#how very 2002

[thresholdbb]

This is all I can think about during Waking Moments

[a-n-i-m-a-t-i-o-n]

Treasure Planet concept art

Source: Disney Fandom Wiki

Concept artist(s) unknown, I tried google reverse image search but only ended up back at the fandom wiki.

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[mr-stottlemonk]

Monk - S02E07 - Mr. Monk and The Sleeping Suspect.

[smaller-comfort]

Wip wednesday except a) it's monday and the passage of time is a subjective social construct and b) instead of a piece of actual writing, you get stupid background facts and ideas that haven't made it past the brainstorm phase. Brain is full of bees. Bees are not great at narrative or dialogue. Alas!

I'd do some sort of ask meme, maybe- give me a character and I'll give you a random fact that hasn't shown up in a story yet.

Here's some modern AU and miscellaneous necrons (tired old men, and monster boyfriends) to start.

Modern AU Aephorul has a t-shirt that says "I'm here to eat ass and chew bubblegum. And I'm all outta gum." Resh'an gave it to him for Christmas one year instead of getting him a new pair of booty shorts with ominous quotes on them.

He's not allowed to wear it out of the house ("Why did you give it to me, then?" "Because it reminded me of you. And I will treasure the look on your face when you opened that box until the day I die." The look on Aephorul's face was pure, unguarded delight, and he laughed until he cried.) But he has absolutely shown up in the background of Resh'an's zoom calls with it on when they both work from home. He's reached cryptid status among Resh'an's advisees, which he finds hilarious. Resh'an will vehemently deny that he's trying to encourage this behavior, but secretly he also thinks it's funny. (There's a whiteboard in the physics lounge with a tally of Aephorul sightings for the semester.)

-----

Anyway this is what I'm writing instead of petplay. *facepalm* It's fine. I'm also stuck in a state of minor crisis over the fact that I'm inevitably going to give Aephorul a goddamn fursona. This is both largely unrelated to the petplay and also extremely embarrassing for me. *double facepalm*

Somewhere between Oltyx leaving on his suicide mission and Denet summoning the monoliths, Erraph basically tackles Parreg in a corridor in a fit of 'holy shit we're not dead yet but we're absolutely going to die soon so this is my last chance'.

Existential crisis aside, one of them has blood streaked across his necrodermis and of course Erraph is just as cursed as the rest of them. "If I'm going to lose myself, it might as well be at your side. Better here than anywhere else."

Parreg is barely holding his shit together at this point; the destruction of his home planet, the inevitable decline of his dynasty, even his own descent into madness- fine. Okay. At least he was going to die with dignity, and not fail his king any further. But surviving? While his king goes off to die? (And this is the second time the survivors of Sedh have watched Oltyx leave on a suicide mission. Once was understandable, and he was only nomarch at the time- but twice is a pattern, and a concerning one at that.)

---

I'm not writing any of this! I'm not. I have no desire to write the tragic confessions of a pair of despairing bureaucrats who have spent their eternity engaged in useless, senseless grousing. (They had a place and a purpose in necrontyr society- grain master and magistrate- but as necrons? Without purpose, without respect, without hope for anything but stagnation and madness? *foaming at the mouth*)

Nate Crowley, come here, I just wanna talk. In lieu of that, I will continue to be unhinged and unwell about these bitter old men, and maybe someone else will write it for me.

Okay, so I know we're all here for Anrakyr/Thaszar but I would like everyone to also perhaps contemplate Yenekh being sexy while he runs into Thaszar attempting to capture the aeldari battle cruiser he and his legions just boarded.

Alliances with flayers are uncomfortable at best for most necrons- but Thaszar is already a bit of a pariah in necron space, so it's not like this would make it any worse. It's a mutually beneficial relationship- the flayers are after a different sort of bounty, after all. (Oltyx is still skeptical but he isn't going to spoil Yenekh's fun. He decides to extract assurances that the Sarnekh forces will leave his people unharmed directly from Thaszar and then has to deal with the fact that oh no he's hot.)

Alternatively, Lysikor is lurking somewhere in the Sarnekh fleet- Thaszar's betrayal and overthrow of his dynasty is legendary. He could learn a lot from someone like that.

[allmyandroids]

👏👏👏👏👏

[bogkeep]

they found a girl at the beach

her words all washed away

still feeling waves against her legs

and whale skin at her touch

foam in her hair, salt in her veins

so

they tell her about the sea

[anghraine]

I honestly feel a lot better about having posted anything at AO3, even things I won't finish, and there's something that warms my heart about posting fic for The Borgias in 2024.

I was actually deciding between two different WIPs to represent that "phase" between my undergrad years and grad school. The other one was the prologue to a Legend of Korra/Star Wars fusion in which Noatak/Amon is Korra's father and this is revealed in S1 (I think it was going to be Tarrlok who figures it out first, lol) and it actually affects the plot and it isn't just the LOK canon plot with minor adjustments—the fusion with SW was meant to be more than vague I-am-your-father inspiration. In any case, I only ever wrote the prologue about the Noatak/Senna quasi-romance that led to Korra's existence and never even got to the sheer comedy of Korra as Tarrlok's niece :(

But the Juan and Lucrezia as dysfunctional twins one-shot is closer to being a whole fic (in a side-story way) and I did like being able to add one more to my Borgias oeuvre—and getting at least some part of that AU on AO3 after all the time I spent on it!

[mlobsters]

signs (2002)

setting the twist aside, as i'm sitting here trying to grab a clip from signs which is a favorite of mine (for a music parallel ofc), reminded that it's such a peculiar quirky unsettling little movie. the performances, the cinematography.. everything is just a little odd. joaquin phoenix really leans into the differences in his physicality, like accentuates the curve and inward concave nature of his shoulders, and how he moves. the one two punch of him in gladiator in 2000 followed by this got me enamored with him for a good while. can't resist the sad weird loser boy (see also: buffalo soldiers, 8mm)

which, ps re: buffalo soldiers

The world premiere was held at the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival in early September.[6] However, being a satire of the US military, the film's wider theatrical run was delayed by approximately two years because of the September 11 attacks. Angry viewers objected to alleged "anti-American" sentiments of the film, deeming it "unpatriotic". At a press conference a woman threw a water bottle at Anna Paquin. By the time the film was eventually released stateside on July 25, 2003, much of the momentum of the film had dissolved, and the positive reviews of the film did not help its reception.[7][8]

[miirshroom]

Test for Echo, Freud, and Elden Ring (Shadow of the Erdtree)

Thinking about how not all examples of fantasy stories come from books or film, sometimes they are found in song. Thinking about the lyricism of Canadian Progressive Rock band Rush.

If it wasn't obvious - the Shadowlands is a Freudian nightmare. The surrealism of Salvadore Dali was heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and the cocoon of the empyrean is staged to resemble Dali's work Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man.

Recently released Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon directly has an AC pilot named "Freud" whose emblem is a hand emerging from shadow holding a key (AC unit called "Locksmith").

And as it turns out, Neil Peart - lyricist for Rush - also was drawing inspirations from Freud while writing songs for Test for Echo (1996).

"I've always been curious about all religions, and the Totem idea came from the Freud book 'Totem And Taboo', which I ran across at the Chalet studio where we were working just in the bookshelf in the living room. I had been kind of rediscovering Freud by way of Jung and getting to understand the really deep stuff he was dealing with as opposed to some of the pop psychology that we were fed growing up, and I thought Totem And Taboo was such a beautiful title because it's what we fear and what we worship. Totem being what we worship and Taboo being what we fear. What a beautiful, embracing metaphor. At one time, the song Resist was called 'Taboo' because I wanted to have the two little set pieces of what we fear, and in 'Totem' I was just trying to appropriate all religions because that's what I found looking around at different religions and different systems, is that they all have something good. So I thought why not have them all? The 'Buddha smile' is a nice thing, and I'd like to have 12 Apostles...it's all great. It was really just a kind of tongue and cheek, all the good things of different religions." Neil Peart, Jam! Showbiz, October 16, 1996

The lyrics to the songs can be found here: https://www.rush.com/albums/test-for-echo/

It's a fantasy that people of all religions and esoteric beliefs would get together to craft their perfect god to fear and worship. Fortunately, Elden Ring is a fantasy. From the song "Totem", how many of the faith systems here can you spot represented somewhere in the game?:

I’ve got twelve disciples and a Buddha smile The Garden of Allah – Viking Valhalla A miracle once in a while I’ve got a pantheon of animals in a pagan soul Vishnu and Gaia – Aztec and Maya Dance around my totem pole I believe in what I see I believe in what I hear I believe that what I’m feeling Changes how the world appears Angels and demons dancing in my head Lunatics and monsters underneath my bed Media messiahs preying on my fears Pop culture prophets playing in my ears I’ve got celestial mechanics To synchronize my stars Seasonal migrations – daily variations World of the unlikely and bizarre I’ve got idols and icons, unspoken holy vows Thoughts to keep well-hidden – sacred and forbidden Free to browse among the holy cows That’s why I believe Angels and demons inside of me Saviors and Satans all around me Sweet chariot, swing low, coming for me

And then there's Resist, which has some Miquellian themes:

I can learn to resist Anything but temptation I can learn to co-exist With anything but pain I can learn to compromise Anything but my desires I can learn to get along With all the things I can’t explain I can learn to resist Anything but frustration I can learn to persist With anything but aiming low I can learn to close my eyes To anything but injustice I can learn to get along With all the things I don’t know

But neither of these songs were the tip off for why I thought to look more closely at this album. It was the Crucible Knights and Bloodhound Knights. They've always had the odd quirk of being named for geological periods. That's a lyric from the song Dog Years:

I’d rather be a tortoise from Galapagos Or a span of geological time Than be living in these dog years

Ironic that the tortoises in Elden Ring have no text option allowing them to be labelled appropriately, so the community has decreed them "dog".

There are other songs from this album that I can see represented in Elden Ring. The title song Test for Echo is about how people yearn for connection, but what the mass media landscape delivers is sensationalism and acts of violence around the world. In 30 years this hasn't really improved. A picture of an inunnguaq was selected for the album cover from fascination for the way that the simple stone structure provides evidence of the existence of other humans having travelled before through a desolate landscape. And as I have mentioned before, Radagon's story has hints of Narcissus and Echo.

This is bookended by the final song on the album Carve Away the Stone. The song suggests that like the Greek Sisyphus, all people are eternally rolling their own stones up a hill in the form of emotional baggage or other trauma. But people aren't static like a character from a story - they don't need to carry that weight forever. If you have the opportunity to shape your own destiny, why not take it? This would be related to the way that both Marika and Radagon appear to be carved of stone.

There's also the largely instrumental song that is second to last on the album and titled Limbo. It's implied to be vampire themed by one of the few vocal cut-ins being in a goofy vampire voice ("Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"). So like, Messmer the Impaler in the limbo-coded Shadowlands. His allusions to vampirism firstly being an epithet invoking Vlad the Impaler and also he has only false/closed eyes so he can't self reflect (one of the superstitions of vampires being that their reflection won't show up in a mirror because the mirrors in those days were polished silver). The archetype of the vampire in the Shadow is Jungian stuff and like I said - Neil Peart was thinking about depth psychology while writing this album.

For the rest of the songs the potential connections are more vague ("Time and motion / Flesh and blood and fire / Lives connect in webs of gold and razor wire" - Time and Motion) ("Gravity and distance / Change the passage of light / Gravity and distance / Change the color of right" - The Color of Right).

This isn't the only Rush album that I find possibly to have had some influence on the Radagon/Miquella/Mohg portion of Elden Ring. There's also the album 2112 (1976) back in Rush's earlier fantasy/sci-fi era, which introduces the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx - a kind of thought police represented by a red star - and mentions twin moons being in the sky. It was Rush's breakthrough album in America, followed the next year by A Farewell to Kings (1977), for which the notable songs include A Farewell to Kings, Xanadu, and Closer to the Heart. Also the album cover shows a puppet king slumped on a throne in front of a crumbling building. But again like with Test for Echo, one could imagine how all songs on the album might be combined to create an overall sense of time period.

I'm not making a case for FromSoft promoting Freudian pseudopsychology, for the record. All this psychoanalysis stuff is in the Shadowlands and nobody in the Lands Between cares about what's in the Shadowlands. It's in the past, dead and buried. You can no more decide the course of the future by replicating the past than you can create a sustainable global economy by learning economics through playing Elden Ring.

[sinclairs-snack]

Velma Kelly is the love of my life and she only eliminated Charlie so I could be with her instead.

[52frogs]

Spider-Man (Raimi) | Mr. Brightside (The Killers)

[devilsskettle]

dinner in america is such a “take what you want from it and leave the rest” movie for me because i do think it’s very cute and i can buy into some of the wish fulfillment nature of the story but admittedly there are some parts that really don’t work for me, there are some parts that fall a little flat either in terms of the characters or humor, and the pacing is a bit of a challenge tbh. but it’s unbelievable what the human brain can overcome by virtue of simply Just Liking That Guy

[mr-stottlemonk]

stottlemeyer really upped his wooing game after season 4.

him: *holds monk's hand to help him down and constantly wraps an arm around his shoulder and hides heights from view and compliments him and tells him jokes and helps him calm down and tells him that what he does is like magic and 'you look really sharp in that uniform' and 'i won't allow that to happen again' AND THEN NOT TO BREAK HIS HEART AND CALLS HIM THE BEST-*

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

To find out that all of the people who accused Michael Jackson of being a c***d m****ter and harassed him about him for decades are finally getting exposed for being exactly what they accused him of is oddly satisfying for the fact that this vindicates Michael even more than before, but it's also infuriating for the trauma and pain they severely inflicted upon that innocent man for years and years and how that led to his self-destruction. All of this because they wanted to cover their own predatory behinds.

[scalesthegecko]

Was a little funny goofy silly and decided to watch all 3 Carrie movies at the same time (using the setup pictured here). I hadn’t seen any of them before and they were on my list so I figured why not kill 3 birds with one stone?