#it definitely kickstarted my interest in law!

[kilometresrufflefuck]

compilation of ace attorney law school struggle tweets. please send thoughts and prayers while i wait to find out if i get to graduate so i can throw my textbooks directly into the fucking sun

[tangerinetrees]

Hello! So sorry to bug you out of nowhere, but you added something really cool from the legal realm to a chain of custody post so I was wondering on your take on whether Harvey Dent could practice law in Gotham (even if he did get disbarred for criminal activities)?

hello! tysm for asking about harvey bc he’s very dear to me!! i do want to specify first that my legal knowledge is mostly limited to like a) criticizing the justice system in the us, and b) pretty vague in terms of the nuances to new jersey’s state system bc i don’t live there, so this is 80% headcanon and 20% personal research. also warning this got kinda long

like for one, regarding the state legal system, apparently jersey has “county prosecutors” (equivalent to new york’s district attorneys) who are appointed by the state attorney general instead of being elected. given it’s pretty much a staple for gotham to have a DA, we’re already throwing real world examples out the window

harvey getting disbarred is a really interesting point to me (<- intense focus on minutiae in world building), given that it’s already established in universe that gotham’s system is corrupt - which should include everyone from police to judges to prosecutors to prisons. which is kinda funny since most comics and adaptations don’t take the level of corruption inherent to police+prosecutors to nearly the depths they reach irl in the usa? and irl they rarely get disciplined or disbarred? i digress. because of the highly public nature of harvey / two face going on a revenge spree against gotham’s mob families, starting his own crime syndicate, and his arrest being published in the media, i think it’s safe to say he was disbarred.

while i’m not sure of how disbarment works as a process, i can imagine the NJ supreme court conducting an investigation into harvey’s crimes and run as DA to decide whether or not to disbar him - and all of the cops/ADAs/politicians/judges he pissed off while trying to reform gotham giving support for his disbarment. not to mention the actual criminal case that would be filed against harvey. disbarment in jersey is permanent (although apparently this might be changing recently?), so realistically, harvey can’t ever be reinstated. man crashed and killed his career so he could kill the maronis. which kind of explains harvey’s hopelessness about rebuilding his life

i mean mostly we see harvey offering legal advice, or sometimes just ‘holding court’ as a way for harv and twos to argue with each other. theoretically harvey could choose to represent himself in court. but even if they finish serving a sentence and try to build a non-crimey life, harvey’s disbarment would be his biggest obstacle to practicing law again. maybe given how convoluted gotham’s legal system is, ex con harvey would be allowed to practice in some but not all courts? like civil court and family court is fine, but as for criminal court... harvey can help with your divorce but he can’t defend you for committing robbery lmao

but honestly my preferred take is that two face and harvey have separate licenses. there was a scene in i think btas where they had a credit card with two face listed as the name, and in one of his runs with red hood he mentions their drivers license being out of date. so really i just think it would be hilarious if two face was not disbarred, or if he passed the bar as part of a rehab program (and i can definitely see a wayne sponsored convict higher education program existing in gotham)

(and relatedly, harvey and the other rogues being sentenced to arkham over and over again has fascinating implications? since traditionally it’s not a correctional facility the way a prison like blackgate is, not really. which would insinuate that despite being hella corrupt, gotham’s DAs don’t typically push for death penalty (illegal in NJ since 2007 btw) or even for life in prison, depending on the case. who knows? maybe harvey’s reform policies have kickstarted a lineage of more progressive DAs. well. unless arkham is being used as a jail+hospital for ppl with health needs, and that sentenced inmates are awaiting trial, bc then that would be more fucked up..)

anyway! sorry for this very long response lol, harvey and two face are my boys, and i could go on all night about them. tldr, whether or not harvey can practice law depends on 1) how closely you want adhere to jersey law, 2) whether he’s currently an escapee/avoiding arkham or an ex-con, and 3) how funny it is at the moment. there was a post floating around about how a reformed dent storyline should be harvey as a pro bono civil defense lawyer and two face as a personal injury lawyer which to me is the ideal state of things lol

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Techno-apocalyptica & Schizophrenia

Spoilers for Fallout

The rational part of my brain recognizes that the timing is too close for that poor guy who self immolated in front of Trump's court proceedings to have seen it or know much about it. However, I'm struck by the big reveal of Vault-tec conspiring with other corporations, oligarchs really, to end the world so they can all be the unquestioned absolute rulers of their Vaults and then take a "free market approach" to rebuilding civilization. It is unsettling the degree to which this is reminiscent of the theses of the now deceased gentleman's manifesto, an admittedly deeply troubled document full of an inability to accept that despoilers and despots might arrive at similar processes by similar motives independent of one another, or the inability to distinguish between cautionary tales and propaganda.

Having skimmed that manifesto and then watching Fallout, it does make me wonder. Could there be ideologues and plutocrats who have talked themselves into razing entire economies and livelihoods, perhaps literally through violence, under the idea that this would be "creative destruction?"

Unfortunately the answer is actually yes and its no paranoid delusion since this is the fervent belief of those among the fever swamp religious right who believe that prodding Israel into first rebuilding their great temple and then getting eradicated for their trouble will kickstart the End Times. This is one of those instances where I think materialist philosophy and materialist explanations simply cannot account for the elite doing things that are against what a rational person would believe is against their interests: whether its starting wars, pumping money into obvious scams like NFTs, the metaverse, and now their new religion: AI; but ultimately even the rich are simply a variable number of monkeys who happen to own a stupendous number of typewriters mindlessly pounding away trying to create value.

It is fashionable on the materialist left to assume the rich know what they're doing and are pursuing their self interest at our expense in a lawful, rational evil way.

Unless they're not. Unless they're possessed of grandiose and mystical delusions, a spiritual level belief in the goodness and wisdom of the Free Market, or in a God that is whispering in their ear and confirming all of their biases.

What is clear to me is that Max Azzarello was a mentally ill man desperately trying to make sense of a deranged world that seems to offer cruelty from the top. He deserved intervention long before he met his fate. He deserved a kinder world. He definitely misjudged Matt Groening. He tried to find order in the madness of our variable number of unhinged billionaires blindly groping for profit and indifferent to who they smash. I disagree with that order. I disagree with him ending his life. I pity him, for I think our society and its cruel oligarchs failed him.

I think he was broken by a reality that was too grim to face and he resorted to connecting threads that had no business being connected, but the theses of mad oligarchs plotting to destroy the world because they know their positions are untenable, that they are unwilling or unable to live peaceably and sustainably with the goose that lays the golden eggs, and thus absolute rule must logically be their endgame since eventually, one would assume, perpetually failing upwards, scam after scam, like Sam Altman of Open AI, or Elon Musk, must cease to be satisfying.

What if they're not actually content to simply jockey for position on the leaderboard of capitalism, admittedly while trampling the rest of us? What if in their bones they think they're the only ones fit to rule and merely influencing society by creating incentives and disincentives, creating the structures we bounce around inside of, is not enough?

I think Mr. Azzarello was wrong about the tech oligarchs for the most part. Except for the ones who are mixing a toxic stew of Laissez Faire, Francoism, and their own personal bespoke interpretations of the Bible.

Those people are real, some of them are quite powerful, and I do think they'd end the world if they believed sincerely that it would kickstart the Rapture under the assumption Christ will anoint them as his ministers since they proved to be oh so good at wealth management.

I'm fine, really, I have no intent to harm myself or anyone literal or proverbial enemies of mankind. Please don't send that bot to inquire after me, unless Tumblr is going to start letting it speak aloud and sound like Matt Berry for an upgrade. That would actually be pretty rad.

[sam-glade]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! Development wise, do your stories start with characters, plot, themes, worldbuilding details, or something else?

Thank you for the question💜

Honestly? All of the Sunblesssed Realm stories started with frustration at the existing media at the time (we're talking 10 years ago if not more). And once I decided I'm writing story that has a premise similar to that, but doesn't to X, Y, and Z, it all dominoed from there.

But now, when I start a WIP, there's definitely a premise and a handful of concepts - I keep a running list in a doc at the root of my writing folders directory. I sometimes look at it and spot some that mesh together, and get this eureka moment. The premise can be something like "the chosen one is chosen by the villain" (Gifts of Fate) or "first contact from the point of view of the aliens" (The Fulcrum).

The concepts kickstart my worldbuilding. For the main setting, the Sunblesssed Realm, it's primarily: people live as long as they have the will to, superpowered swords, and people's beliefs tangibly affect reality. For the planet of Avia in The Fulcrum, it's: Bronze Age civilisation has access to weapons of mass destruction, and the evolution diverged from Earth around the Triassic period. And I enjoy following up on the consequences of each of them a lot. Superpowered swords? What are the laws around them? How are they integrated into the wider society? People live forever - that's got to mess up lifecycle timelines and things like inheritance.

Then come the characters: how would this world be seen by someone living in it. What's the most interesting insight I can get.

And only then I start writing. In a way, my stories showcase the world, but by that I mean, I try to answer what's the most epic, awesome event that can take place there, and how do I get to it?

I hope this makes sense😅

[seewetter]

The whole "racism is inherent to transmisogyny" argument is interesting to examine. It was roughly based on the work of Maria Lugones who argued that modern ideas about gender in countries that the West colonized (like Kenya, Uganda, Chile, etc.) can't be separated from the colonial laws and the Western ideas of colonizers. This was referred to as the coloniality of gender or as the "colonial gender system". British buggery laws, by outlawing cross-dressing, for example, outlawed many visible markers of gender variance. Many African, Latin American and Asian countries to this day have laws against homosexuality or crossdressing whose exact wording and ideas originated in colonial times.

Lugones was obviously not saying anything completely new, many queer people in those countries were probably quite aware that their societies negative reactions to queerness were the outcome of Western influence. But it is likely that it's Lugones work that kind of kickstarted a lot of attention for this idea online, where people would discuss these ideas without mentioning her, but often using her exact framing of arguments. And so, through a long game of telephone, Lugones unfortunately inspired cranks like Zarna Joshi, a Seattle-based "activist" who posits that white supremacy is inherent to sexual assault and that prior to colonization, non-Western countries didn't know sexual assault and it never happened (that's the tip of the Zarna Joshi iceberg & I don't feel like delving deeper today).

More relevant to today's discussion, Lugones' ideas also got reframed as "racism is inherent to transmisogyny". I don't know if this ever morphed into "white trans women are affected by racism" although I wouldn't be surprised. But it definitely became part of hamfisted cries for solidarity. "Racism can never be solved without thinking about trans women" and vice versa. I think some people at the time were very much in the "oppression olympics" mindset and were trying to get everyone to work together by using these kinds of origin myths, where the true origin of discrimination A is discrimination B and once we understand this origin story, we have to destroy the 1 ring at Mt. Doom where it was created to destroy Sauron's power! In other words: these badly sourced conclusions tell us more about the people drawing those conclusions than about the social circumstances they are drawing conclusions about.

With that out of the way, I want to shift gears a little bit and just state where my perception differs from what Talia Bhatt (the OP) is writing here:

"Transmisogyny is ultimately a consequence of patriarchal reproductive politics, a manifestation of society's revulsion towards those who could have been sires and scions opting out of the reproductive imperative."

The emphasis really has to be on the word "a" in "a consequence". Transmisogyny is a lake that draws its water from multiple rivers that feed into it.

It's not like trans women or transfem non-binary people that freeze their sperm (or deliberately have kids before transitioning or don't want to transition in a way that makes them infertile) suddenly evade the revulsions of transmisogynists.

Transmisogyny, transphobia, homophobia, queerphobia are social forces that are much older than white supremacy. With white supremacy we can say that Juan Gines de Sepulveda planned out the subjugation of the new world. Activists like Tim Wise (don't like the guy, just an example) can say that Southern plantation owners in 1690 invented anti-Blackness. Historians like Zia Mian can say that there are clearly documented reasons for why the Spanish crown chose settler colonialism (they appear to have been desperate after escaping 800 years of foreign rule, which justifies nothing they did).

We can't trace that history for any form of queerphobia. In old Zoroastrian texts that historians can't even date without a margin of error of several millenia, we find almost identical wording to Biblical condemnations of homosexuality. In India, we find conflicting cultural traditions, from ancient normalized public sex for spiritual tantric purposes to also ancient and extreme prudishness (of different religious groups) that would put the British Empire to shame.

I would be really careful with making any claims about the ultimate source of these weird oppressive ideas. We weren't alive back then.

We can't ask the authors of the Gathas why "a man shall not lie with another man as he does with a woman" or whether they borrowed this from the Bible or the Bible borrowed it from them or they both borrowed it from an earlier source.

We can't ask the author of the Laws of Manu why he's such a prude and trace back India's history of prudishness (but also its history of sexual openness) to make sense of it all.

We can wildly speculate that evil Indo-Europeans contaminated various cultures with patriarchy or religious sexual and gender conservatism -- and it's not even entirely implausible. But it's speculation and there's lots that speculation can't explain.

I'm especially careful about giving reproductive roles primacy in these kinds of explanations, because of the role this primacy of reproduction played in the history of transmisogynistic turns in feminism. If we argue that transmisogyny arises to punish unproductive "sires", then it's not a stretch to also argue that sexual reproduction is the purpose of gender norms and gendered oppression. From there, you can then easily argue that women are women due to their reproductive role. And then you can exclude transfems as alleged "men". It's also an explanation that kind of ignores why women are saddled with all the housework. It might be a little intuitive that pregnant people rest during pregnancy, that they breastfeed after pregnancy and that cultures that use natural phenomena to try and figure out what norms to live by might conclude that "pregnant people are the ones who raise children". But it doesn't take long to figure out just how restrictive it is to force people to live that way. Just how unpleasant it is to not allow exceptions. Just how close-minded it is for people to panic at exceptions or at alternate attempts at organizing housework and child care. And this role of labour division therefore can't be reduced to "reproductive role". It is it's own dimension. It's own constitutive problem. In a sense, reproductive biology merely offers an excuse, a cover story, that allows society to raise children in a "boy milieu" (boy's bedroom with boy objects or even colours) or a "girl milieu" (same idea) and then release them into a "male milieu" (men's clubs, men's magazines, etc.) or a "female milieu" which both mask a class division between breadwinners and homemakers.

Society in Western countries (but really in the entire urbanized world, in all cities that I am aware of, on each continent) uses this 3 part structure to organize live: it organizes labour into waged labour for companies/government and unwaged house labour -- and since unwaged labour makes people financially dependent on others, it's a huge risk for a waged labourer to become an unwaged labourer. This risk is exacerbated by the fact that society traditionally has a milieu it trains to become waged labourers (boys) and a milieu that is sometimes trained to become waged labourers but always trained for unwaged housework (girls) and so habits are taught and they give provide real security for people. If a woman moves from job to motherhood, she likely already knows a lot of about housework. She was taught (trained for the job). And so many of the things people say about men and women, many of the common opinions of them, are a reflection of this division of labour and these different milieus that make that division easier.

Transmisogyny draws from men's fears of emasculation. A fear that will always continue in Western society if "male" offers promises of payment, promises of financially earning enough to support a family, etc. Put another way: when women in the 20s broke with gender norms they were financially rewarded: jobs previously only available to men would literally pay them to break gender norms. The same is not true in reverse and transmisogyny draws from that. Imagine if becoming a housewife made you completely financially independent from other people and gave you (optional) access to social recognition or even fame! It would probably be a very different position in society.

"This dynamic is not exclusive to racialization either, as the eugenics movement very famously adopted similar attitudes towards disability, and there are localized regimes where racialization is not a visible force while other segregative systems (like caste or religion in India) are."

Can we really think of segregative systems based on religion in India as different from race? Isn't the core of hindutwa ideology the idea that "Hinduism" is the national religion of India and that all religions classified as Hindu are "ours", while Islam and Christianity are foreign and thus must be removed from, to use Hitler language, the Volkskörper (the imagined "body" of India).

I mean, Islamophobia in India and Islamophobia in the West look pretty similar to me. People will say "it's not racism, Islam is a religion", but in practice the hijab is "foreign" and thus rejected, the fear of great replacement or "Überfremdung" seems to be more or less identical in Western cultures as in India. Like can we not imagine an Islamophobic Hindu saying something like "go back to your own country"? Aren't the religious symbols of Christianity and Islam viewed as markers that make their targets visible as a cultural Other who "doesn't belong here"? I agree it's not based on race science, but today's Trump movement for example mostly talks about: Islam, mass immigration, illegal immigration, criminal immigrants, etc. Despite weird "race horse theory" comments, the Trump movement does not by and large discuss genetics or phrenology. Their Other is racial but not race sciencey. To me, if what is happening in the American Right is a resurgence of publicly allowable racism, then what Narendra Modi stands for is also a resurgence of publicly allowable racism. "Love jihad" is an anti-miscenegation concept by any other name. Maybe we are talking past each other (maybe "racialization is not a visible force" meant exactly this). But I think it bears mentioning that these political factions are increasingly similar. It's no coincidence that Steve Bannon, after being asked on the Red Scare podcast about the accusation that he is a racist, responded by denying this and saying his people had sent a delegation to India to have a nice chat with Modi's people. To me, this is typical worldwide: a resurgence of horrific mistreatment of "marked outsiders", so another race basically, presented as if its something else than racism to make it more palatable.

"Because no matter how much everyone pretends that "the West pioneered sexual and reproductive exploitation, corrupting the noble non-Western cultures after colonization" isn't a common opinion, that very much is the juvenile understanding of race, colonialism, and patriarchy that women of color (especially those actually from the Third World) have to contend with in "progressive" spaces: a thorough denial of our oppression and a truly maddening level of epistemic injustice, because Westerners cannot conceptualize a single belief that does not in some way center their society."

The topic is incredibly complex, but it's also worth mentioning that "the West pioneered patriarchy" exists side by side with its ugly twin "patriarchy was universal until feminism".

The latter idea, that patriarchy has been universal until nice Western suffragettes showed us things could be better, is getting harder to defend.

From 2025 BC to 1364 BC, the Assyrian Empire had no known distinction between men and women. This was the Old Assyrian period and was followed by the Middle Assyrian period with patriarchal law codes and myths like the story of the female dragon monster Tiamat birthing all kinds of horrors and being defeated by a male god.

Until 1450 BC, the Minoan civilization used an undeciphered writing system known as Linear A and what is particularly weird about this time period is that there are no depictions of male rulers and only portrayals of women in positions of power.

We now have evidence that the Amazons existed in the time period of 900 to 200 BC in what is today Ukraine and Russia (although we don't know their social structure, but their cultural identity matches the Greek myths that describe them as a subgroup of Scythians):

From 3300 BC to 1300 BC, the Harappans (Indus Valley civilization, Meluhha) had a culture that seems to have been organized horizontally. We currently have no indications of any palaces, places of power, special burials that differentiate rich and poor or men and women.

Social structures in China prior to 3000 BC are really hard to figure out, with academic speculation that society was dominated by women or by egalitarianism or that it was gradually becoming dominated by men.

And then we can look at censorship.

In Europe, our idea of Viking culture comes mostly from Iceland. In Iceland, books like the Prose Edda could be printed without being destroyed as pagan works. If we didn't have Icelandic sources (all from a time when Christians and Norse believers lived side by side) then our ideas about the Vikings would come from Saxo Grammaticus and some Viking sagas: we would barely know the Norse pantheon, we would know very few of the myths of the Vikings and most of our idea of them would come from mysterious artefacts left behind. What do these ravens mean? We wouldn't know, we would have no idea about Huginn and Muninn. What does the picture below mean? We would not know.

Our idea of Celtic culture comes mostly from the Irish Book of Invasions and the Mabinogi of Wales. Those are highly different and highly Christianized sources.

We also have the Finnish Kalevala.

Outside of these meagre sources, pre-Christian Europe has been censored into oblivion. We know that Christianity was constantly violently opposed in so-called "Pagan Uprisings", but we don't know what those pagans of Hungary or Poland or Estonia actually believed. We don't know what the Germans and French that Charlemagne invaded and whose sacred trees he burnt believed.

And it's like this everywhere. In Java, the Srinivaja and Majapahit are our first written sources of Javanese culture and religion. Those sources are heavily influenced by trade and cultural contact with India. Filipino mythology is heavily influenced by India's cultural exports, with basic words describing their cosmology like "diwata" coming from Sanskrit "deva".

When you look at it that way, the only cultural traditions that have been preserved are either ones that were kept around mercifully (a handful of Viking sagas, the myths of the Mexica empire and the Mayan states, etc.) or the ones that managed to dictate their values to future generations (Christian and Muslim missionaries, their Greek and Roman role models, the dominant ideas in China and India etc.)

I think its perfectly fair to say that our modern historic record is spotty. That we don't know what happened for most of human existence. That the last 6,000 years for which we have written records are also subject to regimes of censorship, such as when Gregory the Illuminator had all of Armenia's pre-Christian sources destroyed.

This doesn't mean "the West invented all these bad things and everyone else was a saint". Maybe patriarchies were really common in the past and Old Assyria was a 1000-year exception bucking that trend. Maybe matriarchies never existed and we will dig up a royal palace in the Indus valley or frescoes of Minoan kings on Crete.

But it does mean that much of our intuitions about where a tradition comes from and why it exists can be wrong. We can't understand West African gender norms for example without understanding that Islamic missionaries came there centuries before Europeans decided to show up and missionarize too. Great Fulo (the empire of the Fulani) led countless jihads to convert the entire region long before Europeans did anthropological studies to ask what those people think about gender. And to this day a subgroup of the Fulani (the Wodaabe) consider themselves the most beautiful people on earth and put huge amounts of effort into their beauty including their makeup. Which includes Wodaabe men.

Where the Fulani or the people they forcibly converted to Islam previously deeply convinced of gender norms they hold today? Even the Oyo (a Yoruba state), their enemies, whose ancient and lifelike busts of rulers seem to reflect a complete disinterest in whether the ruler is male or female?

The point isn't that these cultures definitively were non-patriarchal or that evil censorship erased their genderfluidity or whatever. They may have been deeply patriarchal and used different signifiers of male power.

The point is that we have a hard time knowing. That our sources are often biased, prone to misinterpretation, etc.

I fully agree that Westerners are not the center of every story. Not the ultimate villains behind every political struggle.

But we need to be mindful that the West (and the West's cousins: Islam and Indo-European Vedic religion as well as the patriarchal ideas of Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism) have (A) engaged in acts of brutal censorship and (B) have made their societies more patriarchal than they were before.

If we want to understand transmisogyny in Samoa, for example, we not only have to understand that Samoa was Christianized and that local Samoan culture even prior to the arrival of Christianity used the word "fa'afafine" ("like a woman") which suggests that they had some kind of prior idea of woman that precedes the term fa'afafine. No. We have to understand that Samoa was not frozen in time prior to Christianity's arrival. That there's a possibility fa'afafine were not always called that and were not always subject to those particular restrictive norms.

It's really common to find cultural contexts where colonized people have been subject to waves of colonization or foreign cultural influence and to social forces of their own.

If the only stories we tell about this are that societies just do these things naturally to regulate reproduction or that this is just a universal injustice, we erase those Old Assyrian legal codes that show how 4050 years ago people already knew how to do gender equality. We erase the possibility of finding more circumstantial evidence and more hard scientific proof that shows they were not an exception.

Patriarchy is not normal and never has been, no matter how widespread or typical it was.

Sorry for the aimless rambling. Hope this was informative.

"Racism is inherent to transmisogyny"

So, are white trans women affected by racism?

This is not a gotcha. I've seen a lot of people on here attempt to discuss racism and (trans)misogyny as co-constitutive, but people never show their work. If racism is in fact inseparable from transmisogyny, is everyone who suffers transmisogyny a victim of racism?

If cis women of color are subject to transmisogyny, is there no distinction between cis and trans women of color, either within or outside the West?

How does the inseparability of racism and transmisogyny operate in global south cultures where imperialism has shaped their history and economy, yes, but the extant regime is not one where white people are a present or meaningful demographic?

I know people mean well, but if you're going to make broad, sweeping statements about these topics, you need to be able to think through your arguments, realize what conclusions you are implicitly promulgating, and reason out whether what you're saying makes sense and matches up with history and empirical reality.

Because I've had experience both with Western and non-Western patriarchies, and I'm fairly sure in that regard, I am a minority on this site.

[measuringbliss]

Spider-Man Read-Through 033: 'Twas the Season (ASM 165-166, What If 1)

MASTERPOST

In this issue...

*sigh*

A dinosaur. And the Lizard! Brittany S. Pierce would be... very gleeful.

However, we also get great development for Peter, MJ and Flash and THAT's at least worth something.

And also...

Spidey accidentally runs into a secret SHIELD building and chases a dinosaur, but misses him.

Gorgeous panels. Meanwhile, at the Connors's...

Stegron! How I missed you, my dear Stegron! (Said no one ever.)

MEANWHILE! In the street!

I think they should kiss. They should kiss to make MJ jealous. THEY SHOULD SOOOO DO THAT. And I should write it. Should I? I should!

At E.S.U., we get more development concerning Jameson and his mysterious scientist. Turns out Dr Madison doesn't hold much against Spidey, but she doesn't like how he's above law. So she's kinda me when I was playing Persona 5.

Gorgeous page! Once again with the wind and the leaves, like just before the Gwen clone plot kickstarted!

I like that they finally discuss what they are, it's been a long time coming. They think about doing a break...

That's a fun way to break the scene!

Peak comedy.

Meanwhile, Stegron's having the time of his life.

SEE, THAT'S WHAT COMMUNICATION DOES! MAKES EVERYTHING EASIER!

Anyway, stuff happens, and...

Just because I love the purple pants doesn't mean I have to enjoy this plot.

Given that the two issues mention preparing for Christmas several times, I can only assume Peter's birthday is in December.

Anyway, Spidey reassures Mrs Connors, and Dr Madison meets up with Jameson.

Slay. I also really love her outfit.

Anyway, she uncovers a Spider-Slayer... Oh, Jameson, how many times have you tried, now? He never learns his lessons!

Do I sense a Gloria/Randy romance? Why not, especially if that means we get to see more of them!

So anyway, we're on full Christmas mode, right there. How soul crushing it must be for Peter to say he won't be able to spend Christmas with his friends! I was going to say family, but Aunt May hasn't been mentioned in a while (thankfully, let her be in lesbians with Anna). You can just feel how bitter Peter is.

And Harry and Liz announce they're going to marry! Oh, uh. Okay. I guess it was very quick in these times, and publication-wise, it has been a while, but dear Lord, they're quick! I guess it makes sense, with how romantic they were, last batch. MJ's surely gonna feel more stressed about that, now...

...

Anyway. One really cool thing in the battle is that the Lizard takes the time to save Connors' child. I love those moments!

Spidey gets there, makes Connors human again, then goes off to fight Stegron.

We do get great shots, but I'm really not into all of this.

Connors successfully reverses the Dinosaur Revival Beam, and they return to bones. It's nice to see Connors actively help Spidey!

What a dumbass.

At least, this is a great page! It's actually excellent. It's a saving grace, we shall say.

This is nice, but WHAT ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS, PETE? NO EPILOGUE FOR THEM?

THIS IS SAD.

Time for the first What If issue! What if Spidey joined the Fantastic Four?

The issue starts with The Watcher introducing the idea, just like he introduced the last issue of the Phoenix Saga.

Hm!

He's supposed to be, like, 15.

It's fun to see this remade. This issue's obviously partly an excuse to redraw their fateful meeting, but with a different artist, given that it replays a lot of the same beats.

That's nice to see!

The Fantastic Four raise issues, but one is given more weight--the fact that Spidey keeps his identity secret.

Oh!

...He doesn't look like a wallflower with this artstyle, hahaha. Next, Peter recounts his history and retcons himself as a beautiful hunk and not as the nerd he most definitely was.

Anyway, the FF present their newest member at a press conference and...

That's actually very interesting! The Chameleon ends up not doing anything. Instead, the Vulture takes his place!

That's sad.

Later, the Invisible Girl gets jealous of Spidey, who's on an adventure with their teammates while she stays behind and watches over them. And while they're on a dangerous mission, she gets seduced by Namor (the Submariner). This is to retell an early adventure of the FF.

This is nice, but not that interesting to me once it really goes into the FF retelling.

Next time: More of Spectacular Spider-Man! I'm curious to see that.

[sugar-spice-and-everything-dice]

Hello, and welcome to my sideblog. Things you'll find here:

general D&D/TTRPG posts and memes

me asking for DMing advice; please god help

pictures of my dice collection

stuff about the campaign I'm running

stuff about the other games I'm in

the occasional reblog or thought about ttrpg fandom like D20 or TAZ

So if that interests you at all, stick around! If not, no hard feelings. Want more info? Check out the readmore!

My Campaign

The campaign I'm running is (for now) a D&D 5e homebrew game; it's retro-futuristic science-fantasy set in a world that has (dubiously) recovered from a distant apocalypse. The draft title was "Magic and Neon Lights" but I've actually gotten kind of attached to it, so it's official now. Sidenote: should I have maybe started with a module before immediately going all-in on this? Maybe. But look at the blog title. That's my alignment.

I play with four of my wonderful friends and their PCs have truly become my blorbos - I physically cannot stop thinking about them.

Aster: yuan-ti pureblood paladin; you can look but you absolutely cannot touch; prim and proper Bastard

Maeve: drow monk; will kill on sight with no provocation; new emotion unlocked: Anger2

Rahkeki: orc-tiefling barbarian; Big McLarge Huge but just. so fucking sweet; thrift fashion icon

Terlyne: air genasi cleric; mob doctor; prayin' for some booty; (was previously a PC, has been adopted as a DMPC)

Valda: aasimar warlock; definition of the word "ma'am" said in a scared-horny tone; summoner-mom to the cutest familiar; Hulks Out sometimes

Mostly, I'm going to be posting random thoughts and vagueposting about ideas so I can worry my players. Also funny screenshots probably? Yeah. Every once in a while I might do an NPC character profile or a streamlined campaign journal. Tag is: #campaign: magic and neon lights.

Family Campaigns

I play in two games - one run by my dad and the other run by my brother-in-law. I'll probably post about these occasionally.

Dad's game (tagged: #campaign: dad's tyranny of dragons) is Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat with tons of other modules thrown in as sidequests; my characters are a sun elf bard (Gavriil) and a fire genasi artificer (Cinder). It's been running for a long time and the group's gone through a lot of changes and character swaps, but we're at a pretty stable place now and having a lot of fun. Currently we are crawling through a sentient dungeon that wants nothing more than to kill us and take our treasures for itself.

My brother-in-law's game (tagged: #campaign: odyssey of the dragonlords) is the Odyssey of the Dragonlords 5e third-party Kickstarter campaign - it's a Greek-mythos-inspired epic heroic fantasy that's been a ton of fun. Our whole party is just 'oops, all monsters'; I play a siren druid (the bird lady kind, not the mermaid kind) named Adellyr, my sister plays a medusa rogue, my dad plays a minotaur bard, and dad's partner plays a nymph ranger. We are sailing across uncharted waters with a ship full of misfits and political rivals on our way to assault the twin titan gods who have been terrorizing the land. Should be fine!

Tagging System

I'll tag stuff by campaign and character, and each campaign will have its own tag. Characters will also be tagged with the campaign and their status as either a PC or an NPC. As with my main blog, if there's anything specific you want tagged, just ask!

The tag for my dice collection is #diceposting.

[fellowstrangetownappreciator]

Playing Favorites (part 2)

Here we go again! Another 4 TS2 premades that really strange my town! (I’ll see myself out.) Anyway, I have to preface this with saying that so far I’ve only played the 3 base game hoods and although I really enjoy PV and VV, I added them to Strangetown just recently, so I’m still getting acquainted with their casts. That’s why my Playing Favorites posts are so dominated with desert-dwellers - but I definitely plan on including more non-ST Sims once I got to play with them more!

And I also low-key love everybody in Strangetown.

TOP 15 TS2 Premades (according to my personal tastes somewhere in May 2021) (not in any particular order) (and I can’t guarantee I stop at 15 either)

Tank Grunt (Strangetown)

Yes, I am one of them. I am a Tank Grunt apologist. Brace yourself!

Similarly to the Pleasant twins, I view Tank as a victim of his father (Buzz Grunt, the esteemed Strangetown's Worst Parent Award nominee). Of course, that's not to say he's innocent. He is absolutely guilty of bullying Ripp and Johnny and equally guilty of being a bigot. And, most importantly, totally guilty of casually wearing camo face-paint. (that he canonically gets tatooed on his face down the line, which is... its own kind of tragic.)

But that is exactly why I like him so much!

Let me elaborate.

Tank is a very multilayered character, albeit a bit cliché. He is very artistic a eager to always do his best, whether that is in school or home where he competes for his father's affection and approval. Buzz provides both of that but it always feels conditioned – if Tank was to stop getting A+, stop parroting his opinions, stop working out, stop following in his footsteps, would that go away? Even though the answer depends on your interpretation of Buzz and his levels of horrible, Tank definitely thinks so. Just take a look on how his father treats Ripp!

I read Tank as somebody who believes firmly in order and good but has a very twisted understanding of both given his militaristic and hyper-masculine upbringing. He has an enormous potential for character growth. Can he gain (psychological) independence of his father? Can he follow his dreams and become a dancer? Can he free himself of his father’s biases now that he’s out on his own? Can he mend his relationship with Ripp and Buck? (...or maybe even Johnny?) It makes him so fun to play.

Also, I think that it was indeed very cowardly of the developers not to set his gender preference as gay.

Conclusion: Tank is fun! (Although he would probably resent me for saying that.)

Dina Caliente (Str- wait, Pleasantview)

Finally someone who doesn't live in the desert! Both Nina and Dina are such interesting characters, with their connection to Bella’s disappearance, their alien bloodline and their opposing personalities and ambitions.

I feel like the sisters are often getting unjustly demonized. (or mixed up together, I’m looking at you, TS3 and TS4) They’re young, very attractive and in unconventional relationships, thus often labeled as predatory. They’re not.

Dina is a very nice Sim, with Nice points above the average and many Playful points and she tends to roll wants to start a family by the start of the game, although she is not a Family Sim. She’s actually a Fortune Sim, smart and business-oriented. She’s a widow who wants to remarry and has her sights set on the husband of her missing former sister-in-law.

I know that doesn’t make her sound that nice but there is nuance. First of all, the man in question is Mortimer Goth, well in his twilight years, a father of two, simply an adult. He is not a hapless trophy, the decision to start an affair with Dina not long after his first wife got pronounced missing, is his own. He knows he won’t be here for long and doesn’t want to die alone, he wants someone who can make him feel young again and loved once more. Dina, on the other hand, pursues a shotgun wedding to take an advantage of the Goth fortune that will kickstart her business ventures but she is ready to provide what Mortimer needs. She canonically loves him. (proven by the love flag in her relationship panel)

In my personal gameplay, I had Don take Dina on a date before their marriages to their respective Goths, and Dina kept rolling wants to flirt with Mortimer instead. Later down the line she also helped out the Brokes financially, and after her close friend Brandi died young in childbirth, she took in her youngest children, so that her oldest son Dustin could go to college and not worry what’s gonna become of his younger siblings in his custody while he’s gone. I figured it made sense because of Dina’s Nice points, her relationship with Brandi and her now being partially in charge of so much money it isn’t even funny.

In conclusion: I support and condone Dina! Even if it’s somehow implied that she and her sister might’ve just staged her rival’s alien abduction.

Circe Beaker (Strangetown)

Circe is yet another... unwholesome character on my list. She canonically tortures people, namely Nervous Subject, and her bio eludes to there being more in the past or the future. She's cunning, ambitious and very mean.

But she is also very fun to play! Her aspiration being Fortune (not Knowledge) puts an interesting spin on the whole evil scientist routine. She doesn't do it for the love of discovery like the Curiouses and she doesn't care about credit as her husband does. She's out for power and she may as well get it.

Her rather extreme personality would lead one to think she has to be rather disliked around the town but her default relationship panel says otherwise. She doesn't have any close friendships except her husband, though. That makes me think she is superficially charming and tends to act diplomatic to obtain people's loyalty without necessarily caring about any of them. It makes playing her unique from most other Sims.

She is also canonically bisexual! I personally have a deep appreciation for each and every Sim that Maxis sneakily preset to be LGBTQ+. I may not seem like a big deal now but it is.

Conclusion: "She could gaslight, gatekeep and girlboss me any day.” - half of Strangetown’s population

Lazlo Curious (Strangetown)

Lazlo is a ray of sunshine in the Curious household! A very sloppy ray that makes messes wherever it goes, true, but sunshine nonetheless.

I’m very fond of Lazlo because he’s the type of person that looks like he can barely count to five with his easy-going and messy nature but is in fact very clever and, by some measures, the most competent Curious brother, since he is the youngest and it seems like he’s fresh out of college, yet holds a higher career position than his older brothers. “A smart person that doesn’t necessarily seem smart on the first glance” is a trope I have a big soft spot for. (...and it shows)

In my current gameplay, Lazlo wanted to resurrect Vidcund (who died in childbirth), so he switched from Science to Paranormal to swipe a Resurrect-O-Nomitron and, like the madlad he is, succeeded before their round was over (in a span of few days). It was a combination of dumb luck and him having a compatible degree that gave him a hefty bonus but it still made me realize Lazlo could achieve whatever he sets his sights on.

Luckily, his sights are generally set on pizza and video games.

(relatable)

Anyway, I find Lazlo somehow cute, most probably for his constant and very unfruitful attempts to make Vidcund laugh, and in general, how friendly and easy to get along with he is. While he doesn’t have that many Nice points (5, which is a pretty average number), combined with his playfulness he usually tends to act very amicable.

In conclusion: I simp for Knowledge Sims and it shows.

Ok, I’ll be back with another 4 when my horrible procrastinating gruel of a brain feels like it. See ya!

[ahiddenpath]

My Tarot Decks

Hey babes!  I wanted to share my tarot decks and tell you a bit about them.  Maybe one might be right for you!

The decks are listed in the order I received them.  Please click the links to look at the deck art!  These decks are all a feast for the eyes.

Shadowscapes Tarot

This is my first deck, I can’t recall when I purchased it- it was a long time ago!  At the time, it was on a ton of “top 10 recommended decks” lists, and I already knew and loved Stephanie Pui-Mun Law’s faerie watercolor art.

Law’s art is detailed and decadent, and while the cards are gorgeous...  I find they get in the way of themselves.  Ideally, tarot cards should guide our subconsciousness and spark our intuition...  But instead, I find myself squinting at an image featuring ten foxes, a large humanoid figure, and a few smaller fey critters, barely able to make everything out on the tiny tarot card.

I couldn’t use the deck at all, and I thought my third eye must be permanently napping xD  Sadly, I didn’t touch tarot for years after this.

The art is gorgeous though, definitely take a look at the images.  The deck itself is pretty standard in quality, nothing to compliment, but nothing to complain about (except that the pictures are too detailed for the card size).

The Fountain Tarot

Years and years later, I bumped into the Fountain Tarot and instantly fell in love.  The deck utilizes geometry and cool colors, which made it feel more approachable for my scientist, apparently third eye challenged self.  

This is one of the most high quality decks I own.  The cards have silvered edges, and they feel thick and move like water in my hands.  Apparently, many Seekers feel that the deck is “cold,” which means they can’t connect with it or tap into their instincts while using it.  I agree that it feels more “physical” and “conscious minded” than most of my decks, but as a new Seeker who didn’t really “get” the whole “access your subconscious through Archetypes and instinct” thing, this deck gave me the confidence to try tarot again.  

I can see where an experienced practitioner might pass it by, but if you’re a person who is unsure of their ability to tap into their intuition for whatever reason, give this one a try!  

The downsides to this deck are that it doesn’t have enough diversity in the human figures, and that some folks find it “cold.”  The upside is that the quality is stunning, it may feel more welcoming to “logic-heavy” types, and the art is gorgeous.  This deck was hella expensive when I bought it, but you can pick it up for $25 now, which is mind blowing for what you get!  

Considerate Cat Tarot

This deck features a plethora of actual rescue cats, and a portion of the proceeds goes to shelters.  That was all I needed to know to buy a deck.  Oops, I bought it, how did that happen!

The deck is unusable for me, though.  The cats are adorable, but there’s nothing in the art to guide me towards the meaning the card represents.  It’s just a bunch of cute, sweet babies.  The art and the box design are just adorable, but the deck quality itself is miserable.  The cards are thin, and every single one came scratched and dinged.  This was not a cheap deck, so the poor quality was a huge hit :/  I just can’t recommend it, make a direct donation to shelters instead, my friends.

The Wild Unknown Tarot

A huge swath of Seekers swear by The Wild Unknown, and with good reason.  It utilizes images of nature with lots of black and pops of rainbow technicolor.  The images are comparatively simple, but never boring.  Most users report that it’s a “warm” deck that easily guides Seekers to their intuition.

At $30, it’s a high quality deck for the money.  It also comes with a phenomenal guidebook that will really help new Seekers!  The packaging is lovely, and the cards are thick and feel good in your hands.

Tarot of the Divine

This deck is so wonderful- and it’s the only deck I’ve cried over xD  When I opened the box and saw The Little Mermaid as The Fool, I teared up.  When I saw my favorite tarot card, Strength, depicting Janet and Tam Lin...  Yeah, tears were shed.

But let me back up!  Each card in this deck features a fairy tale/folk tale.  It’s a stunningly diverse deck that taps into the collective unconscious by utilizing folk narratives, the kind that pop up around the globe in various similar forms.  I’ve heard people say that the stories get in the way of readings for them, but I find that the opposite is true.

It comes in a stunning box, it includes a nice guide book, and the cards are good quality with gorgeous art.  At $20, you truly cannot beat the quality per dollar.  Plus, you’ll learn a bunch of new stories from all over the world!

The Lubanko Tarot

I was fortunate to pick this deck up from its kickstarter- I’m not sure when they’ll be available for general sale.  It’s a truly stunning deck!  The creator describes it as such: “The Lubanko Tarot is a richly-illustrated tarot deck of 78 original paintings that traverse the mental landscape of the strange, the subconscious, the queer, the divine, and the intense.”  If you’re not sure what that means, you’ll get it when you hold the deck.  The art rises like neon lights from black cards.  It’s diverse, queer, and bursting with energy.  Reading with it is like sinking your teeth into a neon fruit that drips glowing juices.  I’ve never seen another deck quite like it.

It’s a higher end deck in terms of price, but it came with a guide book, extremely high quality cards with my favorite silvered edges, a gorgeous box, and an altar cloth for readings.  It’s stunning and unique and primal.  I tend to feel quiet and receptive when I read tarot, so it feels a bit loud and intense for me.  Still, I adore it, and I know there will be days when it’s the deck I need.

God this is a stunner.  Please feast your eyes and senses on the art (oh, it’s not all work safe, though).

The Spacious Tarot

A brand new deck (to me, I mean) that arrived yesterday!  And it’s another truly special one.

It’s... kind of the opposite of The Lubanko Tarot.  It’s a quiet deck with a watercolor vibe featuring nature.  In that way, it’s like The Wild Unknown, but it utilizes calm colors instead of the rainbow-on-black intensity.  

What makes this deck so great, I think, is that it’s a collaboration between an artist and a professional tarot practitioner.  The cards are supremely well thought out, and they tell a narrative, which the tarot is meant to do (depicting The Fool’s journey through the rest of the cards).  The structure of the art depicts the inherent structure of the tarot.

This deck truly feels peaceful, like meditation.  I haven’t spent enough time with it to say more, but I’m stoked about exploring it.  The guidebook is tiny, but it does so much with so little, which is ideal for learning.  

The deck comes with a guidebook, a box, and the deck.  The cards are good quality with gorgeous colors.  They aren’t as fancy as The Fountain Tarot or The Lubanko Tarot- not as thick, and not lined with silver.  At $49, it’s not the jaw-dropping value of The Tarot of the Divine, but the beautiful art and the unbelievable thoughtfulness of the deck can’t be overlooked.

Those are my decks!  If anyone would be interested in a video flip through of them, please let me know.  I’d love to tell you my story about Janet and Tam Lin as the Strength card in the Tarot of the Divine!

[alipeeps]

New tag game: Post pictures of your first ever (fictional/celeb) crush to the latest one and tag five others to continue the game

Thanks to @minmoyu for tagging me and ooof, are you sure you’re ready for this?!! :D I have been around/in fandom for a loooooong time and at first I thought, okay, no way I can list all my crushes, there have been SO many and we’ll be here all day but then as I started compiling a list I found I was having fun reminiscing and decided, what the heck, yeah, let’s do em all... or at least all I can remember! :D

There have absolutely for sure been other more minor crushes and passing fancies along the way, but these are the big ones that I remember (and that, in more recent years, I can track by going through my posted fanfics on AO3 and even *shudder* FFNET and seeing which shows I was into enough to want to write fic about the characters).

[Quick note: with rare exceptions, for actors I am listing them by the character they played rather than just the actor. Whilst there are actors that I like in multiple roles (and conversely, characters who on paper I would normally be into but are played by actors who do nothing for me, and hence the character generally does nothing for me either), for the most part it is the character I really have the crush on.]

I’m going to put this under a readmore cos it has gotten ridiculously long:

So... without further ado:

1. MORTEN HARKET from a-ha - OKay so, dating myself badly here but... I had the *biggest* crush on Morten Harket when I was a teenager. Pretty much the entirety of my side of the bedroom I shared with my sister was covered in posters of a-ha, and Morten in particular. I even had a heart-shaped Morten Harket pillow! :D I loved a-ha’s music (still do!) and I wanted to go see them in concert when I was 14 but my parents wouldn’t let me (*sob*). I did finally get to see them in concert in the early 2000s and they were BRILLIANT live (and Morten was still very very pretty)! 

2. RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON as MACGYVER - MacGyver is the first tv character I remember being really into and having a crush on, to the extent that I would record episodes of the show off the tv (onto VHS tape - yes, I am *that* old!) so that I could rewatch them (especially the ones where he got hurt - yeah, I was a whumper even then! :D)

3. KEIFER SUTHERLAND - One of my rare exceptions. I think I first saw him in Lost Boys (and loved him in that film) but it was his role as Doc Scurlock in Young Guns that really made me fall for both the character and him. I definitely remember seeking out any and all films he was in and buying any magazine he was interviewed in (and knowing far more facts about him than was probably healthy! :D) and even drawing a fanart portrait of him. :)

4. KYLE MACLACHLAN as SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER - I remember hearing about Twin Peaks before it started airing in the UK and it sounded so different and interesting... I watched it from the very first episode and very quickly developed a crush on Coop.  

5. BRENT SPINER as DATA - I think ST: TNG had been airing for a while before I stumbled across it but I quickly became hooked and Data was my favourite character right from the start. I definitely remember at one point buying an (unofficial) episode guide book so that I could look up which episodes were good Data-focused ones (especially ones where he got hurt! :D) so I could go out and buy the videos that had those episodes on (at the time the show was available to buy on VHS-tape with 2 episodes on each tape).

6. DAVID DUCHOVNY as FOX MULDER - Another show that I heard the buzz about and started watching right from the start and, like so many others, I immediately developed a crush on the snarky, enigmatic, troubled FBI agent with the weird name. The X-Files was the first show I ever tried writing (one, never-finished) fanfic for.

7. PAUL GROSS as BENTON FRASER - Man, Due South was such a good show! It was so quirky and clever and funny and Benton Fraser, with his huge heart and his serious demeanour and his gorgeous blue eyes, was just so darn attractive! He also got whumped a fair bit too! :D Due South was also the show that introduced me to the music of Sarah McLachlan (I was enough of a fan that I bought the show soundtrack on CD).

8. HUGH LAURIE as DR GREGORY HOUSE - This was a bit of an odd one for me because I had grown up knowing Hugh Laurie solely as a comedian/comic actor, known mostly for playing buffoons and genial idiots. And suddenly here he was with stubble, an American accent, and a limp, and he was hawt AF! :D It caused quite the feedback loop in my brain for a while which pretty much went “Wow, House is hot.... but it’s Hugh Laurie... but he’s hot... but it’s HUGH LAURIE!!1!”

I *loved* House (the first few seasons, at least) and oof a character with persistent pain (and a self-destructive streak a mile wide!) was a whumper’s dream. House was the first show for which I wrote - and published online - completed fanfics.

8. JOE FLANIGAN as JOHN SHEPPARD - Stargate Atlantis was my first proper online fandom, the first show I prolifically and repeatedly wrote fanfic for, and the first time I ever met in person an actor I was a big fan of (and while the show was still airing, to boot!). It was also my first introduction to the online community of whumpers! A bunch of us from the Shep Whump thread on Gateworld heard that Joe was going to be at a convention in London and we decided to book hotel rooms and meet up and go to the convention together and it was AWESOME! I can still remember seeing Joe *in person* for the first time and just,,,, struggling to believe he was actually here, in person, in front of me! He was super super lovely and humble too and took time to chat to everyone at the signing table and I clearly remember my brain just pretty much fritzing out during the photo session and being intensely aware of the sensation of Joe’s hand on my shoulder....

It was also super lovely to meet fellow fans, and online friends, in person for the first time and we had so much fun, and it kickstarted me going to lots of other conventions, including specific Stargate/SGA ones where I got to know lots of other lovely fans and online friends. I’ve met Joe about 4 or 5 times in total now and he’s been lovely every time.

9. PAUL BLACKTHORNE as HARRY DRESDEN - Gosh I loved the shortlived tv adaptation of The Dresden Files. I loved the fantasy aspect, the stories, the humour, and I especially loved Harry Dresden and how often he got whumped! :D 

10. DAVID TENNANT as THE 10TH DOCTOR - I had watched the Christopher Ecclestone revival of Doctor Who and enjoyed it well enough but I can clearly remember watching David Tennant’s first episode as The Doctor - on Christmas Day, at my brother-in-law’s house - and being aware, as I watched it that... ooookay, yes, I’m in trouble here... I like him... I like him a lot... :D I mean, I’m sure the fact that he got whumped so thoroughly in his very first episode had nothing to do with how quickly I fell for him... right? :)

11. ALEX O’LAUGHLIN as MICK ST JOHN - Another show that ended far too soon and just as it was getting *seriously* good. But also a prime example of my point about having a crush on the character not the actor. I looooooved Alex as Mick St John... and yet in Hawaii 5.0 he pretty much does nothing for me (the character is too stoic and the whump often too unrealistically glossed over). Anyway, in Moonlight he was my favourite kind of character - angsty, brooding, dangerous AF when he needed to be... and essentially immortal so you could whump the heck out of him and he’d recover so you could whump him again! :D

12. SIMON BAKER as PATRICK JANE - There is so much to love about Patrick Jane... his smarts, his sass, his angst... and Simon is a rare “against type” blonde crush for me (you may have noticed by now that most of my crushes follow a similar physical aesthetic - tall, slim/wiry, and dark-haired) and again here I think my crush is almost all to do with the character rather than the actor.

12. BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as SHERLOCK HOLMES - I’m almost ashamed to admit it, given the clusterfuck that both the show and its fandom became, but in the earlier seasons I had quite the crush on Benedict’s Sherlock (and okay, a little bit on Benedict himself - I did definitely enjoy some of his other roles too). It helps that I was already a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes character (I’ve read all the stories and novels multiple times and was a big fan of the Granada adaptation starring Jeremy Brett - whose Holmes would definitely count as one of my more minor/passing crushes) already. Benedict is another crush that I have met in person, at a (actually, the first!) Sherlock convention and he was lovely in person - very genuine, very articulate and thoughtful.

13. TOM MISON as ICHABOD CRANE - I was excited for Sleepy Hollow as soon as I heard about it and I was SUCH a fan for the first couple of seasons (before TPTB completely destroyed it and it inevitably got cancelled (I didn’t even watch the last season and a half)) and Tom’s Ichabod (and his amazing chemistry with Nicole’s Abbie) was a large part of why. I also quickly became a big fan of Tom himself as he came across as so witty and self-deprecating and *fun* in all the behind the scenes/convention clips etc. I was lucky enough to also meet Tom at a convention and he genuinely is that witty and charming and lovely.

14. TOM WISDOM as ARCHANGEL MICHAEL - I think Dominion was possibly the first show that I got sucked into by seeing whumpy gifsets on tumblr! :D It was such a great show and also to date the most immersive, welcoming, cast-and-crew-interactive fandom I have ever been in. The cast and crew regularly live-tweeted the episodes, and interacted with fans on Twitter, and it was SO much fun. And Tom’s Michael was my favourite character right from the start - seemingly aloof but so much going on under the surface... and some really nice whump, especially in season 2! I was heartbroken when it was cancelled after only 2 seasons (and just as the plot was getting *really* interesting).

15. OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN as LUCAS - I was hooked on Emerald City right from the first episode. It was visually stunning, so atmospheric, and really intruiging. I love love loved Adria Arjona’s Dorothy (ngl, I had a bit of a crush on her too) and she and Lucas together were just... *chef’s kiss*. I mean... what an introduction to a character... she finds him crucified, bleeding, his wrists tied with barbed wire, and amnesiac.... and the whump only gets better and better from there on in! Like the entire first two episodes are just... Lucas whump! :D And his devotion to her... Emerald City was honestly the first show where I really got into a ship. I was *invested* in Dorcas, dammit! Aaaand sadly another excellent show that never made it past its first season.

16. JASON RALPH as QUENTIN COLDWATER - Another show that I watched right from the start, was heavily invested in.... and that the writers absolutely tanked and destroyed in later seasons. *cries* Quentin was such a brilliant viewpoint character for the show and I loved his awkwardness, and his angst, and his enthusiasm, and his adorable floppy hair... and how often he got whumped! 

17. COLIN MORGAN - I fell for Colin in Merlin (which I stumbled upon late, long after it had finished airing, and hence was able to binge-watch the entire 5 seasons!) and liked him enough to seek out his other works, such as The Fall, and Humans, and The Living and the Dead, and he was brilliant (and very pretty) in all of them... and his characters also seem to get whumped quite a lot! :D 

18. MATT LANTER as WYATT LOGAN - Wyatt was another of my favourite archetypes... absolutely badass and competent... but also tortured and angsty and capable of intense devotion. Another show that I watched because of whumpy gifs on tumblr and the second ever show where I actually got invested in a ship - Lyatt all the way, baby!! :D - aaaaaand yet another show cancelled before its time.

19. NOCTIS LUCIS CAELUM from FINAL FANTASY XV - my very first video game crush! I was recommended to play FFXV by fellow whumpers on the whumpshire discord because it was whumpy... and they were not wrong and I loved the game and I absolutely adored Noctis. FFXV is one of very very VERY few video games that I have actually played right through to the end. And possibly the only video game that has ever affected me to such an extent... I became so invested in the characters and their world and I actually found the last couple of chapters really hard to play because it was actually upsetting me emotionally. I had to take a break for a couple of weeks before I could go back and finish it!

20. CONNOR from DETROIT BECOME HUMAN - and from there I jumped straight into another video game crush! DBH was another game recommended to me for its whump potential and I, and many others, immediately fell in love with the quirky, sassy, self-sacrificing (if you play the game right!) “android sent by Cyberlife”. The game itself is really good too... although, I have tried to play through all the different endings to the story but have never yet managed to make myself play the machine Connor storyline.... I want to complete all the story branches... but I also just want Hank and Connor to be friends and to be happy! :D

21. ZHU YILONG - Ahhh... the beginning of the asian drama arc of my fandom life! I first came across Zhu Yilong after getting sucked into watching Guardian because of pretty (and whumpy) gifs on tumblr... and I’ve never looked back. He is one of the rare entries where I am pretty much guaranteed to like him in pretty much anything he does and my crush extends beyond Shen Wei, or his other characters, and into reblogging his fashion shoot photos, and keeping up with news of his work in general. He’s just... so darn pretty! And also so... blur! :D And the behind the scenes stuff and interviews of him with Bai Yu, during the Guardian era, just made me fall for him all the more. He’s also ridiculously talented - not only a fantastic actor, but a really good singer (I love his singing voice), he plays guitar and piano, and he can paint too!!

He’s also pretty much what made me start learning Chinese... because after Guardian I went seeking his other dramas to watch... only to find that many of them are only partially, or not at all, subbed. So I thought... why not try learning Chinese and then I’ll be able to watch his other shows? :D

21. JI CHANG WOOK - My first kdrama crush, and what a good one to start with! Healer was the first drama I ever watched and can you blame me for falling for JCW... especially when I followed up Healer with The K2?! I’ve liked him in pretty much everything I’ve watched him in. Although I do wish he would go back to doing more action-based shows as he is sooo good at them... but he seems to prefer the romcom genre these days, which is something I am nottt always a fan of tbh.

22. JAKE HSU as MENG SHAO FEI - Yet another show that I got sucked into by tumblr - and also one with a great, fun fandom through which I met lots of lovely people who I still follow/am mutuals with to this day. I just *adored* Jake’s character in History and I also loved the ship - Tang Fan and Meng Shaofei were awesome and adorable together and I was totally invested in both the ship and the gangster/cop/what happened years ago story happening alongside the ship. And Jake is just all kinds of cute.

23. XIAO ZHAN - Aaaand we are pretty much up to current day now... where The Untamed took over my life in the summer of 2019 and has yet to let me go. Xiao Zhan is another disgustingly talented human being - a fantastic singer and a really good actor, and also an artist - and he also just comes across as a genuinely sweet and charming person, and a very thoughful and earnest one too. And lbr he is ridiculously pretty, and his smile is just pure sunshine. 

24. LEE DONG WOOK as LEE YEON - The most recent entry to the charts.... a Korean actor I was aware of but whose work I hadn’t watched and whose looks didn’t particularly seem to grab me... until I watched Tale of the Nine Tailed and fell head over heels for Lee Yeon (and daaayum does red hair suit LDW!!) and very quickly began to find LDW’s looks very appealing (and oh my, does Lee Yeon whump well!!). And yes, I have now started watching Goblin. :D

Phew! Aaaand we are done! I’ll admit, I did think of a few more as I was compiling this list but I decided to categorise them as more “minor” crushes and not include them... otherwise we really could be here all day!!

I’m going to tag: @sarah-yyy​, @arlothia​, @howdydowdy​, @thepromiseweheldforlife​ and @the-wandering-whumper​!

[charlietheepicwriter7]

Hey, it’s me again- Danganronpa AU anon... 3H Anon? I’ll call myself 3H for now, it’s simpler. Hope you don’t mind me responding!

Anyways, that’s. Fair- I’ll admit I tend to charge ahead without thinking, so I hadn’t quite considered the ramifications of so many characters... [eyes Teruteru, Hiyoko, and Korekiyo] I could always toss the unnecessary baggage, I guess. And switching POVs also isn’t a bad idea!

Oh yeah that’s definitely something I have to think more about, don’t worry! I’m torn between “the Mastermind arranged it beforehand” and “the Mastermind uses innocent their attempts to organize before the Killing Game was announced against them,” but I’m indecisive so I’m not quite solid yet, ahaha. But! Having the leaders being the ones voting is a good idea, definitely clears up having so many votes- And it adds some potential for guilt because what if they have to vote off one of their own? Though that begs the question of if the murderers are told they can escape with the rest of their group or their leader or something like that- Either way, Kaede and Makoto and Hajime wouldn’t stand for that, but it’s logistics I have yet to really work out (in my defense, Killing Games can already be pretty complicated).

As for timespan- I’m torn. On the one hand, a quicker, murder-a-week scenario would keep with the pace of the games, but on the other hand, a more drawn out game would allow feelings of unease to fester... Hm. Of course, I could also see it being both, depending on how Monokuma does things and who the motives are targeting.

Speaking of motives, but for the game itself- Not sure yet, in all honesty! I’m kinda leaning towards an outside force being the Mastermind, with a spy or two on the inside, but that leaves the question of why... Which, I’ve always thought the NDRV3 plot twist of “it’s a TV show” had more potential than they used- Maybe something based on that? Like, rich people are paying and setting it up? Or it could take a page from SDR2 and use VR... Maybe both? I’m very unsure, I haven’t gotten super far in planning yet- It’s a lot of baseline stuff, but nothing concrete.

As for the teams... For starters, I’m not sure who the Mastermind is quiiite yet. I’ll figure it out eventually, though. Probably not Junko though, because the idea of her still being obsessed with Despair, but not As Much, is interesting to me.

Yeah, that was kinda the thought process in regards to Nagito- If he’s given the ability to choose, he’d go for someone with a “real” talent (since it’s established he doesn’t think of luck as one).

That makes sense for Byakuya! He’s be more taken with someone who stands up to him, and Makoto is... Ah, not that- At least not at first. I’ll probably stick him with Kaede, in that case, because I feel like their interactions would be the most interesting.

Hmmm that makes sense for Fuyuhiko! I hadn’t actually thought about that resemblance, good point... Which, maybe that plays into a starcrossed lovers thing, like you mentioned? Peko could be somewhere else, and god knows that’d devastate them both.

That’s. A good point, Mikan would work best with someone not as pushy as the other two leaders- If nothing else, Makoto reminds me of a cream puff, and it’s hard to find that intimidating.

Thanks for responding to my last message, by the by! I appreciate the feedback (also, bold of you to assume I'm capable of writing).

Sorry for answering so late, 3H-san!

It’s understandable that you want to cut people from the cast, but once you do, you then have to justify it. I don’t like canon Kiyo that much, but he’s someone’s fav and they’re going to ask why he was cut. You’re going to need a satisfying narrative answer for those types of people or risk losing their readership. (the only real solution I’ve thought of is something similar to the beginning of ndrv3 where everyone is chased to the gym, only this time certain people don’t make it and get killed. This would allow some bonding by trauma, allow the hopes to save certain people and kickstart there yan parts of their dere, AND get rid of certain people) (tho I do suggest keeping Kiyo, he’s good for the drama)

(for a mastermind idea, what if it was kirigiri’s dad? there’s no tragedy in this verse so he could totally be a villain)

Timespan wise, keep in mind that the longer the game goes on, the more likely it would be for some type of law enforcement to find them. Or for one of their loved ones to break them out.

More characters!

I’m assuming that each team needs 5 from each class (assuming that ur still into the whole 48 people killing game).

Kaede’s team:

Tenko should go to Kaede, since tenko would never willingly take orders from a man. She’d probably drag Himiko over too (making five class 79 characters). For class 77 (u mixed up the order, 77 are Ultimate Despair), I stand by Fuyuhiko, but Sonia and Gundam would make for good members. Maybe Sonia remembers Kaede from when she played piano for her dad? And while teruteru would try to be on her team, Ibuki would get there before him. For class 78, Chihiro would be a good fit, he would feel more comfortable with a female leader. Add in Byakuya, and I think the last space here should be taken by Celeste, she would make for a wonderful possessive yandere (plus she could play off Kokichi).

Makoto team: 78: Since everything else is filled in with Naegi’s harem, he can have yamada and suffer (also, can you really see Hajime or Kaede putting up with him?) 79: Keebo, bc cinnamon rolls stick together. Maki, bc I’m trying to put at least one high key protector character on each team. Gonta, see Keebo’s explanation. and Ryoma, bc depression. 77: Soda, bc like the protector characters, having one inventor type keeps things balanced. And Hiyoko, since Koizumi can deal with her.

Hajime’s team: 77: filling in the rest, teruteru, peko, akane, and nekomaru (only now do i realize how many fighters are on Hajime’s team, damn. but he also has many problem people, so... 78: Aoi, Sakura, Mondo 79: Miu, Kaito.

these are just ideas, mind you.

[deliriumsetin]

So here’s the thing...

I’m really freaking hard to scare. Unlike my cat that just booked it into another room when our UPS guy dropped a package off at the door. Perfect timing, Percy. Perfect timing...

Anyways! I have NOT had a good scare in probably two decades. No matter what fiction I pick up that promises to chill and thrill me, neither happens.

Now keep this in mind.

As of right now I am launching a business and yes, this will tie into the weird opener. Be patient, please.

I am launching Vox et Liber, a publishing house for ALL kinds of stories and ALL kinds of voices. I started working on this in November 2019, what do you mean that was only 8 months ago?! I originally thought the publishing house up after learning a bunch of facts about the publishing world over the summer.

VeL publishing will be a new kind of publishing and I can say that with 100% confidence because I am building this beast from the ground up, with the help of @hazandlouwho​, my fiance, and a few other amazing people!

Because this business is getting started independently, which means no investors, we are working with a VERY small amount of cash reserved for start up. Initially all works will be published digitally. We do plan on launching a Kickstarter in September/October to get enough funds to keep this going and to do it right which means getting stories published physically and sold to both indie bookstores and Barnes and Noble. Please be on the look out for that.

If any awesome people want to donate to help us not break my own personal bank, which will be easy to do since Covid-19 forced me to quit my job working with the public because I’m high risk and unemployment has kept me in limbo for going on 3 weeks, you can tip us on Ko-Fi by clicking here. ALL donations and funds raised go towards launching VeL and all projects under the VeL umbrella.

Bringing it around to the scares. VeL is launching our first project and we need all you awesome writers’ help. As of today we are opening submissions for our first ever anthology, Graveyard Visits. It’s horror with the theme of marginalized voices written as Own Voice fiction. Meaning stories written by marginalized groups with their marginalized groups as main characters.

Submissions are going to be open from July 1st until August 12th 11:59pm EST. Stories are expected to be between 2.5k-5k words in length. We will be paying $.02 per word as well as giving you a digital copy of the anthology. Submission Guidelines can be found here.

Now the whole me being hard to scare; I want to be scared. Submit your best, your scariest, and most bone-chilling stories.

Also, not so subtly gonna add a nudge to @thebibliosphere​ because I feel like she might have something up her sleeve. If not for this anthology then definitely our erotica one that will be announced later this summer.

We also have a podcast series in the works but I will do another post on that once I or my awesome soon to be brother in law (that’s STILL weird) have a moment to do up some graphics.

Click below for my rant on why traditional publishing right now is a soul sucking leech on EVERYONE.

On average with hardcover books an author is lucky to make $1.50 off each one sold and that’s only AFTER they sell enough to cover their advance. I also found out the average advance is like 3k per book. Some (not including the wicked big names who get a shit ton more) can get as high as 5k but others can get as low as a 1k. An author is lucky to see that twice a year (selling 2 books) because they have to spend time MARKETING book 1 instead of writing book 2. 

Keep in mind fiction hardcovers are generally sold between 19.99 (usually YA) or 29.99 (usually adult). Wicked big difference, huh? I get there’s a lot that goes into making a book, trust me I do but the split between should leave the authors getting around $4 per copy instead of less than $2. That $2.50 is just extra that the publishing house takes because it can.

Then there are the mass paperbacks which an author gets paid 50 damn cents per copy. Yes, those books retail for anywhere between 7.99 and 14.99 per book and sell way faster than hardcovers. Take it from an ex-bookseller.

Most books take on average 500 to 1,000 hours of work put into them before they even get handed off to the publisher for the FIRST time. At minimum that author sees an hourly return wage of $6 which is BELOW the United fucking States shit-tastic minimum peasant wage. We devalue the arts so fucking much- arg! But that can be a separate rant for another day.

Then after doing more research I realized just how off balanced the publishing world STILL is in the year of hell 2020. Don’t believe me click the link. Sarah Park Dahlen did a great article with a great graphic on it. 

As of 2015, yes I’m paraphrasing to continue to rant, children’s books had ALMOST more books about anthropomorphic cars, household items, and animals than there were books about Black kids, Asian Pacific kids, Latinx kids, or Native American/First Nation kids combined. Talking teakettles and their kindred got a whopping 12.5% while if you add up all the groups above you get 14.2%. None on there own beat out the freaking Easter Bunny! Of course books about White kids are the highest at 73.3%. Yes, this was as of 2015 but as an avid reader who reads middle-grade and up books for fun I can tell you nothing much has changed. Books about black kids maybe SLIGHTLY higher since the BLM movement (fuck yes progress!!) but I’d be heartstoppingly shocked if they beat out talking fucking trucks.

And that’s just race. From what I gathered with all the publishing houses less than 100 books with LGBTQIAP+ main characters are published each year. Wtf? And among that as of 2015 55% percent are about cisgendered males and 31% are cisgendered females. (Thank you @malindalo​, you are awesome and I’ve enjoyed meeting you at the Boston Teen Author festival the last few years.) So, just focusing on those 2 first letters, huh? I want to read a story about a kickass transwoman that has to deal with transitioning WHILE demons have torn their way out of hell. That would be badass! Holy shit, someone trans write that!

Same goes for people that live with disabilities whether they are physical or mental, including mental illness and neurodivergents like myself. If you haven’t figured out by this rant just how ADHD I am than you might need an ADHD in your life. My brain works differently and I would have killed growing up to read about characters that have to deal with what I deal with. We have Percy Jackson now and his all ‘verse but it’s not enough and it wasn’t published until I was on my way to college.

All that aside we now have all the bs coming out about what’s been going on in traditional publishing. About all the dickweeds that have been using their power and pull to sexually harass new authors, most often the new authors are young women. I unfollowed people and canceled a pre-order because fuck that shit! Also, I don’t give a fuck how big a name someone is if the hate they spew makes all their trans fans collectively feel like shit for not believing the simple fact that transwomen are women then they deserve to get dropped like the bag of shit they are. TERFs can fuck right off. 

All the publishing bs has made me more determined to get VeL off the ground because no, no, no. We’ll have none of that. All the listed above reasons can go play in traffic. We will be paying our authors better and taking care of them from day 1. We will be making sure our catalog is so damn diverse that you’d have to be looking at the wrong website to not find a story that you can’t see yourself in and lastly, if we hear of any of our authors pulling a Myke Cole or a Sam Sykes than they are dropped. It is in the best interests of our authors futures that they aren’t shitbags. /end rant

If y’all have any questions about anything of this, I think my dms are open or if I’m wrong just tag me. My days lately have been chained to my shit dell computer with one or both cats pinning me to the couch. I finish this up as Percy settles in on my legs. Also, thunderstorm is starting up and both are sleeping through it? If only I could be so lucky when the fiance and I have kids...

[themoonstarwarrior]

PLAYLIST SHUFFLE TAG!

Okay, so @viterbofangirl tagged me in this and I need to start learning to post my own shit, so what the hell, why not?

Rules: you can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to! put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 15 songs, then tag 10 people. no skipping!

(I couldn’t stop at 10 so I added 5 more, sue me)

I have very random music taste and I listen to my music on shuffle alot, so I made a playlist of the ones I like the most (that way I don’t hafta skip 150 songs to get to the one I feel like) so I’m gonna use that one.

1) History of Violence - Theory of a Deadman

Hoo boy starting off light huh?.... Yeah so, I was in the drive thru at Sonic when I first heard this on the radio and was immediately like “holy shit”. Instead of like metaphors and poetic subtlety, it’s just straight up like “here’s a poor abused woman who resorted to murdering her shitty boyfriend/husband cuz she couldn’t take it dum dum dum”. Even though the actual situation is not the same, this song is perfect for getting across the internal issues and turmoil of my character Mikey. Its so perfect I’m even planning to animate something for it...... if I ever get around to learning animation that is.....     

2) The Vengeful One - Disturbed

Two songs in and I look kinda emo.... But hey this song is soooooo cathartic! I love me a good heavy rock song, and the drums and electric guitar are perfect for my ears to absorb. This song gives off a feeling of overwhelming power mixed with a coldness and disdain for the bad in the world. Obviously, thats not my usual temperment, but its an interesting one to explore! Especially when I’m trying to get into the head of characters that exude that like my OCs Spark or Ryu. Plus its fun to sing in the car X)

3) Enter Sandman - Metallica

Okay this one is just a classic! Same thing with the drums and guitar they both slap SOOOOO GOOD. I don’t really associate this song with any of my characters or fandom favorites, but it DOES give me a super strong urge to learn the drums. EXXXXXXXXIT LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT! OFF TO NEVER NEVERLAND!!

4) We Are Giants - Lindsey Stirling ft. Dia Frampton

I don’t really to listen to music by band or artist, but I LOVE Lindsey Stirling!!! She’s probably my favorite musician! This is such a good song, especially for someone like me. Its a positive song that talks about feeling alone in a crowd and unimportant to the world, but how you really do matter and shouldn’t be afraid to dream big and shoot for the stars. It really speaks to me and the vocalization is so good (especially for singing), not to mention the official music video is animated and AMAZING!

5) Cetus - Lensko NCS

I dunno if anyone knows this song, but damn its good. Its one of those Royalty-Free songs that people look up for their channels, which is how I found it in the first place, but I loved it immediately. Its a peppy 8-bit electronic bop that turns a little Irish jig at the end and honestly I think if I ever start an animation channel I’m totally gonna use it! (Also go support Lensko he make good beats!)

6) Sanctuary - Utada Hikaru

I did not grow up with Kingdom Hearts, and only played KH2 within the past year n’ a half. But good God, the moment that Cinematic Opening came on and this song started playing I swear I astral projected into a daze of feelings without names. I know that “Simple and Clean” is the quintessential Kingdom Heart song that gives everyone feelings, but IMHO Sanctuary blows it out of the water. As beautiful as the animation was, or how curious the occasional backwards lyrics are, or how weird it is having high-res Goofy and Donald in what is essentially an anime opening, I really can’t be distracted from this song when I play.

7) Chemical Plant Zone (Rock Remix) - Zerobadniks

Chemical Plant Song is like, one of the TOP Sonic songs by popular vote (and we know how awesome the Sonic series is musically so thats saying something!), but I could never quite vibe with the normal 8-bit version. I think I first heard this as someone’s ringtone and was immediately like “THATS PERFECT THATS EXACTLY HOW I NEED IT!”. The rock makes the song soooo much better and honestly gives the song the perfect vibe. Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to find cuz none of the Rock Covers of this song were the right one. In fact, tbh, I’m not even sure whether Zerobadniks is the correct artist..... that’s just who everybody was crediting when I found it. 

(imma include the link i found since its a little hard to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJiZEM6aPI )

8) The Wolf - SIAMES

YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEOS???? THIS IS A GOD-TIER ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO. I found the video first, and seriously, if you haven’t seen it YOU NEED TO!!! The beat works perfectly with the images on screen and the story being portrayed is really intriguing, with the lyrics adding to atmosphere without necessarily describing the visuals shown. Even without the animation, the song itself is a banger. It bring to mind the feeling of intense motion forward, but unable to decide whether its movement TOWARD something or AWAY from something. I love listening to this on a nighttime drive.

9) Burn the House Down - AJR

If you ask me, the best way to make a pop song better is to add either violins or trumpets. For this song, it was definitely the trumpets that first caught my attention, and the rest of the song kept me listening. I don’t really know how to describe the vibe of this song, and I don’t have a specific character or story in mind when I listen to it, so its a little hard for me to talk about it. I think the best way I can describe this song and what draws me to it is a feeling of nonchalant go-with-the-flow attitude to shenaniganry. Almost an undertone of “We’re hooligans in a situation that we probably should get out of, but hey we’ve got life and each other so why worry?” At least that’s the closest I can get to a verbal description heh...

10) Slim Pickens Does the Right Thing and Rides the Bomb to Hell - The Offspring 

DANCE, FUCKER, DANCE, LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN!!!

So this also has a KICKASS animated music video, but its technically combined with the song “Dividing by Zero”. Now the video works SO well with both, and the shifting artstyles reflect the differing tones of the songs PERFECTLY. However, I have a preference for both the animation and the song on the Slim Pickens half. Its fun to listen to and sing at the top of your lungs and its SO CATHARTIC. Again I cant really describe what my head does when I hear it, but I think you can probably feel a similar vibe if you watch the music video. 

11) No Heaven - DJ Champion

The first time I finished the original Borderlands, I had been playing for days on end, had just finished a long battle with the Destroyer, and sitting back relieved to have beaten it and reflecting on how much I had enjoyed the adventure. Then this song started playing. For what I believe was forty minutes this song looped on my TV while the credits rolled. By the time the credits finished I was pulling up the song to listen to again! What an absolutely PERFECT cherry to add to this experience. This song perfectly encapsulated the chaotic, trigger-happy, morally ambiguous craziness that I had enjoyed and absorbed in this game. Every time I hear it now, I imagine myself in the wastelands of Pandora, driving haphazardly across the sandy dunes as my companions and I shoot and blow up everything in sight. You know, living the dream.......     

12) Hit & Run (Wolfgang Lohr Remix) -  The Electric Swing Circus

I fucking LOVE electro-swing! The electronic beats and rhythm blend so well with the wild and energetic freedom of swing. A lot of electro-swing gives me a vibe of wild movement, reckless abandon, and freedom from constraint. I think this song melds all of these feelings the best! As the last song might have indicated, despite my general nice and sweet temperament, there is a part of me deep down that is an absolute gremlin secretly enamored with chaos, insanity, and a general disdain for law and authority X). But whereas anything Borderlands related has a more “morality is an illusion blowing shit up is real” air about it, this song is far more peppy. More of a “good-hearted but insane” type of chaos, like an 100mph car chase where you end up sailing over the train tracks JUST as the train passes.

.... I may have gotten a bit off track lol 

13) Kickstart my Heart - Motley Crue

I love this song, but I have to be VERY careful when and where I listen to this. I love songs that make me feel like I’m going a million miles per hour, like I’m gotdam Sonic the Hedgehog. Unfortunately, I may or may not have had multiple instances of listening to this song in the car and abruptly realizing that I’m going like 15mph above the speed limit...... So yeah, regardless of absolutely perfect it feels to play this song while speeding down a nearly empty highway, please be careful and drive responsibly!!!

14) I’m Born to Run - American Authors

Imma just up and say it. This song is a Sonic song; like not like actually from the series but a song for the character. This song encapsulates Sonic as a character better than some of his ACTUAL THEMES (and remember Sonic music are bangers!). Its a song about freedom, living life as it comes, and not letting anything slow you down. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t make this song FOR the Sonic series, or even the movie! Speaking of which, ironically I heard this song right after watching the Sonic movie in theaters, so yeah there’s no way I can associate it with anything else. 

15) Opa Opa - Antique

Oh, what a PERFECT way to end this list! This may be one of my absolute favorite songs of all time! I don’t remember exactly how I found this song... I think I had just relistened to Dalar Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak Tun” and was looking for other catchy non-english songs and BOY HOWDY I found one! I know nothing about the band or what the song’s about (its in greek and i dont speak it), but this song is just a masterpiece of retro, pop, and dance sounds. This song feels like the musical and lyrical manifestation of dance and movement. I really REALLY wish I could dance JUST so I can express how happy and free this song makes me feel! This is the BEST song for me to end this list with!

***********************************************************************************

JESUS, this got long..... Sorry about that XD. It was fun though, and hopefully somebody was vaguely interested in my ramblings.

Guess I need to tag people now? How about @tharkflark1, @rockmilkshake, @neonbuck, @drawingsdrawingseverywhere, @birthgiverofbirds, @puccafangirl, @kalcat, @biblestudybussybopsbabey, @monstrous-milktea, and @memecage! I think there are a couple of people here I haven’t talked to though soooooo..... hi, I hope you don’t mind the tag X)

 Anyway hope you enjoyed and/or want to do this too! This took for-fucking-EVER to type, so imma go fuck off and watch youtube or something now...

[printvirgo6]

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Melanotan 2 Injection Customer Dies In Tanning Beauty Parlor.

Content

You're Evaluating: Melanotan 2 Injection Kit.

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Are Melanin Shots Legal In The Uk?

Is It Safe To Utilize Fake Tans During Pregnancy? Male Discloses He's Addicted To Unlawful Tanning Injections:' I Prefer To Be Dead Than Pale'. The X

Scenic Melanotan Ii Nasal Spray.

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Do you have any tips on how to write a female character that's majoring in journalism?

oh boy!!!!!! generally, character-wise, people will of course approach things in different ways, so i’m gonna like mention you know said character and the decisions that she’d make better than anyone else, but i’m gonna write about 1. some “character archetypes,” as it were, that comprise a lot of female members of my journalism school, 2. some general advice on personality traits that would likely be useful/realistic for a female journalism character, and 3. what not to aspire to when it comes to writing women in journalism (ie, this section is just gonna be my biggest gripes about how female journalists tend to be portrayed in media.)

let’s get into it!

section one: “character archetypes,” aka the average personality a lot of female members of my journalism school.

a lot of my really great friends are in the journalism school, and their personality types vary greatly. there are so many awesome women in journalism and this isn’t exactly, like, “BE EXACTLY LIKE THIS OR SHE ISN’T A REALISTIC JOURNALIST,” these are just some character traits/personality things that i’ve noticed when it comes to a lot of aspiring female journalists.

curious. always write them as curious. that’s the backbone of being a journalist is being curious and going after the story. they want to know more about the world, they want to know more about their communities, and they want to provide the perspectives for you, or the reader, or the community, so that you can be better informed/make decisions/be aware. journalists, above all, have that curiosity down; journalism majors can rarely stand not knowing things.

(this also means that female journalists, and journalists in general, really, are very tuned into gossip. not even necessarily “he said she said” gossip, though that can be interesting sometimes too, but things like who got what good grades, which professor said this, what internship accepted who? journalists are basically trained to be investigative and dig deep for things; when it comes to, say, two editors being snappy at each other at a meeting, well, you want to know why, in case whatever is affecting them will affect you. again, not necessarily gossipy in a malicious way that can be portrayed sometimes! gossipy in the sense that they’re usually very in tune with their social circle and immediate community, as well as community at large.)

they are also researchers!!! many journalists are prone to the whole “wikipedia rabbit hole” research thing. they dive deep on a lot of subjects, both broad and narrow, and they like discussing these topics with each other, which again, can vary greatly! the biggest mbmbam/taz Stan i know is a female journalism major, and from there she has a very vested interest in dnd, all because it started with a few funny mbmbam clips (okay, guilty, i was one of the two people who mentioned that it would seem like her thing and now she’s way more into it than i am) and on the flip side of that, there are MANY female journalists who have made careers off their interests—film journalists, video gaming journalists, and social media/pop culture reporters all exist for a reason, and it’s likely because they marketed their interest and therefore “expertise” in these subjects and managed to spin a job out of it!

ambitious. so many kids in the j school strive for really great things, which is super crazy awesome, and they work really hard to achieve it. i know people who have netted amazing internship opportunities while they’re in the j school (we’re talking washington post, new york times, cnn, associated press, like, big organization names) and it’s because they have the ambition to achieve it. they dream big, a lot of the time, and tend to have detailed career goals to go with it.

inclined to ethical/moral discussions. there are a lot of ethical questions when it comes to covering news (there’s actually a wyliwf oneshot in the draft talking about one of my least favorite days of the semester that always comes up in class, which focuses on ethical decisions in times of death, major tragedy, or injury, look up “the breakfast test” if you want to learn more about that particular aspect of being a journalism major) but even when it doesn’t come to major disaster coverage, there are still a lot of little ethical questions to analyze in each area of journalism; journalistic ethics is a whole branch of conversation that i (and a lot of my fellow journalism majors!) fall into discussing. it can be things from the disclosing of anonymous sources to what is and isn’t right to photograph and the inclusion of certain sensitive information or ostracizing it and the importance of fact-checking. i think journalistic ethics is a really interesting topic and it’s usually one of my favorite things to discuss; this wikipedia page just scratches the surface, and here is the spj code of etihcs, widely regarded as a base code of principles for most american journalists to follow, but i encourage you to go out and seek other instances of journalistic ethics, because a lot of the time, what is legal for journalists to do isn’t necessarily right.

organized (even if it doesn’t look like it from the outside) or complete disaster

let’s take my friend, who i’ll call a.c. ac has a color-coded planner, frequently works ahead of schedule, plans out her entire day. she is very tidy, very organized, and seems generally put together. we were roommates in the fall semester and she had a tidy room, a set routine when it came to dinners and organizing her stuff, she’s very On Top Of It

and then there is me. ac once looked at me in horror when i was just starting to write a paper the morning it was due and informed me that the way i approach most deadlines is “her worst nightmare on drugs.” i forget assignments a lot and tend to scramble to do things at the last minute, i am a CHRONIC procrastinator, and yet i still make sure i get things done in time. in essence, i know my limits, and the pressure of a deadline tends to be what kickstarts me into starting those limits.

what i’m saying here is that it’s a vast spectrum, but what tends to drive most journalists is deadlines. journalism people are VERY deadline oriented and their approaches definitely vary, but that tends to be what they stick to most. journalists also tend to have perfectionist tendencies, as a sidenote.

stubborn. holy god. like, just look at the way journalists consistently send foia quests alone, for example, this story about journalists using foia to track hospital bed and ventilator availability in illinous (a dive into sunshine laws, aka releasing public records, which is a whole other thing that people very rarely tend to notice as an aspect of journalism but also lead to really big stories, especially if leaked (pentagon papers, anyone?) and just, yeah. check up on the state’s sunshine laws that you’re writing your story in, i think it could provide a real interesting subplot for you.) journalists. are. STUBBORN. i know people who have sat in offices waiting for public officials to come out for the better part of a work day; i know journalists who have sent hundreds of emails to get one interview; i know journalists who have staged stakeout sessions to see how public officials were using their time when they said they were in the office (hey, including me! i stood in a parking garage for three hours in the middle of winter for this exact purpose once.) what i’m saying here is they are stubborn. if there’s a story, they’re gonna dig. it took woodward and bernstein two years from the time of the watergate breakin to nixon’s resignation. most of the time, that stubbornness pays off.

competitive. yeah, remember that whole ambitious thing i mentioned earlier, coupled with the stubbornness above? journalists are competitive. it’s a competitive job market, so that means that many journalism majors tend to strive for those same big name journalism internships. this is definitely part of my j school culture, so i’m not sure if it’s the same at others, but a lot of people tend to examine what internships or job opportunities or professor favoritism or whatever and see what everyone’s doing, because everyone compares everyone to everyone else. this also tends to feed into other things: getting a story, getting good grades, so on. there’s a definite competitive sense to things, i’m not quite sure how to best explain it, but... yeah. journalists are competitive, sometimes. when it comes to women journalists, it can also be interpreted in other ways (”bitchy” is one) but a lot of journalism majors strive for the best.

supportive. 

section two: some general advice on personality traits that would likely be useful/realistic for a female journalism character

a lot of these were touched on above, but i’d also just like to add: they probably have an interest in some aspect of “social justice,” as it were. feminism, ecological issues, economical issues, racial issues—most of the time, a lot of journalists see these real world issues and it’s what leads them into the career. 

there’s also the whole... ugh... fake news media thing, which i feel like i have to touch on just because: i will say fake news is a meme amongst journalism majors, in that we mutter fake news to each other when our professors are like “this class average is so low y’all need to study more” when it’s their fault for not teaching us i won’t go on that tangent, however, i will also say that this whole idea has contributed to spiking rates of mistreatment and violence against journalists. i’ve been fortunate in that the most tense i’ve ever felt in that situation is taking an uber to a journalism assignment in a white guy’s truck littered with american flags and blaring alex jones on the radio, which i was able to lie and say that i was doing something else and concealing the whole journalism aspect, for my own personal safety, but a lot of other journalism majors i know aren’t so fortunate. i know women who have been yelled at, insulted, and there was a girl who worked around the same time as me who got spit on.

female journalists are usually treated more roughly regardless (when i went out for my first story, my editor sat me down and looked me in the eyes and said “someone might laugh at you because you’re young, and you’re a woman in print journalism, and you know what? fuck ‘em.” which was the first time i’d ever heard her swear and also one of the only times i’d ever heard her swear) so they tend to have to double down and really make sure they know their stuff in case they’re ever quizzed on it in a way that male journalists never really are. this is of course not to say that we’re all mistreated, all the time; it’s just something that female journalists are aware of, the way most women are aware of sexism in general.

section three: realism, and also, hey, maybe don’t do this? just because it’s both unrealistic and like. kinda sexist undertones imo

hoo boy. i’m just gonna take it down the list of some popularized media portrayals of journalists that you might be familiar with and outline why each one is, well..... Not My Favorite?

camille preaker, sharp objects

i do really like gillian flynn’s work, especially gone girl, but camille preaker just rubs me the wrong way? it primarily comes from the ethics involved in her whole situation, and i know they did it for ~drama, but it just... okay, here we go. for starters, you would probably not go out drinking with a source, unless it’s at an event, and you definitely don’t get drunk. you try not to interview people you have personal ties to, because the bias can infiltrate through your work. you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT sleep with your source, especially if he is a member of the police force and a primary source on the murder investigation you’re looking into. just...yeah, those two are the main things?

rita skeeter, harry potter

ugh, the way that rowling painted the daily prophet rubs me the wrong way. like, i understand, and i know that it’s probably more a mention of tabloid culture than like News, but it still just?? it’s the primary news source of the wizarding world?? really?? but yeah, sneaking into places (hospitals especially) to get a story is a massive no-no that would immediately get you arrested.

joan calmezzo, parks and rec

look, i know it’s a comedy, and i know that it’s not realistic, and i know that there is definite semblance for the “alcoholic journalist” thing (an editor i worked for once talked about how her old boss hid a flask in the water fountain in city hall so that he’d be able to get it and drink on the job) and statistically, it does show that journalists turn to sugar/alcohol/caffeine, but i just?? journalists wouldn’t show up to work absolutely blacked out, and if they did they’d definitely get fired.

rory gilmore, gilmore girls

the way rory approaches job hunting makes me cringe down to my very soul. in the original series, from what i’ve seen, she approaches it relatively well (applies everywhere she can, networks, ends up accepting a relatively small job that still provides a massive opportunity to report on a major political figure) but in the revival. who DID that. rory sleeps with a source (WHAT IS IT WITH FEMALE JOURNALISTS ALWAYS SLEEPING WITH SOURCES IN TV SHOWS AND MOVIES?!??!?!!? NO!!!!!!!!!) and falls asleep in the middle of an interview (N O !!!!!) and seems to not understand the concept of freelancing at all (really????? you aren’t working on multiple stories at once??? really????) and also just??? completely disrespects the basic semblance of a job interview??? no matter how impressive your resume is, you still come prepared with ideas and answer questions and no job is OWED to you, especially not with journalism being as competitive as it is, just????

the movie “absence of malice”

i know this one is probably less common, as it’s a movie from the ‘80s, but i still wanna talk about it anyway. sometimes, yes, you write about suspects of murder on the front page of the paper, but federal prosecutor’s don’t usually leak info like That (though rosen is obviously corrupt) and you just?? okay, anyway, carter not revealing her source is good, that’s what a journalist would do, however, teresa perrone disclosing personal information and pleading for her not to include it definitely falls under the realm of an anonymous source. the primary aspect of journalism is “do no harm,” and since disclosing what perrone told her would have harmed her livelihood, carter absolutely either shouldn’t have put it in or made perrone an anonymous source. then we get back to the whole dating sources thing (YOU DON’T DO IT!!!!!!) and then you don’t REVEAL THE SOURCE THAT HURT THIS MAN, OH MY GOD, you still have an obligation to protect your sources!!!! also just generally just!!! this movie does explore a lot of ethical journalistic issues but the sloppy reporting in it just puts me On Edge, ya know?

[vmheadquarters]

By Alexis Soloski

When we last saw Veronica Mars, the greatest private investigator Southern California has ever birthed and tanned — shut it, Philip Marlowe — she had ducked a corporate law job and returned to Neptune, her beachside hometown, resolved to defend the weak, defy the powerful, wisecrack with the best of them. Happily ever after, on her terms.

But why be happy when you can be hard-boiled? As Veronica’s inventor Rob Thomas said, “Happy and noir don’t go well together.”

“Veronica Mars,” a snappy, sophisticated crime drama about a high school P.I., debuted in 2004 and ran for three critically celebrated but lightly watched seasons, first on UPN and then on CW, returning in 2014 for a fan-funded movie.

That seemed to be the end of it. Its star, Kristen Bell, continued a successful film and TV career. Thomas went on to create and run “iZOMBIE.” But you know the noir trope where a character thinks she has outrun her past and then the past comes on at a sprint? It applies.

In a genre-appropriate twist, the show is back, revamped for the streaming age. An eight-episode fourth season will drop on July 26 at Hulu, where the first three seasons are already available.

Reboots and revivals are as thick on the ground as Neptune beachgoers. A long-gone show that returns after so many years with its original cast, led by Bell’s Veronica, and its distinguishing style (think Dashiell Hammett after a few blender drinks) mostly intact? That’s rarer, and not without its dangers.

Continuing a beloved series after so many years risks tarnishing its legacy. (If we’re being honest, the uneven third season was risk enough.) Besides, how do you make a show about a child prodigy when that child prodigy can apply for a fixed-rate mortgage?

The season’s big mystery, according to Thomas: Is a 30-something Veronica Mars “an interesting enough character on her own to continue to attract fans?”

A few weeks ago, I met Bell on a gloomy June afternoon in her trailer on the Universal lot, an overheated box befrilled in demoralizing beige. She was in the middle of a shoot for her other show, “The Good Place,” and had two caffeinated drinks going, which partly explained the pep. (The messianic zeal she feels for Veronica explained the rest.) In her costume, a lilac sweater over an embroidered blouse and green chinos, she looked about as noir as an Easter basket.

And yet “Veronica Mars,” she said, is the show that launched her, that shaped her, that taught her comedy and responsibility and a commitment to social justice. She will quit it, she said, when everyone in Neptune is dead.

“That’s when I’ll do it,” she said, pushing her cane-sugar soprano into a lower register. “That’s when I will let her go: When the last body is buried.”

“Veronica Mars,” which The Times described, on a list of the 20 best TV dramas since “The Sopranos,” as “a peerless blend of neo-noir mystery and teenage romantic drama,” was always a show ahead of its time. Its heroine, 17 when the show began, looked like a Barbie and scrapped like a G.I. Joe. She was as quick with a comeback as with the Taser she called Mr. Sparky, but still vulnerable to problems personal and systemic.

More politically minded than your average teen soap, “Veronica Mars” had love triangles and cliffhangers and, from its first episode, a sustained interest in wealth inequality. In its depiction of gendered violence, it anticipated much of the #MeToo conversation.

“It continually kept questions about gender inequality in view,” said Susan Berridge, a lecturer in media at the University of Stirling who has written about the series. “There were so many story lines involving sexual violence and other forms of gendered abuse that it became impossible to see these issues as one-off aberrations.”

If you don’t identify as a Marshmallow, the name ride-or-die “Veronica Mars” fans adopted, here’s the back story: A onetime popular girl, Veronica became an outcast when her best friend Lilly was murdered and Veronica’s father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni), then Neptune’s sheriff, mistakenly accused the town’s most powerful man. Keith lost his job and his home. Veronica’s mother deserted the family. Her former friends ostracized her. During a party, she was drugged and raped by persons unknown. At some point she gave herself a terrible haircut.

“It was an adult show about a teenage girl,” Mr. Colantoni said, speaking by telephone. “This wasn’t ‘Saved by the Bell.’”

During the first two seasons, Veronica would solve episodic mysteries while also seeking justice for Lilly and for herself. The third season, which brought Veronica to college, dispensed with the case-of-the-week in favor of longer arcs. It also assigned Veronica a nice-guy boyfriend, Stosh “Piz” Piznarski (Chris Lowell), though most fans shipped her and the poor-little-rich-boy Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring).

Facing cancellation, Thomas tried to interest networks in a revival that saw Veronica working for the F.B.I. No one bought it. Presumed dead, “Veronica Mars” was briefly resurrected when Thomas decided to try crowdfunding a movie. He raised $2 million in less than five hours, drawing the highest number of donors for any film or video project in Kickstarter history.

“Veronica Mars” the movie may not have been a masterpiece — The Times called it “a likable, unmemorable, feature-length footnote” — but it melted the gooey hearts of most Marshmallows. Thomas and Bell could have let their gumshoe-made-good ride into the sunset in her secondhand car, placating the fans with the occasional tie-in novels Thomas co-writes. (“‘Co-writer’ is being generous to me,” he clarified.)

But last year, Thomas called Bell and asked her if she would consider playing Veronica again. It was a big ask: Bell had already committed to a final season of “The Good Place” and a “Frozen” sequel. Also, noir involves night shoots and Bell has two young daughters, which means a lot of missed bedtime.

Weighing the commitment, Bell recalled asking herself, “Do I want a world where my daughters know she exists? Or do I think there’s enough out there for them to look to?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “And I thought, yeah, I have to do it.”

And — “this is going to sound so corny,” Bell added — she still needs “Veronica Mars” in her life, even after all this time and all her success. The show gives her a place to put both her anger at a world that is still unequal and unjust, and her faith that individuals and communities can make it better.

“Just knowing Veronica exists has allowed me to pull strength in certain situations,” she said.

This installment picks up five years after the film ended, with Veronica sleuthing alongside her dad at Mars Investigations and living, reward check to reward check, in the oceanside apartment she sometimes shares with Logan, now an active-duty naval intelligence officer. There are a few B- and C-plots, but mostly Veronica works just one case involving a series of bombings threatening Neptune’s spring breakers.

Thomas and Bell, an executive producer, chose the eight-episode format partly because that’s all Bell’s “Good Place” schedule allowed, but also because they were impressed by what shows like “Fargo” and “Sherlock” were able to do in short seasons. They sold the show to Hulu, which was also able to acquire the past seasons. Craig Erwich, Hulu’s senior vice president of originals, described the revival as “an opportunity to see a beloved character grow up.”

Unlike the movie, this new season doesn’t pander — a few Marshmallows may feel scorched. The emphasis on wealth inequality and structural bias is, if anything, starker. The moral palette is grayscale, and the tone (Thomas described it on Twitteras “Hardcore So-Cal noir”) is dark, though maybe not that dark. “There are a lot of jokes,” Thomas said. “I don’t think we can go full ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’”

Though the earlier seasons of “Veronica Mars” shot in San Diego, the show relocated its exteriors to Huntington Beach, nearer to Los Angeles, where Bell lives. Certain sets, like the Mars Investigations office, have been faithfully re-created and shouldn’t upset continuity hard-liners, though Thomas is wary of checking his Twitter feed once the episodes drop.

The dialogue has stayed slangy. “What’s with the fakeloo, our mark’s no Jasper,” Keith scolds Veronica in the fourth episode. (Among this season’s writers: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “It never got normal,” Thomas, a basketball fan, said worshipfully.) And Veronica can swear now, though not much. The sex scenes are a little more explicit, the relationships a little more complicated and the emotions real, just like they used to be. “Even when we were teenagers, we all meant it,” Dohring said.

Here’s the big change: A former child prodigy who could out detect men decades older, Veronica has become age appropriate, maybe even immature when it comes to her personal life. (If the series followed real time, Veronica would now be about 32, but these episodes edge her into her mid-30s, closer to Bell’s age.) Thomas wondered if her superpowers — her bravery, her righteous anger, her lack of interest in what others think of her — would seem as impressive on an adult woman. (Speaking as an adult woman: Yes.)

I spoke to Thomas on the telephone a few hours before I met with Bell. Before we hung up, I asked him what he thought I should ask her.

“Ask for her window of availability in 2020,” he said. “That’s what I want to know.”

So I did. Bell told me she had set aside a few months next spring to shoot a follow-up. “As long as people want to watch it, I will do it,” she said. (Hulu is “definitely open to the discussion” about making more of the show, Erwich said.)

But here is what I wanted to know. As a viewer, I’d grown up with Veronica, too. And I’d looked to her as a character who had survived trauma and had accepted how that trauma had changed her, without ever having to sacrifice her humor or her mean-street smarts or her self-confidence. “Veronica Mars was this girl that other girls and boys could look to as an option of what to do with pain, and how not to let it sink you,” Bell said.

So would she ever get that pony? Would we ever see her happy?

“I don’t think we want to,” she said, speaking as Marshmallow in chief. “We want to see her match lit. We want to keep her fight in her. When she’s truly content, the story will be over.”