s added a very frustrating complication to his life, which in turn, caused quinn to become private, withdrawn, a loner.

⤷ JUDE THOMAS COZENS is the most recent edition, and my hp hockey boy. born on june 13, 2005 as the only child of a single mother, jude spent the first decade growing up in canada, an hour and a half outside of toronto. he is obsessed with ice hockey, having played the game since he was 4. his team is the toronto maple leafs. jude also moved to england at the age of ten after his mother married an englishman.

[mogwai-movie-house]

A Film A Year

Going through an old hard drive today I found this almost-completed list from 2015 in which I'd set myself the task of choosing a single film for each year of the preceding hundred. It was interesting to see in what ways my tastes had changed and just how many more films I'd discovered and fallen in love with in the meantime.

Anyways, I thought I'd finish it off and update it to the present: I very much tried to keep it to just one film per year, but the competition some years was just too high so they've had to share joint first places:

1915 A Night In The Show 1916 The Vagabond 1917 Easy Street 1918 A Dog's Life 1919 Sunnyside 1920 One Week 1921 The Kid 1922 Dr Mabuse, The Gambler 1923 Safety Last / Why Worry? 1924 Sherlock Jr / The Last Laugh 1925 The Gold Rush 1926 The General 1927 Sunrise / Seventh Heaven 1928 The Last Command / Steamboat Jr. / The Man Who Laughs / The Passion of Joan of Arc 1929 The Love Parade / Un Chien Andalou / Lucky Star 1930 All Quiet On The Western Front 1931 City Lights/ The Smiling Lieutenant 1932 Horse Feathers / Love Me Tonight 1933 Duck Soup / The Invisible Man 1934 It Happened One Night 1935 The 39 Steps 1936 My Man Godfrey 1937 Nothing Sacred 1938 Adventures Of Robin Hood / Pygmalion 1939 The Cat And The Canary / The Wizard of Oz / The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1940 His Girl Friday / Pinocchio 1941 Citizen Kane / The Maltese Falcon / Dumbo / Sullivan's Travels 1942 Casablanca 1943 Le Corbeau 1944 Arsenic & Old Lace 1945 Les Enfants du Paradis / And Then There Were None 1946 A Matter of Life and Death 1947 Black Narcissus 1948 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1949 The Third Man / Kind Hearts & Coronets 1950 Sunset Blvd. / La Ronde 1951 A Streetcar Named Desire 1952 Singin' In The Rain / Le Plaisir 1953 Calamity Jane 1954 Hobson's Choice 1955 The Night Of The Hunter /The Ladykillers 1956 The Searchers 1957 The Seventh Seal 1958 Vertigo 1959 North By Northwest / Ballad of A Soldier 1960 Psycho / The Virgin Spring / Two Women 1961 Breakfast At Tiffanys 1962 Le Doulos 1963 The Great Escape / The Birds 1964 Onibaba 1965 For A Few Dollars More 1966 Blow Up 1967 Le Samourai / Cool Hand Luke 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey 1969 Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid 1970 Le Cercle Rouge 1971 Get Carter / Harold & Maude 1972 The Godfather 1973 Don't Look Now 1974 The Godfather Part II / Chinatown 1975 Jaws / The Rocky Horror Picture Show 1976 Network 1977 Star Wars / Annie Hall 1978 Halloween / Superman 1979 Apocalypse Now / Alien / Life Of Brian / Manhattan 1980 Stardust Memories / Raging Bull 1981 Raiders Of The Lost Ark 1982 Blade Runner / The Thing 1983 The Dead Zone / Zelig 1984 Ghostbusters / The Terminator / Blood Simple 1985 Back To The Future 1986 Hannah & Her Sisters / The Fly 1987 Withnail & I / Wings of Desire 1988 Dangerous Liaisons 1989 Crimes & Misdemeanors / Dead Poets Society 1990 Goodfellas 1991 The Silence of The Lambs / Terminator 2 1992 Reservoir Dogs / The Player 1993 Schindler's List / Groundhog Day 1994 Pulp Fiction 1995 Se7en / Casino / The Usual Suspects 1996 Fargo 1997 LA Confidential / Grosse Point Blank / Boogie Nights 1998 The Truman Show / Happiness / Buffalo '66 1999 American Beauty / Magnolia / Being John Malkovich / Fight Club 2000 Memento 2001 Mulholland Drive / The Royal Tennenbaums / The Piano Teacher 2002 Adaptation / The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2003 Lost In Translation 2004 Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind / The Life Aquatic 2005 Me & You & Everyone We Know 2006 The Prestige / Perfume 2007 No Country For Old Men / There Will Be Blood 2008 The Dark Knight / Let The Right One In / Tropic Thunder 2009 Cold Souls / Up / Zombieland 2010 I Saw The Devil / The Ghost Writer 2011 The Hidden Face 2012 The Avengers 2013 Her 2014 The Grand Budapest Hotel / The Winter Soldier 2015 The Survivalist / The Lobster 2016 Like Crazy 2017 Coco 2018 Deadpool 2 2019 The Irishman 2020 Kajillionaire 2021 The French Dispatch 2022 The Banshees of Inisherin

[cityofalbinoch]

What makes up a world?

We don't create in a vacuum, and lately I've been thinking about why Albinoch is shaping up the way it is. Below I've compiled a list of various stories and songs that I think have molded a critical part of what I'm putting out into the world. I sincerely recommend you check all of these out, if you haven't already (with one glaring exception oops). The nuances of Cyberpunk, and Vampires, and Speculative Noir fiction are all so fun to explore on their own, and I've really enjoyed figuring out how to mesh.

FILM/TV

Strange Days (1995)*

Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Near Dark (1987)

Lost Boys (1987)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) (affectionate)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2004)

Angel (1999-2005)

Life on Mars (UK) (2006-2007)

Dresden Files (2007) (derogatory-affectionate)

Midnight Mass (2021)

Mute (2013) (DEROGATORY)**

MUSIC

Princess Goes To The Butterfly Museum

David Bowie (especially Lazarus)

Lanulos by HereComeHere

MCR

The Clash

Death

X-Ray Specs

Jhariah

Bauhaus

LITERATURE

"Johnny Mnemonic" (Gibson, 1981)

Fetch Phillips novels (Luke Arnold, 2020-2023)

Dresden Files novels (Jim Butcher, 2000-ongoing)

Interview with a Vampire (Anne Rice)

GAMES

Vampire: the Masquerade (TTRPG)

Cyberpunk series (little derogatory)

All of these works are found in fragments and little pieces all through Albinoch, in her setting, her technology, and her people. I've really enjoyed taking an inventory of parts of this city and asking, "okay, where did you come from?" I think it's important to recognize that even original creative works are a patchwork of the things their makers love. And this city more than anything has helped me recognize how much I make stories for and because of the stories I love.

*Strange Days is truly one of my favorite movies of all time. Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett are fantastic in this, and it somehow even feels more prescient and applicable now that it's almost 30 years old. HOWEVER. In between the noir buddy dynamics and pathetic poor little meow meows, it's an incredibly heavy movie with some serious potential triggers. The heaviness is, I think, merited for what the film attempts to deal with. More than any other title on this list, I'd check the doesthedogdie for this film before watching it, just in case.

** Don't watch this movie. Don't. It's not even fun to watch going in knowing it's bad. This is ABSOLUTELY NOT an endorsement for this movie. It was three fucking hours of my life I'll never get back. Thinking about it is raising my blood pressure. But it felt intellectually dishonest not to include this movie on the list, because a lot of the reason Albinoch even exists is because I got so mad about the way Mute murders cyberpunk and wears its skin like a cheap suit to cover for how dogshit it actually is that I resolved to singlehandedly do better. This movie is also incredibly triggering. But instead of dealing with heavy topics in horrific but respectful ways to interrogate failings in society, it goes "hoohoo wouldn't this be fucked up" and then does it. It sets up some interesting worldbuilding and then shits all over it for shock value because fuck you for trying to engage with its story or characters in any meaningful way. Fuck this movie.

[ponderhope]

List of films watched in 2022

Extremis (Dan Krauss, 2016)

Children of Darkness (Ara Chekmaya & Richard Kotuk, 1983)

Cops and Robbers (Arnor Manor & Timothy Waare, 2020)

Derrida (Amy Zierning & Kirby Dick, 2002)

One Piece Film: Red (Gorō Taniguchi, 2022)

To Be Of Service (Josh Aronson, 2019)

Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)

Canvas (Frank E. Abney III, 2020)

Into the Deep: The Submarine Murder Case (Emma Sullivan, 2020)

Black Friday: Dark Dawn (Jason Ferrell, 2012)

If Anything Happens I Love You (Michael Govier & Will McCormack, 2020)

Our Father (Lucie Jourdan, 2022)

Pray Away (Kristine Stolakis, 2021)

The Last Blockbuster (Taylor Morden, 2020)

Final Account (Luke Holland, 2020)

The Tinder Swindler (Felicity Morris, 2022)

Burnt (John Wells, 2015)

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal, 2019)

Eternal Ink: Tattoos From the Spirit Worlds (Maellyn Macintosh, 2020)

The Cave (Bruce Hunt, 2005)

The Last Stop (Todd Nilssen, 2017)

Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (David Lynch, 1995)

Mean Creek (Jacob Aaron Estes, 2004)

Freedom Writers (Richard LaGravenese, 2007)