#the 2010s are revived at last

[kgdanny02]

Twillight shirts in Bershka?!

[goatgutzupon]

the wonderful world of LOLLIGAG!!

[fridaynightplacebo]

[creativeashproductions]

Murder Mysteries and Afterlife Businesses // Wally Clark

IN WHICH: Maddie Nears is unaware of one ghost at Split River High School with the connections to help after dead end after dead end. The issue? Well the reader hasn’t stepped in the school since 2013 due to a certain dead jock.

Warnings: Swearing, angst, mention of murder, ghosts and some fluff

Words: 2.7k

A/N: Reader’s nickname is Renaissance since she’s an artist! Renai is pronounced Ren-ah. Reader is a twin!

I could be persuaded to make a part 2 (or more parts).

Masterlist | Next Part

The frustration of dead ends for the mystery behind Maddie was driving her crazy. The inability to leave the school property left Maddie placing a lot of trust and lack of control in other people’s hands. And most of the ones involved had no clue Maddie was wandering the school in the afterlife. And Maddie thus far only trusted 25% of the Scooby Gang attempting to get answers.

There was really only one person in the afterlife with better ways of providing new avenues of searching. But it’s difficult when a metaphorical cavern between two ghosts prevents it.

“Well, Cherrypop, if you want the behind-the-scenes exclusive, maybe you should visit Wally’s girlfriend.” Rhonda’s lips were twisted in a smirk. Her beret sitting prettily on her curls.

Maddie’s blue eyes fled one ghost for the one shifting on his chair in the library space. The support group ended thirty minutes ago, but Maddie needed more information.

“Girl-“

“Rhonda, seriously.” Wally groaned, flopping back on the couch and staring up at the speckles of some mysterious substance on the ceiling, “We’re on a break.”

“For the last ten years.” Charley supplied, flinching when Wally pinched his leg.

Wally’s mouth opened to reply before closing, “She doesn’t want to speak to me.”

Once upon a time, Split River High School had a bludgeoning art studio and an excellent program. You dabbled in many different art forms, but following an unfortunate fire, the program perished, along with the studio and you. The school had rebuilt the studio with better fire-resistant products and attempted to revive the program. It failed ultimately. Even the art scene didn’t want to work in the same building where two students and a teacher had perished. So the program was shifted to a wing inside the school.

Out of sheer surprise, the building was sealed off and avoided by everyone but the janitor.

You and Brady had built a moderately successful afterlife business creating different objects. Then, you were commissioned by the fellow dead to make blankets and pottery around the holidays and birthdays. You barely left the studio, and then you met Wally.

Split River High School, 2010

Your face glanced down at the watch on your wrist before shifting the blanket in your arms around. You were running behind delivering the blanket to Mina. How humourous that even in death, you were always running late.

Typically Brady was the one to deliver items while you stayed in the art studio working. But, unfortunately, the delivery date for Mina fell on the annual day he deemed his ‘day off’ to mourn his life.

And to think you were the theatre kid with how dramatic he could be.

“Why the hell do I need to deliver this. Mina barely likes me and- OH!” You exclaimed, slamming into the linoleum ground.

“Shit!”

You grunted when a body fell right onto your body, “Jesus, dude!”

The other person rolled off to stare at the ceiling in pain. His eyes scrunched closed and curled in the fetal position.

“Watch where you’re going, meathead!” You exclaimed, sitting up to grab the blanket lying on the ground. You didn’t give the guy another glance while you carefully folded the blanket back up and fixed the card on top.

“I’m dead. Why does getting kneeled in the balls still hurt?” He wheezed, slowly rolling to sit up. You knew even with him sitting, he was tall and a jock, given the varsity jacket he wore bearing the older mascot the school retired years ago.

“God, I am so giving Brady garbage duty for the next month!” You huffed, turning to look him in the face properly, “You are so glad this was breaka….”

Wally knew of the afterlife business conducted out of the building on the far corner of the school’s property. Knew that Charley had gotten the coffee mug Wally got for Christmas a few years prior. While Rhonda had tall, thick walls, and sarcasm adored the bracelet Janet had given her. Wally had just never had a reason to go there. He’d seen one of the twins delivering items, but he never saw the other twin. You.

“Hi.” Wally breathlessly spoke, instantly falling for the person standing before him. Regardless of the harsh glare, he quickly scooped the items from your arms, “Let me help.”

And for some reason, you let him. He held the door open to the theatre for you and listened intently to everything you said. It was an instant connection. A friendship with the potential of more.

Wally became a new feature in the art studio while Brady and you worked. He was with the twins when he wasn’t at the support group or on the field. It didn’t take long before Wally asked you out.

And for three years, you built an afterlife together. Until it fell apart in 2013.

For the last decade, you had become more reclusive than previously, partially due to running Highlands House alone without Brady and partly to avoid running into Wally. An ache swelled, thinking of the tall brunette.

You shoved the thought of him aside to focus on the handmade journal Rhonda had commissioned. You’d worked hard to develop the craft of making your own paper and enjoyed it when she popped in when you asked to go over the cover details.

When Brady was still here, you worked more on having clients come to the studio, but you’d managed to get a phone. It was hard to get and used for clients to contact with requests for appointments and contact.

As you said. You’d become reclusive.

So when the knock on the door happened, your eyebrows raised. Your e/c eyes glance at the calendar on the desk. Not a single appointment for today and one known visits you. If Mina left the theatre, you had a feeling she would.

“Renai?”

Your eye quite literally twitched hearing his voice. You kept silent.

“I know you’re there, Renai. I can hear the kiln, and I know you barely move your eyes away from it when it’s firing!”

No matter how much you wanted to slam Rhonda’s notebook on the floor, you refrained. Instead, you smoothed your hair and took a deep breath before striding out of the workroom to the front office. The lock clicked open, and you saw Wally standing there with Charley behind him.

“Hi.” Charley’s smile was watery at best. The apology clears in his expression.

“You so afraid of seeing me you brought backup.” You inquired through the open space between the edge of the door and the jam.

“I think you’re less likely to punch me with him here.” Wally returned with a half smile. His brown eyes watched your lips twist.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for Charley.” Although you admitted opening the door to the duo standing outside, “I wouldn’t punch you. I need my hands.”

You ignored the feeling Wally’s chuckle brought you by leading them to the small sitting room you’d set up. You’d barely sat in the chair with drinks in hand. Tea for Charley, a Gatorade for Wally and your beverage of choice.

“What made you crawl out of whatever hole you’ve been hiding in for the last decade.” You questioned, “Because Charley was here last week to get Mr. Martin’s mug. By the way, how’d he like it, Charley?”

“He loves it.” Charley quietly interjected decidedly, trying to avoid the quarrel he hoped would end sooner rather than later.

Yet it still smouldered.

“It’s not like you’d left the buil-“

“Not like I have a choice.” You shut Wally’s question down. He winced, nodding, “I’m guessing this is more of a business trip than personal.”

Wally nodded. Charley delved into the story of the newest member of Split River Afterlife and the mystery of her death. You didn’t know who this Maddie was, and that was primarily due to how you kept away from the living world.

“So she was murdered in the boiler room.” You finished for Charley, “And you’ve found out she can talk with the living.”

“And I was wondering if you could check in with Jo-“

Your eyes left Charley’s calm ones to Wally’s sitting there in the audacity he had. The cup in your hand slammed against the table so hard you wondered how it hadn’t shattered.

“Are you shitting me, Clark? You come here after so many damn years because you need something from me?!” You exclaimed, taking a step away from your ex-boyfriend.

Charley bit his lip like the meme he saw on Emilio’s phone of Michael Scott from The Office. Charley really didn’t like confrontation all that much. But look where it got him.

“It’s just I feel for her, you know. We all came to the afterlife knowing what happened. And she’s suddenly dead with no idea how or who did it. She’s all alone, and I think you two-“Wally pleaded, attempting to step closer.

“And whose fault is it I’m alone.” You snapped. Wally flinched back, and Charley gasped, “Please leave. I have work to do.”

You fled for the workroom leaving the two in the sitting area digesting what had happened. Charley guided Wally from the building toward the library, where they had left Rhonda and Maddie alone.

“I knew me going was a bad idea. She hates me. Still.” Wally moaned, collapsing onto the couch to sling his arm across his eyes.

“Blowout?” Rhonda ignores the lump of an athlete on the couch.

“Explosive.” Charley replied, turning to ask Maddie, only to find the place empty, “Uh… where’s Maddie?”

You’d slapped the closed sign on the door before stalking away from it and the memories. A trinket is nimbly held by your fingerprints. But, despite wanting to rebel against Wally’s request, you couldn’t ignore the guilt of even considering not helping.

“Joel!” You shouted near the edge of the school property. The chain link fence is the physical evidence of where the property was cut off from the forest. You hated coming to this part because you could feel the eyes of the dead watching from the shadows.

A tall, lanky form materialized from behind one of the trees. He was wearing the sweater you’d swiped from the lost and found. His red hair was as bright as the fire extinguished in the kiln.

“Renaissance,” Joel responded, coming to the chainlink fence. His hand held out for the stamp you’d pay with for any information.

Life was easier when money was accessible. Now instead of cash, it was trading items and favours. Paying for information was more complicated, and Joel didn’t require new clothing as of yet.

“Have you heard anything about the recent disappearance of Madison Nears? She goes by Maddie.” You questioned, stepping away before his skin could brush yours. You hated the screams you audibly heard each time you felt his skin or even his clothes.

Joel curiously looked over the stamp, “I do not have this stamp.”

Getting information from Joel was more challenging than pulling teeth. You loathed any time you lost a piece of leverage for information. It is tough to find stamps the soldier hadn’t collected in the last century and a half since the Civil War.

“Joel.” You huffed, bringing the soldier’s attention back to you.

“I have not. The death of Maddie Nears is no more significant than that of a deer.” Joel responded, looking up to meet the disappointment on your face, “You are kind to me and my fellow soldiers in the face of our part in the Civil War. I shall gather information for you.”

You watched silently as Joel faded into the shadows of Split River’s forest bordering the school grounds. The unease of his presence followed him as well.

Working on any Highlands projects was illogical with how distracted you were. Wally appearing after so long had indeed thrown you for a loop. You were sure everyone would understand things being late by a day.

“You never did tell me where you got this.” Mr. Martin announced from his spot at your desk. His eyes scanned the phone lying facedown on the table.

Your spine stiffened, seeing the ghost in your safe place. The afterlife teacher, slash support group leader, had always rubbed you the wrong way. Something about him felt off, but you could never put your finger on it.

“You evade every question I have.” You deflected grabbing the phone from the desk to lock away in the filing cabinet, “What can I do for you, Mr. Martin?”

“I’m wondering how your grief eased after seeing Mr. Clark so much you agreed to help him. You know this misguided wild goose chase is destructive to Maddie acknowledging and accepting her death.” Mr. Martin replied, dragging a finger down one of the planting pots you had on display. Your flesh goosed seeing his finger disrupt the pottery.

Your laser focus is pinned on Mr. Martin, “Everyone copes differently.”

“And how are you coping with Brady crossing over?” Mr. Martin demanded, turning to face you fully.

Brady’s name, let alone the question, felt like Mr. Martin was shoving a red-hot poker in a wound.

“Fine.” Your features shuttered close from the prodding, “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave Mr. Martin. Highlands House is closed.”

You had never distrusted someone more than the teacher, leaving your business and home with confidence.

“Remember our agreement Renaissance.”

The nickname you’d gained in the afterlife felt comfortable hearing from him. You refused to speak more to the teacher.

Walking the halls of the high school’s main building felt odd after so long. It still smelt of a mixture of questionable cafeteria food, BO, and unrecognizable scents. Little had changed. You couldn’t tell if you felt comforted by that or not.

“-she’s a loner.” Charley’s voice drifted into the library’s opening as you entered quietly.

“All the more reason to talk to her!”

The object of your mission cradled delicately in your hands. The heads of the ghosts in attendance; Charley, Rhonda, Wally and the new girl, you guessed.

“Rhonda, I have your journal ready.” You notified the group but focused on the teen kneeling before the coffee table.

“You’re Renaissance. You own Highlands House.” The blonde female declared, leaning forward, “Have you learnt-“

“Maddie. Manners.” Charley ground his teeth together in a small that bordered more on a grimace, “I’m so sorry, Renai.”

You waved it off, “Hello, Maddie. Welcome to Split Valley afterlife. I haven’t gotten anything from my contact yet, and I’ve received no messages from other ghosts in town. So I’m just here to drop off Rhonda’s journal and head back to the studio. Unfortunately, the ghost who died in Mr. Anderson’s house crossed over a few months ago.”

With that, you turned on your heel and made it a handful of steps down the hall when Wally called out. Then, your feet abruptly stopped striding from the library.

“You haven’t made a delivery since Brady crossed over. You have one of the freshmen help out. What brought you to the school?”

“Curiosity more than anything. Strengthen the relationship with the customers.”

“Bullshit.” Wally spoke, stepping closer to you, “You know something.”

“Nothing of importance yet. It’s hard to get information when and I quote, ‘her is no more significant than that of a deer’. It’s not like she doesn’t have eternity to figure it out.”

“She shouldn’t have to wait that long for answers,” Wally argued, crossing his arms and stretching the white t-shirt under the varsity jacket.

Your e/c eyes scrutinized the jacket you’d worn often during your relationship with the brunette. The dances you’d attended with him and cheering from your spot in the stands for homecoming. Getting to know Mrs. Clark, albeit her being unaware of yours or Wally’s presence and holding him the fifth anniversary, his dad stopped coming.

You’d loved, and if you were to admit it, still loved Wally Clark in every atom of you. But the pain of losing Brady and Wally’s involvement cut deep. You weren’t ready to forgive. You didn’t know if you would ever be able to forgive him.

You cleared your throat, “I’ll let you all know if I hear any news. Be easier if Maddie had someone from her life helping.”

You didn’t see the guilt appear on his features.

“For what it’s worth, Renai. Thank you for helping.”

Your soft smile was answer enough for the football player and reignited his mission to have you forgive him. And rekindle your relationship. Wally wasted enough time with you.

Tag List: Let me know if you want to be tagged!

@websterss

[digimonarchive]

Digimon in all animated media - Anime, Movies and OVA

1st pic = Digimon Adventure anime (Japan: March 7, 1999 - March 26, 2000; USA: August 14, 1999 - June 24, 2000)

2nd pic = Digimon Adenture 02 anime (Japan: April 2, 2000 - March 25, 2001; USA: August 19, 2000 - May 19, 2001)

3rd pic = Digimon Tamers anime (Japan: April 1, 2001 - March 31, 2002; USA: September 1, 2001 - June 8, 2002)

4th pic = Digimon Frontier anime (Japan: April 7, 2002 - March 30, 2003; USA: September 9, 2002 - July 14, 2003)

5th pic = Digimon Savers / Data Squad anime (Japan: April 2, 2006 – March 25, 2007; USA: October 1, 2007 - November 2, 2008)

6th pic = Digimon Xros Wars / Fusion anime (Japan: July 6, 2010 - March 25, 2012; USA: September 7, 2013 - August 16, 2015)

7th pic = Digimon Xros Wars: The Evil Death Generals and the Seven Kingdoms anime (a.k.a Digimon Xros Wars part 2) (Japan: April 3, 2011 - September 25, 2011; USA: March 8, 2015 - August 16, 2015) **

8th pic = Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time anime (a.k.a Digimon Xros Wars Hunters or Digimon Xros Wars part 3) (Japan: October 2, 2011 - March 25, 2012) ***

9th pic = Digimon Adventure Tri OVA (Japan: November 21, 2015 - May 5, 2018; USA: September 15, 2016 - September 20, 2018)

10th pic = Digimon Universe Appli Monsters anime (a.k.a Appmon) (Japan: October 1, 2016 - September 30, 2017)

11th pic = Digimon Adventure: (a.k.a Digimon Adventure 2020 or Digimon Adventure reboot) (Japan: April 5, 2020 - September 26, 2021; USA: November 19, 2022 - April 13, 2023)

12th pic = Digimon Ghost Game (Japan: October 3, 2021 - March 26, 2023)

13th pic = Digimon Adventure (Movie) short film (Japan: March 6, 1999; USA: October 6, 2000 as the first segment part of Digimon The Movie)

14th pic = Digimon Adventure: Our War Game! movie (Japan: March 4, 2000; USA: October 6 2000 as the second segment part of Digimon The Movie)

15th pic = Digimon Adventure 02: Vol. 1: Digimon Hurricane Landing!/Vol. 2: Transcendent Evolution! The Golden Digimentals movie (a.k.a Digimon Adventure 02 Vol 1 and 2) (Japan: July 8, 2000; USA: October 6, 2000 as the third segment part of Digimon The Movie) ****

16th pic = Digimon Adventure 02: Diablomon Strikes Back / Digimon: Revenge of Diaboromon movie (Japan: March 3, 2001; USA: August 5, 2005)

17th pic = Digimon Tamers: The Adventurers' Battle / Digimon: Battle of Adventurers movie (Japan: July 14, 2001; USA: October 16, 2005)

18th pic = Digimon Tamers: The Runaway Digimon Express / Digimon: Runaway Locomon movie (Japan: March 2, 2002; USA: October 2, 2005)

19th pic = Digimon Frontier: Revival of the Ancient Digimon!! / Digimon: Island of Lost Digimon movie (Japan: July 20, 2002; USA: October 23, 2005)

20th pic = Digital Monster X-evolution movie (Japan: January 3, 2005; USA: August 1, 2020)

21st pic = Digimon Savers The Movie: Ultimate Power! Activate Burst Mode!! movie (Japan: December 9, 2006)

22nd pic = Digimon Adventure 3D: Digimon Grandprix! short film OVA (Japan: July 20, 2000)

23rd pic = Digimon Savers 3D: The Digital World in Imminent Danger! short film OVA (Japan: July 8, 2006)

24th pic = Digimon Adventure 20th Anniversary Memorial Story Project OVA short films (Japan: November 22 2019 - December 25, 2020)

25th pic = Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna movie (Japan: February 21, 2020; USA: September 29, 2020)

26th pic = Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning movie (Japan: October 5, 2023; USA: November 8, 2023)

** This is the 2nd part of Digimon Xros Wars saga with Taiki, Kiriha and Nene on their adventure while Akari and Zenjirou are left out.

*** This is the 3rd part of Digimon Xros Wars saga with Tagiru, Yuu and Taiki as the protagonists. This 3rd part has the overly long title so we fans prefer to call it 'Digimon Xros Wars: Hunters' or 'Digimon Young Hunters'.

**** Yes, this movie has an overly long title. I had a hard time deciding whether to highlight it in bold or not.

Happy Digimon Day!

[sunburnacoustic]

(via fuckyesmuse)

[romyandalain]

Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, 1963

“Romy and Alain’s love was an impossible love that consumed them, leading them to hurt each other deeply, with the world around them offering no support, only adding to their struggles…

…I had a brief affair With Delon, in 1964. he had just broken up with Romy, he was melancholy and eager to forget… he loved her whole his life... From there I followed him to Paris for a few weeks. It lasted a breath of time. That summer he got married, I consoled myself traveling around Europe with Friends…even though he's always had ups and downs and it’s not easy to be close to him. It’s as if his complicated childhood and adolescence had the power to resurface at any moment, disturbing the balance of the successful adult, in a continuous struggle with himself…

Delon sought to rekindle his relationship with Romy by making the film "La Piscine." For both of them, it was a way to revive a story that had captivated the world of cinema and resulted in a film that still speaks of jealousy and pain without losing any of its original power.

A few years after The Swimming Pool, I saw Romy again in the Capitale, discovering that the young girl who had been Sissi had become a more confident and sophisticated woman, terribly beautiful... Romy tried to seduce me, but not for a role of course, but simply because because she enjoyed seducing… once through our mutual friend, the designer Jil Sander, she had asked to meet me, but the great love story I was living with Florinda Bolkan (Brazilian actress) prevented me from pursuing her…

I would see her again much later, still with that persistent undercurrent of melancholy, as if she sensed that happiness was not her destiny. The same shadow of melancholy that I still see in Alain today. Perhaps, by bringing them together in the theater in that distant 1961, Luchino had sensed that, despite certain differences, their talent and personalities fused in the most natural way. And they always ended up seeking each other out again….”

Marina Cicogna Volpi, producer (e.g., Belle de Jour), from articles and her memoirs, 2010, 2012, and 2024.

[australiansanta]

no fucking way you're 30. last time i saw your blog you were like 20 something and not even out i don't think.... no yeah, i'm right. you started posting in 2010 and I started following you for years in like 2013 on my old account. i know we're all just silly blogs but I really enjoyed your blog so much for years when i used tumblr regularly as a teen. Wow. Glad your still around. Absolutely love you still have the Redux theme btw lol. So do I.

no i KNOWWWWW tell me about it!! i feel literally 19????

i didn’t use tumblr much for ages😭😭

i was in a super toxic relationship with someone who was just suchhhh bad news from when i was like 22-29. still recovering LMFAOOO we have a dog together tho so i still have to see him weekly. he was sooo much older than me too omg the power dynamic was fukd

and yeah i don’t think i even came out on here til like 2017 or something?!! i mean u all prob guessed it but i had 0 desire to do it like i was like i don’t owe anyone this info

anyway i wanna start using tumblr more bc i didn’t use social media much when i was w my ex and feel like i missed out on a lot

sucks that tumvlr is dead now but maybe we can revive it lmfso i miss having a corner of the internet where everyone gets it and there’s no normies

also redux theme til i die sis

[sunniedesi]

Future Diary Light Novel (thoughts/ short TL)

It’s common for light novels to receive manga or anime adaptations in order to introduce the series to a wider public. What’s not so common is for the reverse to happen, though with a series as popular as Future Diary was back in the early 2010’s, it’s only natural that a light novel was among the many adaptations it received. Said adaptation was released in 2012 and written by the author Itou Nobuki (who, according to his MAL profile, hasn’t worked on any other piece). The light novel was divided into two books, and each chapter contains unique artwork done by Masahiko Yoshihara. The art is also the only different/new thing the light novel adds to this series. 

The general consensus on the light novel is that it’s a retelling of the manga, which other than giving you a little more insight on the characters’ thoughts, doesn’t add anything new. I decided to give it a read to confirm this myself, and… I have things to say (spoilers for the LN ahead… and Future Diary too, duh).

First and foremost, the notion that the light novel adds nothing new is mostly correct, save for the prologue and epilogue. The prologue introduces the reader to ““Deus,”” who is experiencing some form of memory loss and is now being guided by MurMur through the Akashic Records to remember the events of the Survival Game. The novel then goes over the events we already know from the series all the way up to 9th’s death… where it suddenly ends. Yes, the novel ends with 9th’s death and jumps straight to the epilogue, where ““Deus”” informs the reader that he cannot recall the events after that, because it physically hurts him to remember.

That’s when we get the revelation that this isn’t Deus we’re dealing with, but Yukiteru, who has taken on Deus’ role after winning the Survival Game. Apparently, he’s experiencing problems with his memory similar to Yuno’s due to the trauma of losing her, so to further help Yukiteru remember the ending of the Survival Game, MurMur gives him Yuno’s diary, from which he gathers the final details. From there on, the events carry out similar to Redial, where the last entry in Yukiteru’s diary gets rewritten to “Yuno’s coming to see me.” Yuno then magically appears and it’s happily ever after and blah blah blah…

While I found the prologue and epilogue to be insightful in terms of giving us more details about the ending, I was pretty confused that the novel left out the most crucial aspects of the story. Everything from episode 22 and on from the anime (or the last two volumes of the manga), which includes: Yukiteru killing his friends, Yukiteru finding out that the dead cannot be revived, Happy End, time loop plot twist (which is the pillar the story is built upon btw), the final battle between Yukiteru, Yuno and the 9th… and the list goes on. If someone who hasn’t read the manga or watched the anime read this as a stand-alone piece, they’d be left scratching their heads at the epilogue. 

The novel makes you raise all the questions that would lead to the eventual plot twist, simply to end with said questions unanswered. And if you think this is weird, it’s because it is. The author himself acknowledges this on the author’s notes at the end of the novel. He explains that the light novel was set out to be a two-parter from the very beginning, meaning he couldn’t extend it to fit all aspects from the manga. Which is understandable; however, he deliberately chose to end it with 9th’s death because he "wanted to leave the story at its climax for the epilogue."

Look, I understand this man was working with what he was given, but if he really wanted to blue-ball the audience, he could’ve at least tried to fit the revelation of the time loop before cutting to the epilogue. You know, so the story actually makes some sense? The epilogue casually mentions the second and third world as if it's something that's been brought up before, when this is the first and only time it's mentioned. Anyway, I’m going off on a rant here. I’m very particular about pacing and structure in writing, so seeing something like this really grinds my gears (especially since I wanted to see the events from the final episodes novelized).

With that out of the way, I did translate a little bit of the light novel since there’s no official translation out there, namely the prologue, chapter 1 and the epilogue. I’m not planning on translating the rest of the novel since it’s basically a retelling, but I did find those parts to be interesting enough to translate, given that the prologue and epilogue delve into Yukiteru’s ten thousand years of solitude. 

Now that I have my little rant/ translation projects of the week out of the way, I’ll go back my cave ~

[big-idiot-wolf-boys]

Ok wait this series also goes off the rails in a different way than twilight and idk if I'll finish it but the first four books fuck hard

Ok twilight fans. Go run and get yourself a copy of Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire/Thirst series. We briefly get the vamp in high school trope actually done with an understandable motive, way better action and general vamp stuff, interesting lore, and a suspiciously fast growing perhaps vampire baby done way better and actually portrayed to be horrific. Seriously underrated series, go check it out!!

[s10127470]

My Wolverine and the X-Men Rewrite (Part 1)

I'm sure many of you are familiar of Wolverine and the X-Men, as it was the last major animated series based on Marvel's merry band of mutants before X-Men '97 came out....

And before Marvel entered their infamous "anti-mutant" phase of the 2010s.

(If you don't count the X-Men Anime, which was a mini-series.)

Premiering back in 2009 on the somehow still-existing Nicktoons Network, the series is about the X-Men disbanding after a mysterious explosion results in the destruction of the Institute and the disappearance of Charles Xavier and Jean Grey.

About a year later, the team ended up reuniting for two major reasons.

The MRD (short for the Mutant Response Division), a government-supported organization created for the detainment and subsequent registration of existing mutants, begin capturing mutants from all over the country. Not only that, but they’ve even taken humans as prisoners as well just for helping mutants.

Charles Xavier, who the team find out is actually alive but in a coma resting on Magneto’s island nation of Genosha. Xavier is able telepathically communicate with the team from, in the words of Squidward….

Essentially, the explosion resulted in Xavier’s psyche being flung 20 years into the future. And Xavier himself won’t be awakened from his coma until those 20 years pass. Meanwhile, in the future, Xavier is awake, but finds himself constantly trying to survive as the future he’s in is absolute shit.

Being a loose adaption of Days of Future Past, the future Xavier’s in is one where the Sentinels have conquered the world after a war that broke out between the Master Mold program and Genosha.

In the end, nobody won.

As in this future, humanity has essentially been wiped out and mutants are on the verge of extinction, being placed in concentration camps.

But there is some hope....

Xavier in the future has formed a new X-Men team as it’s revealed that all of the original team are now dead. This new team consists of the likes of Bishop (who’s was one of the many mutants unfortunate enough to be born into this life instead of being a police officer from the distant future), an older Domino (whose present self is an enemy of the X-Men as she’s a member of the Brotherhood), and Marrow (who isn’t a member of the Morlocks).

Since Xavier is able to communicate with his past X-Men, he wants them to ensure that this future never happens.

So now, the reunited X-Men must face on the MRD, stop whatever plans Magneto has up his sleeves this time, and prevent the dark future from happening.

And all with Wolverine being the leader.

Yep! Wolverine is the leader of the X-Men as of right now as Cyclops is not doing so well….at all.

But in addition to those two, the rest of the X-Men consists of Storm, Beast, Nightcrawler, Iceman, Shadowcat, Angel, Forge, and newcomer Emma Frost.

WAXTM is notable things for two things.

It was also shortest-lived of the shows, only lasting 1 season of 26 episodes, which ran through the year of 2009, from January 23rd to November 29th.

This would be the sort-of beginning of an all-new shared animated universe known as the Yostverse, which consisted of the Hulk vs. Films, Thor: Tales of Asgard, and most notably, The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The reason I say sort-of beginning because one of the shows that’s supposedly a part of this universe is The Spectacular Spider-Man, which came out almost a year before this show did. But that’s a discussion in itself.

Ever since its cancellation, WAXTM has gained a following and has become one of the many animated shows that got cancelled too soon and has led thousands of fans clamoring for a revival.

And to this day, people consider the show an underrated gem.

But I'm gonna have to come out and say it.....

Wolverine and the X-Men is not exactly a good show....

It's not bad by any means, but does have a lot of flaws.

And while it did do some things right, it wasn't quite to the extent of X-Men Evolution and especially X-Men: The Animated Series.

So today I want to discuss how I would rewrite the show. Keeping what worked about the show and either strengthen or removing what didn't.

And for this rewrite, be prepared to expect changes in characterizations, looks and even voices!

For the first part of this rewrite, we'll be covering the first three episodes of the show, Hindsight: Parts 1, 2 and 3.

And for this version of the show, all 3 of episodes would premiering on the exact same night: January 23rd, 2009.

Essentially, Wolverine and the X-Men's premiere in this AU would be a full-on TV movie!

This would be similar to what Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends did as when they first premiered, they had the first three episodes packed into a TV movie.

And one last thing, I would like to credit synergysilhouette as my main inspiration for this post, as he also shared his own idea on rewrite Wolverine and the X-Men as well.

So with that being said, let's get this party started!

First thing we need to get out of way that this show would not be called "Wolverine and the X-Men".

As that title is undoubtedly emblematic of the show's greatest flaw: the focus on Wolverine.

It's pretty obvious that the original series was riding on the coattails of the X-Men films, which Wolverine was not only the most popular character of, but the essentially the main character (and the only one that really mattered, much to the detriment of basically everyone else.).

Made more obvious with the fact that it premiered just four months before his long anticipated solo film.

Yeah, we all know how well that turned out....

Apparently, when WAXTM was first conceived, it was initially meant to be solo cartoon for Wolverine.

At least in the eyes of the executives...

But to the directors and producers, this was meant to be another X-Men cartoon.

In the end, the two sides essentially came to a compromise: the show would have the X-Men as its main cast, but Wolverine would be the focal character of the show.

Everyone has already said it before, but it does bare repeating.

The X-Men are suppose to be an ensemble. It shouldn't focus on just one character and essentially make everyone else irrelevant.

For this rewrite, the show's name would be changed to "X-Men Destiny", which I feel like fits perfectly with the premise of the series.

Next we come to the tone and style. This was another area where the influence from the films is quite obvious.

Just like the FOX films, Wolverine and the X-Men is notably more serious and gloomy than most other X-Men media, even the comics at some points.

It's somewhat melodramatic and there's rarely ever a sense of levity or humor to lighten things up

I'm admittedly not a fan of this style. I understand the X-Men are a little more serious when compared to other characters of the Marvel universe, but I don't think they need to be this overly serious.

I feel like the core of the X-Men, in spite of the all bullshit they deal with, they still persevere and keep their heads up no matter what.

So for this version of the show, the tone will be a little more light-hearted.

There will actually be humor present and some characters will be the resident comic reliefs.

But don't worry, the show will still take itself seriously when it needs to.

But another area the show would see change in is the art-style.

For this version of the show, the character designs would be done by ZyalahDoodles.

She’s an artist here on Tumblr who has done some redraws and redesigns for WAXTM.

I really like her style. It strikes that balance between being similar to the original art style while still being somewhat different. And if anything, it’s actually an improvement over the original style, especially when look at characters like Quicksilver. 

Like Jesus Christ, he was hideous in the original!

I know he’s suppose to be Magneto’s son, but you didn’t need to make him look as old as him too! 

Like Zyalah’s Quicksilver can actually get it.

If you want to check out more of her art, here’s the link to her page below.

Next we come to the roster.

Overall, it's largely the same as in the original except we would see the addition of one more character.

And that's none other than the steel-skinned gentle giant himself, Colossus!

Not only because he's one of my favorite X-Men, it's also because he's honestly kind of deserves it.

For those who don't know, despite only appearing in the prologue of the first episode, Colossus was weirdly in a lot of promotional material and merchandising for the show.

Apparently he was suppose to return to the X-Men following the explosion, but the producers decided not to do that and just save him for the planned season 2.

I'm guessing that the promotional material and merchandising started production during the early development of the show and before everything got finalized.

And thus, it's why a lot of this stuff still shows Colossus as a main character.

It's similar to what happened with The Simpsons, as during its early years, a lot of merchandising featured Bart famously wearing a blue shirt instead of his trademark red shirt.

But now that we got our roster out of the way, let's talk about the characters.

Specifically, their voices, appearances and ages.

In terms of voices, just about everyone still have their respective VAs in this version....except for two of the X-Men.

Those two being Iceman and Rogue.

Iceman would be voiced by Jason Marsden, replacing Yuri Lowenthal.

But don't worry, Yuri would be still in this version of the show, but as a different character (who we'll get to shortly).

And Rogue would be voiced by Melissa Disney, replacing Kieren van den Blink.

As for appearances, synergysilhouette brought up how a little wonky the builds of the characters were.

Like some of the males had buff upper bodies but surprisingly thin torsos and legs, and the females were pretty paper thin.

Like, we're talking almost VivziePop thin, specifically in the leg area.

The only part of them that wasn't thin were their chests....

Who designed these girls? Greg Land?

So yeah, in this version of the show would fix some of those designs.

Particularly putting a little more meat on the females.

I guess you could say I made them....

But for the builds of the X-Men.

Wolverine has a stocky and muscular build.

Cyclops is lean but athletic.

Emma Frost has an hourglass figure with a more top-heavy build.

Storm also has an hourglass figure, with an all-around build.

Beast...basically looks the same as he does in the original show.

So does Nightcrawler, Angel, Colossus, Iceman, Shadowcat and Forge (expect he'll actually have tanned skin)

And Rogue has a similar build to Storm.

Apart from the builds, the X-Men look largely the same as in the original show.

Though Cyclops and Rogue would definitely be getting a serious hairdo.

Since let's be real, their haircuts were pretty awful in the original show, especially Rogue's.

Cyclops' new hair would look just how it does in Zyalah's piece I showed earlier, and Rogue would have much longer hair.

As for heights, the X-Men are pretty accurate to those from the comics.

Yes, and that does include Wolverine.

However, there is one exception to this and that's with Beast.

I've always felt that Beast definitely should be a much taller character than he actually is.

(He's canonically 5'11)

But despite that, in the more recent comics, he's always shown as being bigger than most of the other X-Men.

So here, Beast is like 6'5.

As for their outfits...

Wolverine, Storm, Emma, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Angel, Rogue and Forge would be wearing the exact same outfits they did in the original show.

Beast as well, but he would also be sporting goggles this time.

(He just looks so right with them).

Iceman would wearing a modified version of his outfit from the show.

It would have a light blue and dark blue color scheme, short pant-legs and no shoes.

Shadowcat would be wearing her outfit from the Astonishing X-Men run.

And Cyclops, well....

This what he'll be wearing.

If you collected any Marvel merchandising during the 2000s, you've most definitely seen this look before.

It's kind of like an combination between his 90s outfit and his Astonishing outfit.

And in all honesty, it's really cool looking.

But weirdly enough, he's never wore this any iteration outside of the merchandising.

So I figured.....

Finally, we come to the ages of the X-Men.

I'm reason I'm bringing this up is because of the episode, Breakdown.

In that episode, we take a look into Cyclops' past, and just like in the comics, the X-Men originally started off with the original five.

And we can clearly see that they're teenagers.

But this becomes an issue when take Iceman into account.

In the second episode when Wolverine and Beast come to recruit him, the latter mentions to his parents that Iceman is now 18.

Which would mean that three years have past since the X-Men formed.

And since the estimated age difference between the original five is that Beast is older than Cyclops, Jean and Angel by 2 years and Iceman is younger than them by 2 years, that would mean that Cyclops, Jean Angel are around 19-20 and Beast is around 21-22.

And yeah, there's is no way in hell that's the case.

I could definitely see them being in their 20s, but like mid-to-late 20s.

Definitely not early 20s!

Here, it would be established that the X-Men have been around for about 8 years, including after the explosion.

As for the ages of the team.

We all know Wolverine is old as hell!

Cyclops, Jean and Angel are 24.

Emma is 29.

Storm is 26.

Beast is 27.

Nightcrawler is 22.

Colossus, Rogue and Forge are 20.

And Iceman and Shadowcat are 18.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's go ahead and talk about the episodes themselves!

Hindsight: Part 1

This episode is largely the same, but there would be a few changes.

-All of the X-Men would be present in the prologue. Iceman would training in The Danger Room with Shadowcat, Colossus and Nightcrawler, Forge would be working on a new device while ignoring the cries for help from the four after getting trapped, and Angel would be seen spending them with Storm.

-We would get the establishment of where everyone else is once Wolverine and Beast reunite. Cyclops has living in a rundown apartment by himself, Storm moved back to her village in Kenya, Angel has been working at his father's company, Iceman and Shadowcat moved back in with their parents, Colossus moved back to his family's farm in Russia, and nobody's heard from Nightcrawler or Rogue. As for Beast, he's been hanging at what's left of the mansion with Forge, working together to see what caused the explosion in the first place.

-Speaking of Forge, he would be helping out Wolverine and Beast with their break-in. And also, and more importantly, Forge's characterization is much different. Here, he's basically like Sokka and Velma, being the team's resident tech-genius and total smartass.

-Pyro wouldn't be one of the mutants freed when Wolverine, Beast and Forge free the prisoners. Instead, his place would be taken by Jubilee (voiced by Janice Kawaye). She would end up staying with the X-Men, kick-starting one of the storylines for this series. As for her characterization, it's pretty accurate to how she is in the comics. In terms of overall physical appearance and age: she's about 15, has a slightly petite build, black hair in a bob-cut style, pink lips, brown eyes, stands at 5'1, and wears a modified version of her classic 90s outfit. It's largely the same, except with a navel-bearing shirt, fingerless gloves and sneakers.

Hindsight: Part 2

Once again, largely the same with a few changes.

-The Brotherhood has two new additions from the original version in the form of Pyro and Gambit. Yep! Gambit is a member of Brotherhood in this version of the show, as it would set up his eventual turnover to the X-Men and his romance with Rogue. And in typical Gambit fashion, he'll definitely be laying his Cajun charm on Rogue immediately. As their voices, all of them remain the same except for Quicksilver, Toad and Pyro. Quicksilver would be voiced by Yuri Lowenthal (I told you we would be coming back to him!), Toad would be voiced by Danny Cooksey, and Pyro would be voiced by John Kassir. Also, Toad will be British. Yeah, remember when he used to have a British accent?

-Cyclops' characterization. One of the biggest flaws of the original show was how Cyclops was characterized. In the original, he was intolerant, depressed grub. I get that he's grieving over the loss of Jean, but man. It's hard for us to feel sorry for the guy when he's constantly being angry and angsty. He may've not been done as dirty when compared to the Fox films, but this version of the character isn't too far behind. But here, Cyclops is will actually remain as the leader of the team, and his big story of the season (apart from the obvious) is him grappling with whether or not he still has what it takes to be leader again. And along with that, he isn't gonna nearly as angry and angsty as he was in the original. However, he will still be grieving and his depression will be shown in a way where we actually sympathize with him. This would be first shown when Wolverine tries to recruit him and after blasting him out of his room. And although he starts off looking down at Wolverine angry at first, but once he leaves, his expression eventually turns into one of regret.

Hindsight: Part 3

Just like with the last two, it's mostly the same with one notable exception.

-When the X-Men meet Emma for the first time, their reactions are a little different. Angel isn't smitten by her at all, as he already has a special somebody (i.e. Storm). But Iceman still is. But he's not the only one. The other would be Shadowcat. Yep! In this show, Shadowcat and Iceman are both, in the words of NSYNC....

Well that's all I have for now.

Let me know what you guys think about this rewrite. And if you could, give me some ideas on how the rest of the series should play out!

But anyway, I'm gonna go play some X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse....

Peace out, yo.

[operafantomet]

Do you have any other photos of the shawl Meg wears during "Notes"? I'm trying to recreate it and there are different versions but I'm struggling to find pictures that are better than my blurry screenshot so I thought I'd ask the expert. Many many thanks!

I think the good news is that there isn't one specific look. It depends on what version of the shawl you are looking for, which production, which actress, as the shawls come in many forms and colours. Note that it's only in the West End revival and the Restaged Tour that she use the shawl in the managers office. In the original staging it's only done for the Sitzprobe. Which in turn means that the typical Primadonna lineup looked like this:

While the new West End revival lineup looks like this:

They do the same in the Restaged Tour, so I assume it's a clue or two picked up from there. The Restaged Tour has used many different colours for the shawl - originally black, then blue, now pink. The latter is in sync with the West End revival.

The shawl itself, in the original staging, is usually knitted or crocheted, sometimes more lace-like or embroidered silk, with or without fringes, usually cream, sometimes grey or beige.

Janet Devenish, original West End 1986:

Kelsey Connolly, Broadway 2019:

...Paloma Garcia Lee in the US Tour 2010:

...and Kara Klein on Broadway 2012:

Emma Harris, West End 2009:

Georgia Ware, West End 2016:

A similar one, albeit with more structure, could be seen in the South Korean revival 2023, as worn by Cho Ha Rin:

And a plainer floral one worn in Essen, Hamburg, Oberhausen and Sao Paulo - here seen on Theano Makariou in Hamburg 2013:

Last but not least this, worn by Tandi Meikle in South Africa 2004 and later by other World Tour Megs:

For the West End revival they did a more pinkish tone to the shawl Ellie Waite and later Maiya Hisaka wore:

I am almost tempted to think they dyed an elder cream shawl, as it looks very similar to the one Heidi Ann O'Brien wore some 12 years ago, give or take the fringes:

But then an additional change for Maiya Hisaka in 2024, as they fitted her with what looks like a pink embroidered Chinese silk shawl, similar in style to Christine's Aminta shawl. This is what she wore for the West End Live performance:

And here's a better view of the details:

In other words: Unless you are determined to recreate one specific shawl, you have quite the leeway to recreate the look. They come in many textures, patterns and colours. As long as it is square and preferably with some fringes or outline, it is a recognizable look.

A last note: The shawl is usually fastened in a much-used period way. Fold it in half (making a triangle), place it over the shoulders with the large point down the back, and bring the ends over the chest and tie them in the back. For this to be comfortable it's a good idea to stick to a knitted or crocheted shawl, or an elastic material.

Best of luck with the making / sourcing!

[lizardsfromspace]

The last survivor of the mid-2010s sitcom revival boom is really gonna be the Roseanne one, which is entering its sixth season without Roseanne in it, and is still a show that exists, apparently?

[katvenus]

My girl, my girl, don’t lie to me, tell me where did you sleep last night…

[glassprism]

hey there! i just read your post about musical bootlegs, and you mentioned that some filmers just disappeared. do you have any examples? i'd love to learn more about the history of bootlegging

Oh, that would probably be a really long list. I'll just note some of the most well-known ones that occurred during my time trading (so post-2011), whether within the trading community or in Phantom. Keep in mind too that some filmers disappear for a long while only to make a return; I won't be listing them since they're still around in some form. I'm also not going to name many of them because, well, safety, but you might be able to tell who they are based on the bootlegs I list as theirs.

One of the first is a filmer who filmed, among other things, the last show of Phantom's 3rd national tour, the video of Chris Mann and Katie Travis in Phantom, and the complete video of Dallas's modernized version of Les Miserables. They're well known to me because they actually posted their releases on Tumblr for a time, only to get harassed out because people kept yelling at them for bootlegging or selling bootlegs. They disappeared shortly thereafter; not sure if it's related to what happened to them on Tumblr, but it was a loss because I believe they were situated on the West Coast, whereas most other US filmers are in the East Coast, around Broadway, so we lost someone who could film productions in LA, San Francisco, and the tours.

Another who disappeared shortly thereafter was someone who was, well, a prolific filmer of many shows on Broadway and occasionally tours all over the US and was active since at least the mid-2000s. If you've watched, I don't know, the Cooper Grodin restaged tour videos, the original Broadway cast of Hamilton, the original Broadway cast of the 2nd revival of Les Miserables, any of those, you've seen their videos. From what I've gathered, they experienced some personal issues that caused them to take a break from filming and they have not returned since.

Also happening around the same period of time was another, mainly Broadway-based filmer who also did a few videos on the West End. (They filmed a video of Ben Crawford with Ali Ewoldt as well as the video of David Thaxton and Kelly Mathieson.) My recollection is that this person experienced a lot of leaks of their videos, causing them to take stricter and stricter measures in an effort to stop that, which culminated in them leaving altogether. Them leaving along with the two above contributed in some part to the dearth of bootlegs you see in the... late 2010s or so, at least with Phantom, because they were some of the most prolific filmers around. It wouldn't be until after COVID-19 that I saw a resurgence of filmers on Broadway.

Going back in time a bit! If you ever look at trading lists, you might see that there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of videos from the Broadway production of Phantom from 2012-2015 or so. That's almost entirely due to two filmers who were also very active on Tumblr and were based in NYC and went quite often to catch various understudies, swings, and unusual cast combinations. Both have since left filming, though in their case, it's at least partially because they're working in the theater industry in some capacity now.

And onto more depressing cases... there were a couple of filmers based in Europe, I think Germany or Austria, though they definitely made trips to other countries. They filmed several of the Phantom Hamburg revival videos, a lot of Elisabeth videos, and a number of the West End Les Miserables videos (if you see one that's heavily focused on Anton Zetterholm - yeah, that's one of theirs, that filmer was a fan). Unfortunately both were... I think either arrested or had their homes raided (or both) and collections confiscated, and while I think they were released, you can bet that put them off filming.

Finally and most recently, that I know of, the filmer who got the one complete video of Jonathan Roxmouth in the World Tour was caught and has not done any filming since, obviously. That was a shame as well because they had been planning to get more videos of the World Tour with the various alternates and understudies, but of course that never happened.

So that's a few, there's way more around, but I was just trying to think of some of the most prolific recorders around.

[tutyayilmazz]

The sheer number of older and more experienced professionals involved in Måneskin introduces a tension between the rock conventions that characterize their songwriting and the fundamentally pop circumstances under which those songs are produced. They are four friends in a band, but that band is inside an enormous machine. From their perspective, though, the machine is good.

The American visitor to Rome arrives with certain preconceptions that feel like stereotypes but turn out to be basically accurate. There really are mopeds flying around everywhere, and traffic seems governed by the principle that anyone can be replaced. Breakfast is coffee and cigarettes. Despite these orthopedic and nutritional hazards, everyone is better looking — not literally everyone, of course, but statistically, as if whatever selective forces that emerge from urban density have had an extra hundred generations or so to work. And they really do talk like that, an emphatic mix of vowels, gestures and car horns known as “Italian.” To be scolded in this language by a driver who wants to park in the crosswalk is to realize that some popular ideas are actually true. Also, it is hot.

The triumphant return to Rome of Måneskin — arguably the only rock stars of their generation, and almost certainly the biggest Italian rock band of all time — coincided with a heat wave across Southern Europe. On that Tuesday in July the temperature hit 107 degrees. The Tiber looked thick, rippled in places and still in others, as if it were reducing. By Thursday morning the band’s vast management team was officially concerned that the night’s sold-out performance at the Stadio Olimpico would be delayed. When Måneskin finally took the stage around 9:30 p.m., it was still well into the 90s — which was too bad, because there would be pyro.

There was no opening act, possibly because no rock band operating at this level is within 10 years of Måneskin’s age. The guitarist Thomas Raggi played the riff to “Don’t Wanna Sleep,” the lights came up and 60,000 Italians screamed. Damiano David — the band’s singer and, at age 24, its oldest member — charged out in black flared trousers and a mesh top that bisected his torso diagonally, his heavy brow and hypersymmetrical features making him look like some futuristic nomad who hunted the fishnet mammoth. Victoria De Angelis, the bassist, wore a minidress made from strips of leather or possibly bungee cords. Raggi wore nonporous pants and a black button-down he quickly discarded, while Ethan Torchio drummed in a vest with no shirt underneath, his hair flying. For the next several minutes of alternately disciplined and frenzied noise, they sounded as if Motley Crüe had been cryogenically frozen, then revived in 2010 with Rob Thomas on vocals.

That hypothetical will appeal to some while repelling others, and which category you fall into is, with all due respect, not my business here. Rolling Stone, for its part, said that Måneskin “only manage to confirm how hard rock & roll has to work these days to be noticed,” and a viral Pitchfork review called their most recent album “absolutely terrible at every conceivable level.” But this kind of thumbs up/thumbs down criticism is pretty much vestigial now that music is free. If you want to know whether you like Måneskin — the name is Danish and pronounced MOAN-eh-skin — you can fire up the internet and add to the more than nine billion streams Sony Music claims the band has accumulated across Spotify, YouTube, et cetera. As for whether Måneskin is good, de gustibus non est disputandum, as previous Italians once said: In matters of taste, there can be no arguments.

You should know, though, that even though their music has been heard most often through phone and laptop speakers, Måneskin sounds better on a soccer field. That is what tens of thousands of fans came to the Stadio Olimpico on an eyelid-scorching Thursday to experience: the culturally-if-not-personally-familiar commodity of a stadium rock show, delivered by the unprecedented phenomenon of a stadium-level Italian rock band. The pyro — 20-foot jets of swivel-articulated flame that you could feel all the way up in the mezzanine — kicked in on “Gasoline,” a song Måneskin wrote to protest Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. From a thrust platform in the center of the field, David poured his full emotive powers into the pre-chorus: “Standing alone on that hill/using your fuel to kill/we won’t take it standing still/watch us dance.”

The effect these words will have on President Putin is unknown. They capture something, though, about rock ’n’ roll, which has established certain conventions over the last seven decades. One of those conventions is an atmosphere of rebellion. It doesn’t have to be real — you probably don’t even want it to be — but neither can it seem too contrived, because the defining constraint of rock as a genre is that you have to feel it. The successful rock song creates in listeners the sensation of defying consensus, even if they are right in step with it.

The need to feel the rock may explain the documented problem of fans’ taste becoming frozen in whatever era was happening when they were between the ages of 15 and 25. Anyone who adolesced after Spotify, however, did not grow up with rock as an organically developing form and is likely to have experienced the whole catalog simultaneously, listening to Led Zeppelin at the same time they listened to Pixies and Franz Ferdinand — i.e. as a genre rather than as particular artists, the way my generation (I’m 46) experienced jazz. The members of Måneskin belong to this post-Spotify cohort. As the youngest and most prominent custodians of the rock tradition, their job is to sell new, guitar-driven songs of 100 to 150 beats per minute to a larger and larger audience, many of whom are young people who primarily think of such music as a historical artifact. Starting this month, Måneskin will take this business on a multivenue tour of the United States — a market where they are considerably less known — whose first stop is Madison Square Garden.

“I think the genre thing is like ... ” Torchio said to me backstage in Rome, making a gesture that conveyed translingual complexity. “We can do a metaphor: If you eat fish, meat and peanuts every day, like for years, and then you discover potatoes one day, you’ll be like: ‘Wow, potatoes! I like potatoes; potatoes are great.’ But potatoes have been there the whole time.” Rock was the potato in this metaphor, and he seemed to be saying that even though many people were just now discovering that they liked it, it had actually been around for a long time. It was a revealing analogy: The implication was that rock, like the potato, is here to stay; but what if rock is, like the potato in our age of abundance, comparatively bland and no longer anyone’s favorite?

Which rock song came first is a topic of disagreement, but one strong candidate is “Rocket 88,” recorded by Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythym band in 1951. It’s about a car and, in its final verse, about drinking in the car. These themes capture the context in which rock ’n’ roll emerged: a period when household incomes, availability of consumer goods and the share of Americans experiencing adolescence all increased simultaneously.

Although and possibly because rock started as Black music, it found a gigantic audience of white teenagers during the so-called British Invasion of the mid-1960s (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who), which made it the dominant form of pop music for the next two decades. The stadium/progressive era (Journey, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner) that now constitutes the bulk of classic-rock radio gave way, eventually, to punk (the Ramones, Patti Smith, Minor Threat) and then glam metal: Twisted Sister, Guns N’ Roses and various other hair-intensive bands that were obliterated by the success of Nirvana and Pearl Jam in 1991. This shift can be understood as the ultimate triumph of punk, both in its return to emotive content expressed through simpler arrangements and in its professed hostility toward the music industry itself. After 1991, suspicion of anything resembling pop became a mark of seriousness among both rock critics and fans.

It is probably not a coincidence that this period is also when rock’s cultural hegemony began to wane. As the ’90s progressed, larger and again whiter audiences embraced hip-hop, and the last song classified as “rock” to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 was Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me” in 2001. The run of bands that became popular during the ’00s — the Strokes, the Killers, Kings of Leon — constituted rock’s last great commercial gasp, but none of their singles charted higher than No. 4. Let us say, then, that the era of rock as pop music lasted from 1951 to 2011. That’s a three-generation run, if you take seriously rock’s advice to get drunk and have sex in the car and therefore produce children at around age 20. Baby boomers were the generation that made rock a zillion-dollar industry; Gen X saved it from that industry with punk and indie, and millennials closed it all out playing Guitar Hero.

The members of Måneskin are between the ages of 22 and 24, situating them firmly within the cadre of people who understand rock in the past tense. De Angelis, the bassist, and Raggi, the guitarist, formed the band when they were both attending a music-oriented middle school; David was a friend of friends, while Torchio was the only person who responded to their Facebook ad seeking a drummer. There are few entry-level rock venues in Rome, so they started by busking on the streets. In 2017, they entered the cattle-call audition for the Italian version of “The X Factor.” They eventually finished as runners-up to the balladeer Lorenzo Licitra, and an EP of songs they performed on the show was released by Sony Music and went triple platinum.

In 2021, Måneskin won the Sanremo Music Festival, earning the right to represent Italy with their song “Zitti e Buoni” (whose title roughly translates to “shut up and behave”) in that year’s Eurovision Song Contest. This program is not widely viewed in the United States, but it is a gigantic deal in Europe, and Måneskin won. Not long after, they began to appear on international singles charts, and “I Wanna Be Your Slave” broke the British Top 10. A European tour followed, as well as U.S. appearances at festivals and historic venues.

This ascent to stardom was not unmarred by controversy. The Eurovison live broadcast caught David bending over a table offstage, and members of the media accused him of snorting cocaine. David insisted he was innocent and took a drug test, which he passed, but Måneskin and their management still seem indignant about the whole affair. It’s exactly this kind of incongruous detail — this damaging rumor that a rock star did cocaine — that highlights how the Italian music-consuming public differs from the American one. Many elements of Måneskin’s presentation, like the cross-dressing and the occasional male-on-male kiss, are genuinely upsetting to older Italians, even as they seem familiar or even hackneyed to audiences in the United States.

“They see a band of young, good-looking guys that are dressing up too much, and then it’s not pure rock ’n’ roll, because you’re not in a garage, looking ugly,” De Angelis says. “The more conservative side, they’re shocked because of how we dress or move onstage, or the boys wear makeup.”

She and her bandmates are caught between two demographics: the relatively conservative European audience that made them famous and the more tolerant if not downright desensitized American audience that they must impress to keep the ride moving. And they do have to keep it moving, because — like many rock stars before them — most of the band dropped out of high school to do this. At one point, Raggi told me that he had sat in on some classes at a university, “Just to try to understand, ‘What is that?’”

One question that emerged early in my discussions with Måneskin’s friendly and professional management team was whether I was going to say that their music was bad. This concern seemed related to the aforementioned viral Pitchfork review, in which the editor Jeremy Larson wrote that their new album, “RUSH!” sounds “like it’s made for introducing the all-new Ford F-150” and “seems to be optimized for getting busy in a Buffalo Wild Wings bathroom” en route to a score of 2.0 (out of 10). While the members of Måneskin seemed to take this review philosophically, their press liaisons were concerned that I was coming to Italy to have a similar type of fun.

Here I should disclose that Larson edited an essay I wrote for Pitchfork about the Talking Heads album “Remain in Light” (score: 10.0) and that I think of myself as his friend. Possibly because of these biases, I read his review as reflecting his deeply held and, among rock fans, widely shared need to feel the music, something that the many pop/commercial elements of “RUSH!” (e.g. familiar song structures, lyrics that seem to have emerged from a collaboration between Google Translate and Nikki Sixx, compulsive use of multiband compression) left him unable to do.

This perspective reflects the post-’90s rock consensus (PNRC) that anything that sounds too much like a mass-market product is no good. The PNRC is premised on the idea that rock is not just a structure of song but also a structure of relationship between the band and society. From rock’s earliest days as Black music, the real or perceived opposition between rocker and society has been central to its appeal; this adversarial relationship animated the youth and counterculture eras of the ’60s and then, when the economic dominance of mass-market rock made it impossible to believe in, provoked the revitalizing backlash of punk. Even major labels felt obliged to play into this paradoxical worldview, e.g. that period after Nirvana when the most popular genre of music was called “alternative.” Måneskin, however, are defined by their isolation from the PNRC. They play rock music, but operate according to the logic of pop.

In Milan, where Måneskin would finish their Italian minitour, I had lunch with the band, as well as two of their managers, Marica Casalinuovo and Fabrizio Ferraguzzo. Casalinuovo had been an executive producer working on “The X Factor,” and Ferraguzzo was its musical director; around the time that Måneskin broke through, Casalinuovo and Ferraguzzo left the show and began working with the stars it had made. We were at the in-house restaurant of Moysa, the combination recording studio, soundstage, rehearsal space, offices, party venue and “creative playground” that Ferraguzzo opened two months earlier. After clarifying that he was in no way criticizing major record labels and the many vendors they engaged to record, promote and distribute albums, he laid out his vision for Moysa, a place where all those functions were performed by a single corporate entity — basically describing the concept of vertical integration.

Ferraguzzo oversaw the recording of “RUSH!” along with a group of producers that included Max Martin, the Swedish hitmaker best known for his work with Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. At Moysa, Ferraguzzo played for me Måneskin’s then-unreleased new single, “Honey (Are U Coming?)” which features many of the band’s signature moves — guitar and bass playing the same melodic phrases at the same time, unswung boogie-type rhythm of the post-Strokes style — but also has David singing in a higher register than usual. I listened to it first on studio monitors and then through the speaker of Ferraguzzo’s phone, and it sounded clean and well produced both times, as if a team of industry veterans with unlimited access to espresso had come together to perfect it.

The sheer number of older and more experienced professionals involved in Måneskin introduces a tension between the rock conventions that characterize their songwriting and the fundamentally pop circumstances under which those songs are produced. They are four friends in a band, but that band is inside an enormous machine. From their perspective, though, the machine is good.

“There’s hundreds of people working and talking about you and giving opinions,” De Angelis said at lunch. “So if you start to get in this loop of wanting to know and control and being anxious about it, it really ruins everything.” Here lies the conflict between what the PNRC wants from a band — resistance to outside influences, contempt for commerce, authenticity as measured in doing everything themselves — and what any sane 23-year-old would want, which is to have someone with an M.B.A. make all the decisions so she can concentrate on playing bass.

The other way Måneskin is isolated from the PNRC is geographic. Over the course of lunch, it became clear that they had encyclopedic knowledge of certain eras in American rock history but were only dimly aware of others. Raggi, for instance, loves Motley Crüe and has an album-by-album command of the Los Angeles hair-metal band Skid Row, which he and his bandmates seemed to understand were supposed to be guilty pleasures. But none of them had ever heard of Fugazi, the post-hardcore band whose hatred of major labels, refusal to sell merchandise and commitment to keeping ticket prices as low as possible set the standard for a generation of American rock snobs. In general, Måneskin’s timeline of influences seems to break off around 1990, when the rock most respected by Anglophone critics was produced by independent labels that did not have strong overseas distribution. It picks up again with Franz Ferdinand and the “emo” era of mainstream pop rock. This retrospect leaves them unaware of the indie/punk/D.I.Y. period that was probably most important in forming the PNRC.

The question is whether that consensus still matters. While snobs like Larson and me are overrepresented in journalism, we never constituted a majority of rock fans. That’s the whole point of being a snob. And snobbery is obsolete anyway; digital distribution ended the correlation between how obscure your favorite band was and how much effort you put into listening to them. The longevity of rock ’n’ roll as a genre, meanwhile, has solidified a core audience that is now between the ages of 40 and 80, rendering the fan-versus-society dimension of the PNRC impossible to believe. And the economics of the industry — in which streaming has reduced the profit margin on recorded music, and the closure of small venues has made stadiums and big auditoriums the only reliable way to make money on tour — have decimated the indie model. All these forces have converged to make rock, for the first time in its history, merely a way of writing songs instead of a way of life.

Yet rock as a cluster of signifiers retains its power around the world. In the same way everyone knows what a castle is and what it signifies, even though actual castles are no longer a meaningful force in our lives, rock remains a shared language of cultural expression even though it is no longer determining our friendships, turning children against their parents, yelling truth at power, et cetera. Also like a castle, a lot of people will pay good money to see a preserved historical example of rock or even a convincing replica of it, especially in Europe.

In Milan, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees, and Måneskin’s show at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza — commonly known as San Siro, the largest stadium in Italy, sold out that night at 60,000 — was threatened by thunderstorms instead of record-breaking heat. Fans remained undaunted: Many camped in the parking lot the night before in order to be among the first to enter the stadium. One of them was Tamara, an American who reported her age as 60½ and said she had skipped a reservation to see da Vinci’s “Last Supper” in order to stay in line. “When you get to knocking on the door, you kind of want to do what you want,” she said.

The threat of rain was made good at pretty much the exact moment the show began. The sea of black T-shirts on the pitch became a field of multicolored ponchos, and raindrops were bouncing visibly off the surface of the stage. David lost his footing near the end of “I Wanna Be Your Slave,” briefly rolling to his back, while De Angelis — who is very good at making lips-parted-in-ecstasy-type rock faces — played with her eyes turned upward to the flashing sky, like a martyr.

The rain stopped in time for “Kool Kids,” a punk-inspired song in which David affects a Cockney accent to sing about the vexed cultural position of rock ’n’ roll: “Cool kids, they do not like rock/they only listen to trap and pop.” These are probably the Måneskin lyrics most quoted by music journalists, although they should probably be taken with a grain of salt, considering that the song also contains lyrics like “I like doin’ things I love, yeah” and “Cool kids, they do not vomit.”

“Kool Kids” was the last song before the encore, and each night a few dozen good-looking 20-somethings were released onto the stage to dance and then, as the band walked off, to make we’re-not-worthy bows around Raggi’s abandoned guitar. The whole thing looked at least semichoreographed, but management assured me that the Kool Kids were not professional dancers — just enthusiastic fans who had been asked if they wanted to be part of the show. I kept trying to meet the person in charge of wrangling these Kool Kids, and there kept being new reasons that was not possible.

The regular kids, on the other hand, were available and friendly throughout. In Rome, Dorca and Sara, two young members of a Måneskin fan club, saw my notebook and shot right over to tell me they loved the band because, as Sara put it, “they allow you to be yourself.” When asked whether they felt their culture was conservative in ways that prevented them from being themselves, Dorca — who was 21 and wearing eyeglasses that looked like part of her daily wardrobe and a mesh top that didn’t — said: “Maybe it turns out that you can be yourself. But you don’t know that at first. You feel like you can’t.”

Here lies the element of rock that functions independently from the economics of the industry or the shifting preferences of critics, the part that is maybe independent from time itself: the continually renewed experience of adolescence, of hearing and therefore feeling it all for the first time. But how disorienting must those feelings be when they have been fully monetized, fully sanctioned — when the response to your demand to rock ’n’ roll all night and party every day is, “Great, exactly, thank you.” In a culture where defying consensus is the dominant value, anything is possible except rebellion. It must be strange, in this post-everything century, to finally become yourself and discover that no one has any problem with that.