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cutiecorner · 1 year

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Happy Holidays everybody! I hope everyone is having a wonderful season! Since I recently got an ask about my personal reqs for where to start with batman, as a Christmas gift to me and y'all I'm finally making a curated list of my favorite batman media! This is 100% skewed to me, it's essentially just a list of all the batman stuff I've consumed, but I might throw in a few others for folks with different tastes! Also, most of these can be found on HBOmax as of now, but I'm including links to where you can watch online where possible! See you under the cut for a very, VERY long guide! Enjoy!

TV!

Hands down, the definitive piece of batman TV is Batman: The Animated Series. Soooo much iconic batman stuff was coined in this show. Also, it has hands down the best characterization of Bruce himself imo. If you're getting into Batman due to dadfred & babybat, here's a list of standout episodes for you!

Beware the Grey Ghost: A whole episode about Bruce's childhood special interest. You even get to see actual baby Bruce!

Eternal Youth: Absolutely precious Alfred episode, with Ivy as the villain no less. Sooooo many adorable moments, like, I don't even wanna spoil it. Just watch it.

Heart of Ice: For one, an absolutely excellent episode of television, and also a tooonnn of cute Alfred and Bruce moments!! Real dad moments for sure.

Harley's Holiday: 100/10 episode in general, and full of Harley and Bruce moments!!

The Lion and the Unicorn: Another Alfred focused episode!! Bruce Dick and Al being famiwy...

I have more, but those are a good place to start. Have a fave villain? Watch all their eps!! Discover new ones! Watch it from the beginning! Watch around and see what floats your boat. There's a redesign in season 3 (The New Batman Adventures) and they bring in a littler robin, Tim Drake. Warning for TNBA in general though, they tease at some really uncomfortable relationships here and there. But overall it has a lot to offer!

After btas I started on Justice League (2001)! I super love it, I adore the other members of the league so much and there's plenty of interesting stories. Justice League Unlimited is great too! Fantastic Bruce/Diana stuff, even though I'm not big on the ship their interactions are beyond precious. These are ensemble pieces so they're not all bats, but they're highly recommended if you're interested!

For some quick silly adventures, Justice League Action is fantastic! It's super funny and cute. There's plenty of batman centric episodes, and it's super lighthearted and fun! No robins or alfred in any of the Justice Leagues (very sparcely in JL/JLU) though, unfortunately. Speaking of silly fun batman shows: Batman the Brave and the Bold is a total blast! There's soooo many heroes in it, if you like any other DC characters there's a good chance they appear!

I just recently got into The Batman (2004), and it's really growing on me! The first season especially is really creative and cool. It's a younger take on batman, and it has seeerrious early 2000s boy/Ben ten/bionicles energy lol, but if that's nostalgic for you you'll LOVE it.

If you like adult cartoons, Harley Quinn is pretty good and funny! Of course it's about Harley and her gang over the bats, and the first season especially can get kinda ick in the adult cartoonyness, but by the third season it gets great (VERY good Bruce stuff in the third season! Honestly in all the seasons). Overall I definitely think it's worth a watch. It is not appropriate for kids though, make sure to look up warnings! If you're especially sensitive to gore/violence maybe skip it.

I haven't watched much of these, but I've heard good things if live action is your style! Gotham follows the villains and older generation before Batman came along. Supposedly very good Alfred and Bruce content, with kid Bruce! For my Alfie lovers, Pennyworth follows the adventures of Alfred along with the Waynes, taking down conspiracies back in England during the 60s. As completely up my alley as those sound, they're not really my thing because they are pretty violent, so beware!

Movies!

Starting off with animated movies, the btas movies come very highly recommended! Especially Mask of the Phantasm! I was super not excited for the romance plot, but it 1000% won me over, it's fantastic. Lots of young Bruce stuff (like early early 20s), which is wildly endearing, and very good dadfred moments!! The Mystery of the Batwoman isn't as great, but it's good fun. Sub-Zero is really good if you like Mr.Freeze! For The Batman 2004, there's the Batman vs Dracula! It is wild but so much fun!

On the animated movies front - Batman and Robin: Return of the Caped Crusaders and Batman vs Two Face are absolutely delightful. They're based on the 1960s Batman show, and they go all in on the campy goofy energy!! They're such a good pick me up if you're having a rough day.

As for live action movies, I honestly cannot recommend the 1990s Batman movies enough. Yes, they don't have a great reputation among mainstream comics fans, but they're straight up just wrong. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are some of the most fun batman content ever created! There is so much creativity and energy and love in these movies, they are the definition of a good time. Absolutely guaranteed to provide childlike wonder, 1000/10.

If you're into the more gritty stuff, The Batman (2022). It's a cool new take on Bats, I think it's an interesting direction artistically. Once again violence isn't super my thing, but I appreciated the Alfred moments and Bruce's potent autism swag. Also, though it's probably a genuinely good movie, I am physically unable to take anything seriously and really enjoyed watching it ironically (there are so many serious moments that land as... pure comedy). Though please be sure to look up trigger warnings first, it's a lot.

Comics!

Full disclosure, I'm not a big comic book reader "^^ I really just read the comic versions of the shows I like and a few miscellaneous others I run into. Here's a list of some of the comics I've enjoyed, but they have no rhyme or reason, they are not cohesive lol. If you're more into comics you want to look elsewhere for advice "^^

All Star Batman: First Ally - I have no context for this series as a whole and I do not care: I'm here for pretty art, Alfred backstory, and father and son behavior. I own a hardcover copy.

Batman: Zero Year - Stumbled upon by accident but thoroughly enjoyed. I don't agree with everything in these (batman writers obsession with characters slapping each other my BEHATED) but its pretty cool overall. Featuring my The Alfred Ever and baby Duke Thomas! There's Dark City then Secret City!

One Bad Day: Mr Freeze - I'm not gonna lie this comic is like... bad. Okay so that's not entirely fair: I adore the art, the baby Dick Grayson content, the Alfred content, and honestly most of the story until the end. Spoiler, but they nerf the daylights out of what makes Freeze such an iconic character. Like, I get what they were doing but... come on. Insinuates a bizarre message too. Still worth a peruse for the good moments.

Batman: the Adventures Continue - a continuation of the btas comic series (the batman adventures)!! It's interesting to see them put more modern storylines in the btas universe. The last few issues (holiday special!) Are at very least worth a read.

While I'm here, The Gotham Adventures is also cute and cool, takes place in the btas universe with the tnba style + continuity.

Same as above, if you like the Justice League cartoon check out the tie in comics, including the recent continuation Justice League Infinity!

Oh I guess this do counts: The Wayne Family Adventures is a very cute comic on tapas! It's very cute, and actually published by DC comics!

My best word of advice: follow your interests! Indulge! There is no right way to explore this franchise! There's so much to discover and there's a little something for everybody. There is no obligation to know every little thing about the mythos, you do not need to read from issue 1 or know all the current updates to be a "real fan". Actualy, do us all a favor and stick it to toxic comic fanboys by having as much fun as you can! Pick and choose! Try it all! Be gritty! Be goofy! Be both! Spend hours poking around on fandom wikis to learn about what you want to learn! There's no wrong way to play, I'm just so happy youre here. Now go forth and be batfans!!!

#updated: now with all the links i can find!#squeaks #fandom agere #dc agere #batman agere #dadfred & babybat

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thenationaltreasuregazette · 4 months

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Holiday Hijinx, Fluff Edition

Merry Christmas!

@thesere1418, let me try to answer your actual question: how does Team Treasure spend Christmas?

Last time, I posited some theories on what the gang’s pre-treasure hunt Christmases looked like. The short version: lonely and isolated to varying degrees. Sometimes of the “sitting home alone” variety, and sometimes more “alone in a crowd.”

This time, we’ll look at how Team Treasure might spend Christmas after the events of National Treasure bring them all together. Fluff will ensue! But since I’m a hopeless pedant, I’m going to make you work for it.

Let’s begin with the timeline. Way back in the very first issues of this blog (insert nostalgic awww), we took a deep dive into the timeline of National Treasure, both how long the events of the movie take place and when they take place. If we’re looking at the first Christmas after the movie, the timeline piece will become very important.

As I wrote there:

The 70th Anniversary of the National Archives really was in 2004. The organization was founded on June 19th, 1934. June 19th 2004 was a Saturday, so it’s conceivable that the Gala was meant to be that weekend. However, based on all the characters’ clothing, I’ve always felt like National Treasure was a fall movie. … It’s already dark when Ben arrives. Sunset on June 18th, 2004 was at 8:36pm in Washington DC, so that gets us to potentially 9-11. However, that seems like a late start, especially considering this gala’s attendees are probably mainly older, wealthy donors. In September, sunset would have been closer to 7pm. I still think it’s fall. All we know for certain is that the story had to take place before October 31, as that was the last day of daylight savings time in 2004.

Based on the National Archives fact, the movie should theoretically take place in June. However, this is not how you dress in Washington D.C, Philadelphia, or New York in the summer.

[Outfit snips]

This could be explained by the fact the the movie actually filmed in September 2003 - February 2004. And they’re dressed like it. It’s impossible (for me anyway) to watch the movie and believe it’s anything but fall.

In my heart, National Treasure is a November movie. However, we know that doesn’t fit canonically either since the story had to take place before the end of Daylight Savings Time, October 31, 2004.

So let’s say it’s mid-October.

That means the first post-treasure hunt Christmas is only two months and change later.

As I posit in…an article I haven’t published yet, oops, I don’t think Ben and Abigail got together immediately after the treasure hunt. I think Abigail is too pragmatic to make a major decision like that on the heels of having her whole life turned upside down by the treasure hunt, and I think Ben has been burned before by women who found his whole Indiana Jones schtick charming, until it wasn’t.

Also, what season is the “Three months later” epilogue supposed to be? September? For our purposes a unseasonably mild January day, I guess.

Team Treasure’s First Christmas

The reason I am dwelling on this, other than because it delays the creative work of imagining things that didn’t happen on screen, which I am inevitably procrastinating, is because deciding when the treasure hunt took place really colors how Team Treasure spends their first Christmas together.

If the treasure hunt happened in June, then things have had time to settle down by December. Ben and Abigail are new but reasonably well established couple, Ben is settled into his massive new house, and the logistics of dealing with the treasure are well enough under control that everyone can take a breather.

If the treasure hunt happens in October, none of these things are the case. Sorting out who is working on the treasure, what pieces are going where, security, research, transportation, sale donation, etc. etc. is still a full-time nightmare headache. Ben and Abigail are toying with the idea of actually dating but haven’t taken the plunge. Ben bought his big stupid house but it’s 80% empty rooms and 20% cardboard boxes.

So.

Riley and Abigail still go home for the holidays, but although the basic sequence of events is the same as it always has been, the feel is very different. Abigail is no longer just the reserved, quiet, nerdy aunt. Riley is no longer the burnout computer geek uncle. They’re treasure hunters. They’re famous, at least for this moment in time. Everyone is either tiptoeing around them or running up to ask a bunch of questions.

For Riley: “Were you scared?” “How many crimes did you commit?” “Did you really fool the FBI?” “How did you break into the National Archives?” “What does the Declaration of Independence feel like?” “Does this mean you’ll get a better job now?” “Will IBM take an almost-felon back?” “What are your plans moving forward?” “You know, that Gates fellow isn’t going to need you any more.” “Have you thought about a history degree?”

For Abigail: “That treasure hunter’s pretty handsome. Hint hint, googly eyes.” “How did you meet?” “Is he as charming as he looks on TV?” (Oh my god mom.) “You’re sure you’re not in trouble at work?” “You worked so hard to get where you are. I’d hate to see you throw it away on some crackpot. Even if he’s rich now.” “Does the Archives give medals? You should get one.”

It’s a lot, but they get through it. They both know that this is a one-time thing. The Templar Treasure won’t be the hot news story next year.

As for the Gates boys, Ben is finally the center of attention at his mother’s Christmas party in a good way. For the first time he can arrive with his head held high. The academics spend all night asking him detailed questions about the treasure and the search, how he knew where to look for Charlotte, what he’s learned about the contents of the cavern so far. The attention and interest feels good, but nothing feels better than his mother’s proud smile saying, That’s my boy.

And on Christmas day, Ben and Patrick have dinner together. It’s stilted and awkward at first, especially since it’s just the two of them. There’s no one else to serve as a buffer, and their years of estrangement hang over the afternoon like inescapable clouds. “Oh, you play poker?” “Been in the same Thursday night poker group for fifteen years.” Silence.

But then the topic switches to John, and early Christmases the three of them spent together. “Grandpa and I spent a day driving all over D.C. looking for the perfect ship in a bottle. I think we visited twelve different antique dealers that day. That was my first treasure hunt, I guess.” “I still have it. It’s right here.” “I always thought you hated it. I know you and he didn’t see eye to eye about the treasure.” “We didn’t. But it was from you, so it was always special to me.”

It’s ends up being a pleasant evening of reminiscing, and an important step as Ben and Patrick start to rebuild their relationship.

Subsequent Christmases

And finally, your actual question!

By the next year, everything is much more settled. Ben, and now possibly Abigail as well, actually live in the giant house. It’s filled with books and antique furniture and maps to possible future treasures. It’s lived-in and it’s theirs. They’re an established couple at this point, and the treasure situation is much more under control. And it would be insane of them not to throw a Christmas party in that massive, massive house.

The house is decked out with vintage Christmas decorations and a fifteen foot tree. In the style of the 18th century, the main fireplace is decorated with fruit and greens. There’s catering and a hundred guests and a band (perhaps that same string quartet from the gala?). This first year especially, they really go all out.

But their actual Christmas Eve and Christmas day celebrations are much more intimate. Abigail makes a selection of German Christmas cookies and she and Ben and Riley decorate a second, smaller tree on Christmas Eve. Riley brings kugel and rugelach from his favorite deli and tells them about some of his favorite family traditions. Patrick stops by for a while and they sip nice wine or nicer scotch around the fire while reminiscing about the insane last year that brought them together. The treasure hunt but also the excavation of the treasure and their travels around the world to all the exhibit openings.

Ben and Abigail dance to slow jazz in the firelight. Patrick beats Riley at chess, repeatedly.

They exchange gifts, but what do you get new multi-millionaires who just found a history-redefining treasure?

Gifts

Ben gives Riley an early prototype of Hedy Lamarr’s frequency hopping radio that would become the basis for wifi and GPS technology. He gives Abigail letter written by George Washington that he once found in an old house in Virginia. And he gives Patrick a framed photo of himself, Patrick, and John. In all the hubbub about the treasure someone had tracked down old family photos of theirs.

Riley gives Ben a framed blueprint of the National Archives overlaid with the exact route he took to steal the Declaration. There’s a small note at the bottom that says “Security has since been upgraded.” He gives Abigail a computer program that can sort her email much more accurately that any built-in program in 2004 could. (He’s been working with the National Archives to bolster their digital security.) For Patrick, he’s not really sure what to get, but when Ben suggests a nice bottle of scotch, Riley takes it a step farther and gets a custom blend made and labeled “Trinity Church Staircase (contains no actual 200 year old wood).”

Abigail gives Riley a book of American history written in an fun, narrative style—picture Drunk History in book form—and a state of the art remote control drone. She gives Patrick an set of antique letters from a period she knows is of interest to him. And for Ben, she puts together a scrapbook off newspaper coverage of the treasure from all over the world. She puts out a call to the archivists community, in addition to the papers and magazines she’s been collecting as they travel.

Patrick gives Riley a computer programing manual from the 1940s, one of the earliest in the world, and a two books on conspiracy theories, one from the 1870s and one from the 1970s. He gives Abigail antique records of her favorite composer, and brings an album of baby pictures of Ben to show her. And for Ben, he gives him the Gates family scrapbook, which Patrick has taken and updated with pictures of Ben and the treasure.

The Gang’s Christmas Superpowers

As for special holiday skills,

Ben is a master gift finder. He doesn’t give gifts too often (he’s pretty oblivious to the whole thing) but when he does, he finds the perfect item. It’s never something off the shelves, it’s the same antique china pattern your grandparents had when you were a kid, or a vintage book on your favorite topic.

Abigail is the perfect gift wrapper. Her fastidious nature, steady hands, and decade of training to handle delicate paper items make her excellent at it, no matter the shape or size. Perfect corners every time, paired with the perfect ribbon and bow.

Riley doesn’t love Christmas music, but if he has to hear it, he wants to hear what he tolerates, so he’s created a database of all the best Christmas music ranked by decade, vibe, and his personal taste. He can whip up the perfect playlist for any occasion in seconds.

Patrick can tell you a historical Christmas event from any year between 1717 and 1990. Choose any year and he’ll have an anecdote about the news of the time, anything from small town goings on to world-changing battles and decisions.

Conclusion

There you go! A Team Treasure Christmas!

Whohoo! I did it! I got the article out on time!

Hope you’re all having a nice holiday out there if you celebrate.

#national treasure #the national treasure gazette #ben gates #abigail chase #riley poole #patrick gates #team treasure #christmas

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words-after-midnight · 23 days

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Hey thanks for the follow and reblog! Just stopping by to say your WIPs sound interesting and unique. For Storyteller Saturday: Since Life in Black and White is an aughts period piece, is there a song from that time that reminds you of the story or characters? Or a song the characters like? (Believe it or not I was going to ask this anyway before I saw your playlist poll lol. Im curious either way tho!)

Ooooh thank you for this, I love music questions!

I'm sure I will forget some, but here are some songs from the aughts that I associate with the story/characters (many of these were on the original playlist, as I actually drafted the story in the late aughts):

Yellow by Coldplay (2000)*

It's Been Awhile by Staind (2001)

Weathered by Creed (2001)

My Sacrifice by Creed (2001)

Hide by Creed (2001) - This song still makes me emotional to this day, bwuh. 🙃

Breathe Your Name by Sixpence None the Richer (2002)

Down and Out of Time by Sixpence None the Richer (2002)

Dark Diamond by Elton John (2002)

Original Sin by Elton John (2002)

This Train Don't Stop There Anymore by Elton John (2002)

Unwell by Matchbox Twenty (2002)

Bright Lights by Matchbox Twenty (2002)

Clocks by Coldplay (2002)* - I've considered this the story's theme song, pretty much, since I started drafting in 2008.

The Scientist by Coldplay (2002)*

Harder to Breathe by Maroon 5 (2002) - Generally not a fan of Maroon 5 but this song is lyrically great for Gabriel

Fallen by Sarah McLachlan (2003)

Stupid by Sarah McLachlan (2003)

Train Wreck by Sarah McLachlan (2003) - this one is funny because I refer to the Gabriel/Jeff dyad as "trainwreck," but this song is not where the name comes from. It just fits lyrically.

Mr. Brightside by The Killers (2004)

Savin' Me by Nickelback (2005) - The actual only Nickelback song I've ever liked because of how perfect the lyrics are for this story lol

Amid the Falling Snow by Enya (2005)

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap (2005)

Us by Regina Spektor (2006)

To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra (2007) - Not to be dramatic but I can barely listen to this song now lol.

Death and all His Friends by Coldplay (2008)*

O My Heart by Mother Mother (2008)**

Burning Pile by Mother Mother (2008)**

Body by Mother Mother (2008)**

Ghosting by Mother Mother (2008)**

Try to Change by Mother Mother (2008)**

40 Day Dream by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (2009)

Bulletproof by La Roux (2009)

White Blank Page by Mumford and Sons (2009)

The Cave by Mumford and Sons (2009)

*Can you tell I was listening to a lot of Coldplay as a teenager? The opening chapter is called "A Rush of Blood to the Head" after the album that Clocks and The Scientist are on.

**Alternate playlist for libaw: the 2008 Mother Mother album "O My Heart."

In terms of what music They™ enjoy (ie. stuff they actually listened to at that time, so mostly older stuff than the aughts):

Gabriel's mostly an alt rock/metal/punk & similar type, which I'm sure will surprise approximately no one who's read Gabriel. His frequently played artists include Nine Inch Nails (his favorite band), Joy Division, Tool, Radiohead, RATM and the like. He's also been known to dabble in more electronic genres (eg. we share an appreciation for Daft Punk and Depeche Mode), enjoy classical music (eg. Beethoven), and have a certain nostalgic fondness for some classic rock, such as GNR and Pink Floyd, and Elton John, who was his late mother's favorite singer.

Jeff's a big classic rock snob* - think GNR, Zeppelin, AC/DC, Rolling Stones, CCR, Van Halen, Springsteen. His favorite band is Pink Floyd (favorite album Animals). Caveat: if you get him drunk enough there's a chance he'll jokingly (read: fully seriously) put on either Aquamarine by Aqua or Voulez-Vous by Abba and get very into it.

*He gets that from me. The classic rock part, not the snob part.

#writeblr #music #story playlist #aughtscore #libaw #ask #sts

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frankendykes-monster · 6 months

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This week marks the 20th anniversary of Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a remake of Tobe Hooper’s iconic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Nispel’s gory and grungy slasher is hardly a great piece of cinema, but it is a surprisingly important one. Texas Chainsaw Massacre altered the course of mainstream populist horror cinema, at least for a couple of years, by ushering in an era of horror remakes. Pop culture is inevitably guided by larger trends. This is particularly true of horror cinema, where the tendency to make movies cheaply and quickly allows studios to chase popular fads. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre arrived at the end of one such fad. The renaissance in teen slasher movies sparked by the release of Scream in December 1996 was already dying down, giving way to diminishing returns like Scream 3 and Urban Legend: Final Cut along with spoofs like Scary Movie.

That late ’90s slasher fad was self-evidently nostalgic. In Scream, film nerd Randy (Jamie Kennedy) pauses a pivotal scene from John Carpenter’s Halloween to explain the rules of the slasher movie. Scream writer Kevin Williamson would go on to work on the slasher sequel Halloween H20, which would include a sequence of its characters watching Scream 2. However, there was a layer of irony and self-awareness to this nostalgia. These movies referenced classics, but stood apart from them. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre removes that layer of self-reflexive irony. It doesn’t just pay homage to one of the classics of American horror, it straight up remakes it. It reboots the franchise and starts over, as if offering a young moviegoing audience a chance to witness their version of the beloved horror movie. The gambit worked. The movie grossed $29.1 million in its opening weekend. “To say that it exceeded [our] expectations is an understatement,” conceded David Tuckerman of New Line Cinema.

Nispel’s remake had a profound impact on both the franchise and the larger industry. While many other major classic horror franchises, like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, tended to slow down as they entered the new millennium, Texas Chainsaw Massacre roared to life. The franchise has released more entries in the past twenty years than it did in the previous thirty, including the reboot, a prequel to the reboot, two sequels to the original, and a separate prequel to the original. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre made an even bigger impression on the horror genre as a whole. For the next seven years or so, theaters were flooded with remakes of 1970s and 1980s horror classics: Dawn of the Dead, The Amityville Horror, House of Wax, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13, Black Christmas, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man, The Hitcher, Prom Night, Friday the 13th, Sorority Row, The Stepfather, My Bloody Valentine, and many more.

Of course, trends do not exist in isolation. These remakes overlapped with a similar push to adapt Japanese horrors like Ring and The Grudge for American audiences. More interestingly, they seemed to unfold in parallel with the “torture porn” fad, which really kicked into gear with the release of Saw in October 2004 and Hostel in January 2006. Both trends seemed to be displaced by the embrace of “found footage,” and many of these remakes were notably gorier than the originals. It’s worth revisiting this trend in general and Nispel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre in particular. There is a tendency to overlook the horror genre in discussions of popular cinema. This is most obvious when it comes to awards recognition, but also applies to general discussions of the artform. There’s also an understandable impulse to dismiss these sorts of remakes as inherently unworthy of discussion or scrutiny. Five years ago, Keith Phipps noted that these remakes were largely forgotten.

One of the more interesting – and frustrating – aspects of Nispel’s remake is the fact that it is a horror movie that exists in the context of decades of slasher movies. Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre may not have been the first slasher movie, but it was released before Halloween codified the conventions of the genre. Even watched today, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is a delightfully and unsettlingly odd experience. It can seem uncanny to a viewer versed in the films that followed. Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre begins with a sense of a world that is unraveling, reflecting the chaos of the early 1970s. It begins with a news broadcast about the handing down of an indictment, an invocation of Watergate. Sally (Marilyn Burns) and Franklin Hardesty (Paul A. Partain) are traveling with their friends to visit their grandfather’s grave, following a series of desecrations in the region. There’s an apocalyptic vibe to all this, recalling George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.

In contrast, Nispel’s remake is much more conventional in its framing. It is set in 1973, but there is no real sense that the larger world is collapsing. None of that apocalyptic dread hangs in the air. These teenage leads are not investigating a case of potential grave robbery. Instead, they are driving to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert after purchasing drugs in Mexico. This is a standard start to a slasher like this. The teenagers transgressed, so will be punished. They broke the rules, so must die. In contrast to the irony that defined the meta-slashers of the previous few years, this is all played remarkably straight. The movie’s final girl, Erin (Jessica Biel), is entirely innocent. She is shocked to discover that her friends used the trip to Mexico as an excuse to buy marijuana. Her friend Kemper (Eric Balfour) jokes that she didn’t even drink the tequila down there. As such, Erin’s survival feels like it plays the socially conservative tropes of the slasher movie remarkably straight.

To give the movie some credit, it is at least somewhat equal opportunity in terms of the violence it inflicts on its teenage victims. In Hooper’s Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the male characters tended to die quickly while the female characters suffered longer. Nispel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre reverses that dynamic somewhat. Pepper (Erica Leerhsen) dies abruptly in the distance, while Andy (Mike Vogel) hangs from a meat hook in place of Pam (Teri McMinn) in the original. That said, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is hardly a reconstructed slasher movie. Nispel’s camera lingers on Jessica Biel, particularly her exposed midriff. It seems to luxuriate in shots of her running and panting. It’s an approach that feels very similar to how Michael Bay’s camera would treat Megan Fox during the Transformers films a few years later. Biel may not be hanging on a hook, but there are certainly times when Texas Chainsaw Massacre treats the actor as a piece of meat.

There is a sense that the remake is revisiting the original through the lens of the decades of slasher movies that followed, smoothing down the rougher edges of the original film to make it more easily fit within an established template. This is true of most of the uninspired remakes that followed, which would take messy and clumsy original films that were figuring out what these horror movies looked like in real time, and apply a “one-size-fits-all” structure to them. These movies could be grungy and grimy. They could feature graphic gore. However, these remakes also tended to be products of a more ruthlessly efficient studio system than the films that inspired them. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sets early scenes to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, a song that the original could never have afforded to include. Biel and Balfour may not have been movie stars, but they are more established than any actors in the original. There is a polish to these remakes that exists at odds with the power of the original.

Notably, there is no sense of mystery or ambiguity to Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski) in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film offers the iconic horror villain a backstory involving horrific skin disease and even a name: Thomas Hewitt. Hooper’s original film was so scary because it suggested that this violence couldn’t be explained or rationalized. It had the logic of a nightmare. It’s very hard to replicate that sense of existential dread when so much of the appeal of a remake is the familiarity. Then again, perhaps this makes a certain amount of sense in context. As with the “torture porn” trend, these horror remakes were largely a product of the Bush era. They existed in the context of the War on Terror. This may explain why they were so much more graphic than the original, and why they tended to fixate upon torture and brutality. The War on Terror was defined by a desire to understand the horrors lurking out in the darkness, to understand, “Why do they hate us?”

Released a little more than two years after 9/11, Nispel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is rooted in that moment. The biggest alteration to the original narrative is the introduction of R. Lee Ermey as Sheriff Hoyt, a sadistic local law enforcement official who feels more at home in Deliverance rather than The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Hoyt is a product of the Bush era. A former governor of Texas, Bush was likened to a western sheriff when he boasted about posting “Wanted” signs in the wake of the attacks. Hoyt physically and psychologically brutalizes these teenagers. He forces Morgan (Jonathan Tucker) to reenact a suicide that the characters witnessed, pushing Morgan to place what he believes to be a loaded gun in his mouth. When Morgan resists, Hoyt handcuffs him and loads him into the back of his police car. He takes Morgan away, but not to experience due process. On the drive, he smashes a nearly empty bottle of liquor in Morgan’s face. It seems likely that Morgan is just going to disappear.

This is perhaps the most unsettling sequence in the film. It resonates with contemporary anxieties over the “enhanced interrogations” and “extraordinary renditions” that defined the War on Terror. Of course, Hoyt doesn’t have any authority to do what he is doing. In perhaps the film’s sharpest jab at the Bush administration, it is eventually revealed that Hoyt isn’t even really the local sheriff. None of this is as overt as the cultural context of Hooper’s original, but these are films of their moment. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is ultimately an underwhelming, generic, and gory imitation of a much richer film. It takes one of the most transgressive horror films of its era, and reduces it down to a standard slasher template. In doing so, it provided a sustainable model for mainstream horror over the next few years, an assembly line that could reliably churn out low-budget and low-effort films to solid box office returns.

In its own weird and grotesque way, Nispel’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre turned mainstream horror into a charnel house. It pushed away from the knowing detachment of the self-aware slashers, and embraced a more direct mode of recycling. It carved up the corpses of classic horror movies to be repackaged as subprime cuts.

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goodguynickachievement · 8 months

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DEAD BEFORE DAWN - A homage to the 2000s and Dawn of the Dead.

Note: The following version I'm writing on is the Uncut (beta) version of the campaign. I will make another post if this appears in the final version.

Film reference: Dead Before Dawn is a custom Left 4 Dead 2 campaign based off the film, Dawn of the Dead (2004). This isn't the same as the 2012 film of the same title (Dead Before Dawn's red logo).

There's various advertisements you'll see throughout the game, especially in the third floors. The third floors for each of the mall's interior is inaccessible to Survivors, but Special Infected players are allowed to roam here.

DAWN DVD - Parody Logo The first image I found reads "Dawn DVD." It's a recall to Dawn of the Dead, but in the form of early 2000s DVD advertisements.

Q: How can we tell if it's the same film version, and not based off the George A. Romero version?

A: For those unfamiliar with this movie, the spoofed logo has the same color palette the movie's cover art has.

DARTH X3 CAR- Darth Brush's cameo

This is a shoutout to one of the campaign's developers, Darth Brusher.

The car is named Darth X3. As for the bottom text, the inscription could be made out to be:

Buy Darth X3 and enjoy the best automobile in the whole world. This car is a one of the (???) (???) which is produced in City of Dawn.

The text repeats after this, but this is the most I could make out of it as the texture itself appears to be small.

CITY OF DAWN: A savety place to live

Here we have one of the buildings that the survivors start out in another beta version of the campaign. The building in the photo is the same townhouse/courthouse(?) that the Survivors start in during the Extended version of Dead Before Dawn.

Not my screenshots. In the Extended version, you start at the Townhouse(?) before proceeding to climb down into the sewers. The finalized version has you start in the garage instead. The Uncut and Extended versions has you start out in an area of the city BEFORE reaching the garage.

In the Uncut version, you start out much further than the Townhouse(?) and the garage.

Q: Why the different daytime settings, and why does it look more rugged?

A: No clue! This could've been an earlier build that got memorialized throughout all versions.

TAKE MUSIC WITH YOU: Sony Ericsson Walkman.

If you're familiar with ye olde Y2K advertisements about music and the Frutiger Aero visuals of old music, you'll have a blast with this one.

Just as this section's title says, "Take music with you," this is one of those advertisements you might see in nostalgic One True Media clips. But wait, it's not! These are Sony Walkman devices!

If we look up "company that has an orange squiggly as the logo," we get...

THE SONY WALKMAN ERA STRIKES!

And the phone featured in the advertisement is a Sony Ericsson Walkman camera phone! Exact model is the W810. Wikipedia article linked for those who love their history.

Now, can we find the exact advertisement in all its splendor? Not YET, but let's take a moment to appreciate the 2000s cheesy advertisements that comes close.

Sony Ericsson W200i advertisement by Malin Gron | Behance

Sony Ericsson W300 | Youtube

youtube

Sony Ericsson Zylo - Commercial | Youtube

These advertisements aren't the exact same thing as what we find in-game. However, once I'm able to find the source of it - I'll update this post.

That's all that I've found so far in Dead Before Dawn (Left 4 Dead 2).

If you see something that I could look at, or want me to conduct some research on - let me know! Thanks for taking the time to read this freshly procured piece.

#left 4 dead #left 4 dead 2 #l4d #l4d2 #dead before dawn #dead before dawn campaign #Youtube

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twistedoliver · 2 years

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Thank you for the warm welcome guys! I’m currently planning a piece of fanart for once I’m caught up on schoolwork so I’m looking forward to finally contributing! Just thought I’d explain how I got into it in the first place

I was first introduced to Thunderbirds through the 2004 movie. I have a nostalgic feeling for the film and watch it often, although I do think it’s pretty awful.

I then met the creepy toy in my Nan’s shed. It was creepy as heck and I refused to go near it, not realising it was in fact (I think) Virgil Tracy! Which I only realised when my dad put on some original series thunderbirds, which I was freaked out by cuz I was only lil

I then watched the animated series when it came out, before re-obsessing with all versions again recently and beginning my toy collection. In fact, just this past week I spent a full 4 days binging thunderbirds content with a friend which was glorious

How did you guys get into the amazing-ness that is thunderbirds?

#thunderbirds #thunderbirds 2004 #thunderbirds are go

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gobs-o-dice · 6 months

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If I may wax nostalgic for a moment:

So, yeah, this account got deleted by hackers, which sucks, but I can always rebuild it, bit by bit.

This is way more of a huge personal essay than I'd normally do, especially on this sideblog, but it's about this blog specifically, so I think it's really only appropriate that it goes here.

(Rambling got long-ish, so putting in a cut to keep your dashboards clear of clutter - Because it turns out I have some feelings about this blog)

(TL;DR: Thank you all for your kind words and support over the years. This blog meant something to me, it still means something to me, and I'm going to keep working at it - Rebuilding it one piece at a time. I look forward to continue engaging and re-engaging with you all again as I do so)

I had my main tumblr account for something like 5 years by the time I started this sideblog. And I never really had any sort of focus on my main, I was just your general nerdy blogger.

But at some point - 2016-2017, judging by my photos timeline, I started getting really into collecting sets of dice. In as much as I was accumulating them at a much, much faster rate than I'd ever done so before.

My first set was bought when I was still in high school, probably no later than 2003-2004. I know I had at least 5 total sets by the time I finished my first undergrad degree in 2009 and moved across the country for a job. I'm pretty sure I got the 6th set on a trip back home to visit friends during that year I was working. The 7th, I honestly can't remember. Maybe 2011 at a con? That seems like something I'd do.

My 8th set was definitely purchased in the lead-up to my sister's wedding in 2014 - I specifically bought it to match their purple and blue colour scheme because we used the d20 to stop people from clinking glasses to get them to kiss (if people wanted to get them to kiss, they'd have to roll 10+, otherwise, they'd have to find someone to kiss, themselves).

I wasn't taking photos of sets as I got them yet, so this has been a bit of guesswork and memory.

I can confirm that by the end of 2016, I had bought my 15th and 16th sets. I started showing off my shinies, probably here and on twitter. I think even some basic photos made it to facebook/instagram before I realized not many friends and family cared too much about them over there.

2017, I can see set #23 appears in a photo, among others previously.

By September 2018, Sets #44, #45, and #46 were bought at a convention - These are the three sets you can see in the mouth of the yarncraft mimic in my profile picture (also bought at that convention). So, yeah, definitely a steep acceleration in my dice-buying (this was about the time I started buying dice online rather than just in physical stores, I do believe). Overall, a huge shift in my approach and drive towards collecting dice around this point.

It's around here I really start taking photos of my dice, playing around with my flashlights and such for different lighting effects - Basically the first forms of the kind of photos that would become my "brand", such as it is. I think it's here too that I started aspiring to make a character to pair to each individual set (While I do have many, many characters, I can tell you that some of these first sets still don't have characters for them yet. So, y'know, I'm nothing if not consistent in my inability to focus).

The first bunch of these sort of photos were posted to my main, but eventually I decided to start doing the dice posting on a sideblog, so as not to completely flood my main with not only my dice, but all the dice I was reblogging, as through my posts, I had found that there was indeed a community here of dice fans - Often posting their own creative photos.

Now, I've never been exactly quiet about what was going on in my life at that time - The summer of 2018, I had to take a medical leave of absence from my PhD program in university, because my migraines had been worsening from episodic to chronic over the past year or so. I had thought that maybe it was burnout, and I'm sure that's not an insignificant part of it, along with the then-undiagnosed adhd, I was just unable to function in general.

So, I took that summer off, then was genuinely feeling better and came back and tried to pick up again - But as the stress of getting back into things picked up again, it was clear that I was not in fact better. And the meds I was on at the time put me in a near-permanent brain fog, so I just was not able to function on an intellectual level like I had been. I could muddle my way through reading ecology papers that presented broad, easily-followed narratives, but highly technical microbiology and genetics papers, which were a slog at the best of times, became literally impossible to meaningfully read and acquire the sort of information I needed from them.

So, January 2019, I made the painful decision to withdraw from my PhD program. And I was utterly crushed by this point - Y'know, with whatever energy I had left to feel emotions. There is nothing quite so gutting as believing you're better and can handle things, and then finding out that you absolutely cannot, and feeling like you're letting everyone down because you can't keep up with even the bare minimum of responsibilities. I truly do not want this sort of thing to happen again, hence why I really do want to get my migraines under control before I consider going back to school or work - And it's been basically 5 years now. My education and experience have absolutely atrophied, possibly to the point that I'd essentially be starting pretty fresh and need to be brought back up to speed on so much that I'm not sure its something I want to ever tackle.

Anyway, that was where I was when I decided to make this sideblog. It was always, first and foremost, a place where I could post my nerdy photos, ramble about my characters, and just generally go whole-hog in on my nerdy TTRPG-related hobbies. And if other people found what I was posting enjoyable, well, it was all the better.

February 2019, before I moved back home, is the first folder that I can distinctly say I did a series of hoard photos. I wasn't using the term hoardscape yet. And they weren't styled exactly like that, but the genesis of the idea is there - I'm calling these pre-hoardscapes as I do my daily image re-upload. May 2019 was the first time I consciously set out to take photos of the hoard all mixed together. There's some weirdness as I included minis and other nerdy things in this first batch, but the overall style was now something I was fully enjoying - Photoing the dice from angles that made them look like rolling hills or other styles of heaps/piles emerging from one main pile - ie: Trying to make it look like I was taking a photo of a landscape made of my entire dice hoard. I have these labelled as "Hoard Shots" in this folder, but my numbering of them starts there. The next batch, June 2019 was where I started labelling them with the term "Hoardscape". I'm glad that people liked this term and it got used beyond just myself.

In total, I took over 1200 hoardscape photos between 2019 and 2021, not including the photo sessions where I did specific arrangements of specific die-types, since I had to sort them all before putting them away again anyway. So over three years of material for daily content, in addition to the shots I did of individual sets and other flights of fancy I'd have.

It'd be hyperbolic to claim that these "saved my life" or some other cliche like that. But they probably saved my sanity at least a little bit. They've given me something to do that was novel and creative. Something engaging, something to aspire to do, something to look forward to that wasn't the same "wake-up, watch tv, surf the net, play video games" routine I found myself otherwise in. Something to have some tangible ambition towards, however ultimately frivolous it is. Something with a schedule and structure that I felt compelled to adhere to.

This sort of stuff was great for me too, in that I could work on creative projects according to my own, quite nocturnal, inconsistent schedule (You'll notice that pretty much all of my photos of individual sets are also done at night, which was eventually also partially so that the lighting could be consistent). I could work for a few hours at a time, according to however much energy/focus I had. And if I had a bad day, I wasn't obligated to do any specific amount of work at it each day or anything. It was work, in the sense of something productive to do. And honestly, I thoroughly believe you need something that at least feels productive to work at (at your own pace), so that you don't go completely batty with boredom. And that the photos resonated with people out there was absolutely fantastic too. I was honestly a little surprised and always utterly delighted when people would mention my style of dice photos as inspirations for their own creative works - Their own photos or otherwise.

Heck, at one point I had great ambitions to maybe start turning hoardscape-type shots into jigsaw puzzles. Well, that kind of fizzled - We did do one small session using my brother's actual, serious camera instead of my camera phone, and got a jigsaw puzzle made from that high-res shot, but in terms of actually making puzzles from my photos consistently? Well, not so much. Unless, like, some company picked up and licensed my/our photos or something for printing themselves, there was no way we could feasibly afford getting enough made up to sell at any sort of reasonable price. And as fun as it was, to make this, puzzles, I really didn't think it'd be practical to order 1000 of any single design, let alone more than one design to have some variety, and then try to find some market to sell them in.

But hey, this is a fun little treasure of my own to have, even if it was, like $60

Admittedly, as much as I loved doing these shots, there were things that made them increasingly difficult to keep doing new ones of - The way it took over the family room area with my hoard meant that I really only wanted to do them when the rest of my family was gone for long stretches of time - Over a week or so, to give me enough time to get a decent amount of new material and then go through the process of re-sorting and repacking my dice after getting those photos, but also getting any sort of bonus shots - Like once I got the actual stage, taking photos with it, instead of just on the mug warmer (The mug warmer was a decent stage for someone operating with no real budget and still focused on getting more dice, okay? :P). But then the hoard continued to grow and swell (because I'm a sucker for buying more and more dice, after all), which meant that the cleanup process took longer and longer. I mean, it eventually got to the point that the table I used as an auxiliary for sorting was too small for everything to be on there period, let alone with any real clarity to which set was which. And it was more and more painful - Sitting there hunched over, searching and sorting for hours to get everything back to its proper home in my storage bins left my back, neck, and shoulders utterly stiff and sore for days afterwards, which isn't exactly fun. The final big one is that in 2021, for my mom's birthday, my family got a new kitten for the first time in years. As much as I loved Ollie , I knew he absolutely could not be trusted with a big pile of dice just left out in the open. And after his tragic passing [RIP poor Little Bud. Sometimes biology just plain sucks, and it sucks that you apparently got dealt a bad hand], we eventually got Lilah, who much the same, is a cat. And leaving small, shiny things they can bat around out in the open is just a bad idea if you don't want to lose those things.

That's not to say that I've closed the door completely on doing more hoardscapes ever again. It's just that I'll definitely have to think about my approach carefully. One thing with my family having moved into the home that was my grandma's farm, is that I have a much bigger room now I could theoretically set up a table or something in here and keep it closed off, mostly solving the cat and "taking over a communal space" problem.

But, I guess for now, I think I have a pretty large amount of back-content to get back through - I'd even been reposting my old hoardscapes for quite a while now, and I guess I'm starting from the very beginning. So, new hoardscapes are not necessarily going to be something I rush to do. But it's not a hard-"absolutely never again" situation, either.

Anyway, I'm doing much better overall now (better meds/treatment/management, other diagnoses, living at home where I don't have to worry about day-to-day stuff falling by the wayside, etc.) , but still haven't returned to school or work because the migraines still are such that they're really not conducive to participating in capitalism - Most places are unhappy if you take more than the equivalent of 1 day per month off. I have constant low/mid-level headaches, with spikes into the upper end of the scale as the weather shifts. I can't recall a month that I haven't had at least three of those "absolutely not"-level days since all this started. In addition to them not being a consistent, predictable schedule. It just doesn't really provide a good work schedule. And the lingering fatigue is often more generally-limiting than the headaches themselves - Especially when combined with the adhd, so efforts towards self-employment/productivity of any sort are similarly sabotaged - As you no doubt might have surmised from my wildly inconsistent surges of creative output. So basically, for now, I'm still not really going to be working in a traditional sense. At most, I might pick up some of those online gig-type-things at some point, but that'll depend heavily on how that interacts with the government support payments I receive.

If nothing else, there's a good chance I'll get little projects from my family - I already transcribed my grandma's old cookbook to send around to my family, and am just waiting on my mom to help do some final edits for the text stuff. If I get really ambitious, I might try making as many of the dishes (mainly the baked goodies, lol) in there as I can to add photos into it for extra style points (and yeah, if I set out to cook everything in there, it will absolutely be a thing I make another sideblog about, and probably something I even upload content to instagram or youtube about - But that's all probably a long ways off from now). There's other stuff of my grandma's that I'll probably work on transcribing and organizing - Her "red book", as we call it, all the family history and such - Essentially a wiki before wikis were a thing (Note to future self: Is there a wiki-type thing you could use for this? It might be a more intuitive way to link entries).

Nevertheless, now that my hyperfixation seems to have swung back this way, towards creating D&D-related stuff, I'm going to keep at it. I've decided to spin off my character/lore posting to a new side-sideblog (@gobs-o-cs), and since I don't think I'll be reviewing each set of dice as I upload them again, I'll try to keep the individual set posts to a more *aesthetic*-look.

Honestly, the individual set uploads are the most I've lost with these blog resets. those comments (along with those on dicemails and such) are lost, because I generally just wrote them here and didn't think too much about backing them up anywhere.

All of the lore stuff I generally have saved in various other spots. The biggest loss on that front was all the work I'd put into organizing sub-pages on my blog for a character list and pages for individual characters. I'll definitely have to look into less-fiddly ways of keeping things sorted (Honestly, if I get really ambitious, I might have to look into those wiki-style things for writers/creators).

Okay, this was a lot longer (and maybe only a bit rambly-er) than I was planning for it to be.

(Although, when you do stream-of-consciousness-type essays rather than setting out with with any sort of specific plan, that's what'll happen. Hopefully I haven't left too many orphaned paragraphs as I've jumped around to different thoughts, lol).

The long and short of it is that this blog was exactly the sort of project I needed to give myself at a time when I was pretty much bottomed out in life. This was never a huge internet presence or anything, but I know there were quite a few people following towards the end of things. I certainly would be intimidated if I were standing up in a room and giving a presentation to well over 1000 people, not to mention other people who would reblog or like things even if they weren't specifically followers. But it was never about having a huge audience or anything like that. It's something I enjoyed, and will continue to enjoy and keep at for now. And if it re-finds its audience and continues to find an audience, well then, that's all the better.

Once again, thank you all very much for popping in here. Thank you to all of those who have liked and reblogged the silly dice photos I post, the stories I tell, and the random thoughts I follow to whatever conclusion they end up at. Especially thank you to everyone who's ever left a kind word on any of my posts - In the comments, in the tags, wherever.

I'm so glad you've all enjoyed my strange little hobby so far, and I hope you'll continue enjoying it as I work to put it all back up here, piece by piece.

#also if you made it all the way through this - Thank you so very much for reading!#long post #rambling about life #this blog has been a fantastic creative outlet for me #and I guess it's honestly been something truly good for my mental health #at a time when I desperately needed something #so thank you all for everything #and I look forward to seeing you all again - Old friends and new

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captainclaudeandthehiddenlogs · 1 year

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📺 Tv Show Tag Game 📺

Tagged by @redfurrycat , thanks dear! ♥️🐈

Rules: list eight shows for your followers to get to know you better.

I feel like the tv shows that define me better are anime, so I’ll just go for two lists, one for anime and one for non anime tv shows 😅

8 (Non Anime) TV Shows I Love

(In no particular order - The fact that I love them doesn’t mean that I like all the seasons 😅)

~ The Simpsons 🍩 (1989- …) / What can I say? Iconic. It’s a classic.

~ Supernatural 👻 (2005-2020) / I love so many characters in this show, it made me laugh and cry, some episodes and seasons are amazing and I love Dean with my whole heart. And Bobby and Crowley!

~ Once Upon A Time 👑 (2011-2018) / The first three seasons and the Musical Episode are 💫💫💫 I love Hook, but also Peter Pan, Zelena, Pinocchio, Rumple, Mulan and Regina.

~ How I Met Your Mother ✋🏻 (2005-2014) / It’s so fun, even though it can be painful sometimes. I think it really describes my generation.

~ Friends ☕️ (1994-2004) / I watched it only a few years ago, but i immediately found it so comforting! Chandler and Joey are my favorite characters! They’re lovely!

~ Top Gear 🚗 (presented by Richard Hammond, James May and Jeremy Clarkson; 2002-2015) / I love the specials and it’s so fun. Some scenes had me rotfl.

~ I Medici ⚜️(2016-2019) / The second season got me in a chokehold. Francesco is such an interesting character and his chemistry with Lorenzo…!

~ Cobra Kai 🐍 (2018-…) / The soundtrack! I love Johnny’s POV, and i’m also fond of Chozen. It’s nostalgic and funny, and some scenes and characters make me laugh so hard. But some others like 2x06 Take a Right (the one with the old Cobra Kai members) and 5x06 Ouroboros (the one with John Kreese during therapy) were also moving.

8 Anime Tv Shows I Love

(Again in no particular order and in some cases i don’t like all seasons)

~ Shingeki no Kyojin 🗝 / The obsession was real. The plot is dramatic and some characters are so good. My fave characters are Eren, Levi, Jean, Reiner and Zeke. And the soundtrack, amazing!

~ Boku no Hero Academia 🏫 / There’s plenty of characters I love, some soundtracks are so good and the chemistry between some characters is on point. And Shōto!! ♥️

~ Violet Evergarden 🦾 / This is so poetic and the animation is beautiful, it amazed me.

~ Free! Iwatobi Swim Club 🌊 / I’m a swimmer so I’m biased. 😅 I love the animation and the characters, this show is really comforting to me. And I empathize with some characters so much.

~ Dragonball 🐉 / It’s a classic and VegeBul was my first ship.

~ One Piece 🏴‍☠️ / Iconic, I’ve grown up with it. Corazón and Ace are so precious to me.

~ Nana 🍓 / Nana (Osaki) is such a great character!

~ Naruto 🦊 / Itachi will always be one of my fave anime characters and the backstories of some characters are so moving.

~~~

Tagging (no pressure and no rush!): @earthangel-44 @beccaanne814 @midnighterapollo

#tv show tag game #red! ♥️ thanks for the tag!#about me #tv shows i love #anime i love #redfurrycat

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alienbeads · 9 months

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7. Black Sabbath - Born Again

Black Sabbath is one of these bands that I'd listen to a lot in middle school, I've always liked them^^

I find Stonehenge to be a beautiful and nostalgic piece (and my top 3 favorite song on this record), following with the angrier and crazier Disturbing the Priest (which I really enjoyed too), but it's The Dark that has this hellish sounding guitar THAT I'M LOOKING FOR. Iommi is genuinely a monster.

The intro to Born Again is so beautiful and the entire song is pretty emotionally charged. It's my favorite song off of this record. Gillan's voice fits this song so nicely (even tho he's definitely not my favorite Black Sabbath singer) and the guitar solo.... the guitar solo lord..... this is a great song really.

And even though I was already enjoying this album, Hot Line starts and it's just fucking great you know? For the first few songs I wasn't vibing with Gillan's voice, then I was like "no yeah that's cool" but GOD he fucking kills it on both of these songs, which feel like the culminating point of the album.

Then starts Keep it warm, which is a nice (a little less high-tension) ending track for this album.

Iommi's guitar sounds like a huge lake of hot purple unidentified liquid. If that makes sense. I wanna bathe in there that's all I know.

This album was great, regular Black Sabbath W

#August #Spotify

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robskaschedulearchive · 1 year

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Here’s the Comedy Central schedule for Monday, March 21 to Sunday, March 27, 2011.

Honestly, this schedule is weirdly nostalgic for me, not just because I remember this era like I remember a good memory, but this was also when I had been watching some South Park on Demand (when I was 5-6, once again, I had a weird childhood with not a lot of limitation). Honestly, when I see those episodes, I see them like how I see Johnny Test or SpongeBob, a great TV Show from my childhood (although South Park was not for children)

Another thing I really like from this schedule was that Futurama had some decent rerun slots (early evening slot, 3 primetime slots on Thursday, and some overnight slots), and I had only seen bits and pieces of the show (once again, I was 5, nearly 6, the theme song was great, remember seeing it a couple times on Netflix, hadn't really got into the show until FXX got it in 2021). The final show to round out the big 3 of early 2010s Comedy Central was Tosh.0, which had only been big because the Internet was big in the early 2010s, and Cable wanted to market it to their viewers.

Unlike the modern Comedy Central of Today, there had been movies during the daytime slots, and a couple of reruns of The Daily Show (then hosted by Jon Stewart), and The Colbert Report (hosted by the current Late Show host), and RENO 911! was used as time filler if a movie went short.

Oh, yeah, and Scrubs was on the channel during the time, definitely a great show for the time (and even today, besides the final season when they changed the Hospital to a Med School and a lot of the cast left). and Chappelle's Show had gotten some good rerun slots, which is funny, given the show ended in 2004, and Season 3 was only 2 episodes and aired in 2006.

Here’s what was new that week:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Mon-Thurs at 11p

The Colbert Report - Mon-Thurs at 11:30p

Comedy Central Presents - Fri at 11p

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tagesmosaik · 1 year

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Tagged by @booksnpictures to share my top 10 comfort movies. Thank you so much, this was fun! 😊 As you might expect, it was pretty hard to settle on 10. Halfway through I even started to question my definition of comfort. Regardless, here are my picks (in chronological order):

The Heart of Me (dir. Thaddeus O'Sullivan 2002)

Lost in Translation (dir. Sofia Coppola 2003)

In My Father's Den (dir. Brad McGann 2004)

Wie im Himmel (orig. Så som i himmelen, engl. As It Is in Heaven, dir. Kay Pollak 2004)

Brokeback Mountain (dir. Ang Lee 2005)

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (dir. Ken Kwapis 2005)

Zusammen ist man weniger allein (orig. Ensemble, c'est tout, engl. Hunting & Gathering, dir. Claude Berri 2007)

Ziemlich beste Freunde (orig. Intouchables, dir. Olivier Nakache & Éric Toledano 2011)

About Time (dir. Richard Curtis 2013)

Druk (engl. Another Round, dir. Thomas Vinterberg 2020)

Honorable mention:

Der ganz große Traum (engl. Lessons of a Dream, dir. Sebastian Grobler 2011) - This is my favorite movie to watch when I'm homesick or feeling nostalgic (aka old), because the filming location is actually the building that houses the highschool I went to. I still remember how absolutely thrilled I was about the possibility of casually running into Daniel Brühl while they were shooting. Which sadly never happened. However, I've kept the piece of paper with all the actors' measurements on it, that I found in one of the classrooms back then. Good times. 😅

I'm tagging, if you like to share: @ladjarica @dejlige-dage @raisedtokeepquiet @morganathewitch @corvid-kitty @onlypassingthroughh @cuttlefishbones

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blackbird-brewster · 1 year

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After one of my tangent conversations with @cargopantsprentiss I started thinking about someone who was a huge part of my past and got that sort of nostalgic feel about those times.

The thing is, I have huge gaps in my memory about my past, for multiple reasons. Just years where I no longer have memories and for the most part I have accepted that

But talking about this topic always makes me feel unhinged bc honestly I have convinced myself that a lot of events I 'remember' are so absurd, I MUST have made them up

And for whatever fuckin reason today it suddenly dawned on me to go poke around my old Live Journal that I kept from 2004-2010

H O L Y. S H I T.

I've spent the last FIVE hours reading years of entries that not only prove I DID NOT make up these things but also things were like 500x more intense than I remembered

To read old entries about my relationship at the time and be like GOD. I. WAS. POLYAM. AF. And now being able to release a lot of guilt I wasn't even fully aware I've been holding on to for over a decade???

To read old entries and say YOU. ARE. AUTISTIC. And for that to comfort me and for that understanding to forgive my younger self for so many things.

It's been really eye opening. Freeing? And just generally mind blowing to read about a life, until today, I had totally forgotten about.

Basically due to events in 2014-15, I lost a lot of long-term memories. So for eight years, I have just accepted that I have no recollection of most of my life prior to 2015. Years gone.

Reading my live journal feels almost like reading a book or looking into someone else's life but it also has started helping me piece together a bunch of things.

Idk a very strange way to start the year but Holy shit. I am very grateful to have these threads of all the things I no longer have memories of

Transparency: this is NOT a vague blog about anyone on here! This was someone from college in the early 2000s

#About me 2k23 #My life has been very very strange #As Rosie says: I have lived Every Single Trope #Wild fuckin time

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nacentart · 9 days

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Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a great day out for those who love walking and sculpture. It is set amongst 500 acres of rolling Yorkshire countryside and will get you to Olympic fitness if you want to tick off each of the art sculptures that have been made a home at the park. The park contains sculptures from a cavalcade of celebrated artists and sculptors from the last 100 years. Many pieces are quite new with some more famous older pieces from the likes of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Anthony Caro to name but three. On the day I was at the park, the rain was torrential and did not yield, however, this added to the whole strange atmosphere of being set free in the estate on such an occasion. I felt alone with the art, for the most part, I was, not many others would brave the weather. I had crashed onto an alien world and was trying to piece together what or who could live on such a planet. Indeed, there is a statue of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong called Bronze Eroded Astronaut to guide me. Daniel Arsham’s Unearthed Bronze Eroded Melpomene from 2021 was one such piece where it felt like my crash site was at the epicentre of a fallen ancient civilization, reminiscent of the film Planet of The Apes. It depicts a character called Melpomene, a Greek goddess and muse of tragedy. There is a part of the brain that believes what it sees, and this can have a discombobulating impact on the senses, especially as it was situated at the bottom of some neo-classical steps and balustrades from the formal gardens of the sculpture park. The sculptures and their decay are influenced by Arsham, as a child, having his family house destroyed in the early 1990s, by a hurricane.

I loved a few of the pieces, sometimes by the way a sculpture would just look or how it would interact with other close-by pieces and the landscape. At other times, just the size of a piece would have me feeling that sense of awe and a kind of diminishing of my importance under their vastness. Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms was sculpted in bronze from 1966-69 and was a magnificent work that felt like it had lived there for a thousand years. As with any of the best sculptures, I was left just staring at it from different angles and looking through its many contours and planes, which revealed and vanished as I walked around its dense solidity, that jolts up against the softness of its form. Moore was raised local to the park, so it seemed very fitting for it to be part of this particular landscape.

I also loved the Barbara Hepworth group of sculptures called The Family of Man. I think this was my favourite set of sculptures at the park, I loved everything about the pieces and their relationship to each other. These were sculpted by Hepworth in 1970 and have been at the park since 1980. There is a family of nine pieces, and they are set upon a gentle slope surrounded by trees. ‘Set’ is the correct word as they appear like the gemstones of a fine necklace or ring. The patination of the pieces are sublime, the abstract nature betrays their very humane and familiar aura. I intensely felt that these have been made by a human. The rain gave the pieces a lustre, and the overcast sky would still allow some light to rebound off the remarkable perspectives of their surface; it was otherworldly and serene. My visit was worth it just for this personal moment with Hepworth’s work.

Moving on to the fungible fanatic Damien Hirst, there were one or two dramatic pieces at the park. The Virgin Mother 2005-2006, The Hat Makes the Man 2004-2007 and, I hate to say it, but I felt a deep nostalgic connection to Hirst’s other work, Charity 2002-2003. It consisted of a giant charity box statue of a little disabled girl wearing a calliper, which you would normally have found outside a 1960s/80s British Butcher’s or Newsagent’s shop. It was an outmoded way to pull at the heartstrings to make us part with our pennies for the Scope charity. Its sheer size shrank me back to wet winter shopping outings outside local shops and how I would have viewed the little girl as not a charity case but maybe an upset little friend at that time. Anyway, it gave me a Proustian rush and it shows you can even like a piece of art from someone you do not like as an artist, be it just by tapping into nostalgia, which does tend to be a weak point, I admit. There were a few other notable pieces from other sculptors at the park. David Nash had some wooden steps rising up a grassy slope; there were many other sculptures from artists such as Anthony Gormley, Ai Weiwei, Willem Boshoff, and Elizabeth Frink, to name but a few. It is well worth a day out for those who love art, and nature.

#Yorkshire Sculpture Park #Barbara Hepworth #Daniel Arsham

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