Festivids reveals have SNUCK up on me they are happening TOMORROW and I have NOT had time to watch all the things I wanted to watch but! here are some things I very much liked anyway!
First, my own three (3!!!) beautiful vids:
Sharp Dressed Man, for Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, a glorious celebration of Theatrical Fashion
Touch, for the film Phantom, tense & wistful lesbian tragic romance!
and Ready to Fight, also for Phantom, TRIUMPHANT KINETIC ACTION
I did not expect to receive vids for either of these sources and they are all beautiful and perfect to me!!
And now, an incomplete list of other vids I really really liked and/or was impressed by and/or laughed my ass off at:
Keith Giffen, Gerard Jones, and Bart Sears do this whole storyline. Warning for OTT violence and nuclear apocalypse. Which, okay, is another kind of OTT violence.
The Silver Sorceress and Bluejay have blamed their world’s destruction on nuclear weapons. They neglected to mention the gang of badass villains who set those weapons off.
Five of those villains are still hanging around their dead world. When they lose their last living human prisoner, they’re on the verge of turning on each other. Lucky for them, that’s when the Silver Sorceress stumbles back into town. From her comings and goings, they know she’s found a new world for them to conquer.
[Youtube]Sir_Superhero’s backstory breakdown of Wonder Man in the comics. I only ever saw scattershot appearances of the guy, never knew his whole deal, so this was cool and enlightening. (Haven’t actually watched the MCU show yet, I’ll be curious to see which parts they keep.)
[Youtube]A for Angel, a pilot for Cartoon Network that I guess was stuck in rights/development hell, and finally got released? By the creator of the webcomic Angel’s Advocate (also started but not continued, maybe because of the cartoon being in production), and you can see a lot of the character designs coming through, although the plot and worldbuilding seem pretty different. Charming and adorable.
Sporadic Phantoms, a fictional true-crime podcast…set in a 2020-AU version of the Animorphs universe. There’s something weird about The Sharing, these amateur journalists are starting to think it’s a cult, and they’re here to investigate! I’m only a few episodes in, but the continuity bonuses are [chef’s kiss].
For most of the time I was watching Cosmic Princess Kaguya, I was thinking “Well, this is cute. The animation is excellent, the designs are a lot of fun…the plot is pretty basic, and the video-game fight sequences do not need to go on for this long, but it’s still a good time.”
And then I got to The Reveal — maybe 20 minutes from the end — and thought “…wait, hold up, I might need to rewatch the whole thing now??”
Somewhere in the middle, I had actually noticed that [Character] was animated with an expression that’s very characteristic of [Other Character], and idly thought “huh, maybe they’re connected somehow.” How many more hints like that did I miss? How many can I catch now, if I watch with The Reveal in mind?
Not sure if there’s much else I can say without spoiling it! But yeah, quite good. If you like grumpy/sunshine canon f/f, with internet friendships, weird fantasy age gaps, the power of expressing yourself through virtual avatars, and the power of music, don’t miss this one.
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Friday to midnight on Saturday (8pm Eastern Time).
The aim of the game, the goal -- and I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it, I don’t think it’s within my powers -- is to turn Paul into a sort of adorable sitcom dweeb. To kind of defang him, to remove his power, to remove this kind of toxic power he has over the readership. -- Al Ewing
Mod here. Real life has been rough and this year I am not able to give this exchange the effort it deserves. I have made the difficult decision to put it on hiatus for a year.
I hope the next year is kinder to all of us and I look forward to seeing you then.
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #995. Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ]. Current Secret Submissions Post:here. Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
The context is Simone Giertz's Incomplete White Puzzle, which A got me partly to troll me and partly because they thought I'd enjoy it and partly because getting the bundle of all three puzzles gets you 20% off individual list prices.
Current status: 105/"500" pieces in their final positions, plus another 57 no longer singletons. I have several semi-sorted categories including (in the halves of the box) "could plausibly have come from a reasonable puzzle" and "bullshit", and (on the table) Swoopy Bullshit, Offset Noses, Weirdly Straight, Multi-Nose Bullshit, and Featureless Curves.
I am having a very pleasant and soothing time, and I am trying to break up the hyperfocus by instituting a rule of Get Up And Do One Unit Of Something Else After Every (Contiguous) Piece Placed, and yes that is me rules-lawyering after the fact...
All the fail_fandomanon Rules and Information (and Ban Requests): https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/1076.html. The short version: no embeds, don't out people's real names, don't be that much of an asshole, body fluids are off topic, Mods reserve the right to freeze, screen, and delete the fuck out of stuff. FFA discussion covers a wide variety of topics and has a very flexible view of 'fandom' that includes politics, current events, and cooking techniques. FFA is a Choose NOT to Warn experience. Meme away.
Unofficial FFA archive & search: Dememe.info Username/password pairs are nonnie/pony, nonny/seal, or ayrt/velociraptor. As of 2025, Dememe is geoblocked for the UK.
If you have a DW account, you can use DW's content search. Don't forget to tick the box to search in comments. You can also use FFA Rocks.
I am not sure that exorcism is quite what is needed in the case, unless he starts doing manifestations in galleries of writhing and speaking in occult tongues and so on: Demand for exorcisms rises as faithful want ‘deliverance from evil’. And in fact it all sounds rather low-key:
Even when an Anglican priest does perform an exorcism, they are nothing like Hollywood horror scenes with “shouting and screaming” and demonic drama. They are “quiet and calm” affairs where a priest prays with a troubled person, usually after consultation with a psychiatrist and safeguarding experts.
One does feel that this is in the tradition of the C of E! Maybe with a nice cup of tea afterwards....
After inheriting the estate from his grandparents in 1983, Charles Burrell soon realised that large-scale farming was impossible on low-lying clay land. So, in 2002 he and his wife, author, and journalist Isabella Tree, embarked on what has become a pioneering rewilding project converting pasture into a patchwork of grasslands, scrub, groves, and towering oaks. Now home to storks, beavers, and nightingales, to name a few, Knepp’s ever-evolving experiment is open for all to enjoy.
Call me a cynical old bat, but I can't help feeling that this is in a Grand Old Longstanding Tradition of landowners doing whatever is The Latest Thing with the estate they inherited. And these days it is not either, tart it up like unto the gardens he saw on his Grand Tour in Italy, introducing various invasive species animal and vegetable, or, set up a funfair and safari park as a remunerative enterprise to enable him to pay off the crippling death duties the iron heel of Clem Attlee and Co has imposed, but to get acclaim for this absolutely on-trend thing to do with his land.
Birmingham Municipal Bank (1919-1976) was unique as the first and only local authority savings bank in England. Unlike other savings banks (such as the Trustee Savings Banks), customers could borrow money through the House Purchase Department to buy their home. Unlocking the Vaults, has been uncovering the Bank’s history and how it helped shape Birmingham’s story. The Exchange (opposite the Library of Birmingham) was once the head office for the Municipal Bank, and it lies at the heart of this project with many projects and events taking place in the historic Vaults. Historic black and white photo of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, showcasing its grand architecture with tall columns and detailed facade. .... A key finding of the project has been the significance of the Municipal Bank, not only as a financial institution but also as a cornerstone of community life, with local branches established on high streets across the city between the 1920s and 1970s.
***
The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships - in fact, point is made in there that perhaps what there has been is a rise of is families being all up in one another's business because of Modern Technology and tracking devices, family group chats, the ability to know where family members are and what they are up to at all hours of the night and day.
Because I would not at all describe my own family as 'low contact', we just did not live in one another's pockets and need to be constantly informed and have opinions about each other's lives. Weekly phone-calls - occasional visits- etc etc.
I'm not surprised people feel smothered and overwhelmed when I read some of the shenanigans that families do but then, am introvert to start with.
I took a bunch of really nice photos of the crow army today - with the light reflecting from the snow, the details of their feathers come out so beautifully. Look at how blue/purple the big feathers are, edged by black, compared to the dark black of the smaller head feathers.
This is the boldest of them. He stayed juuuust out of arm's reach but didn't mind me kneeling down and stretching my arm out at him. He miiiight be Mr Roadside Pair but I don't think so, I think he is smaller.,,,
We see that Hector Hammond's been successful at being Hector Hammond in a way that the regular universe version wasn't. If you go way back to the 60s, he started as this great sort of society man, and this great business person. Very quickly, all of that fell apart, because Hal Jordan found him out as the phony he was. And then the next time you see him, he's got a giant head, and, you know, that's his life now. So in some ways, our Hector's, like, more successful than the regular first one. We'll see if he manages to keep that up. -- Al Ewing
There's a lot of good stuff on the podcast feed this week, but look, we all have to be Elbows Up these days or whatever, even though Canada is a fake country, because it's better to be a fake country with healthcare than a fake country with crushing medical debt. So I must proudly wave the flag when Behind the Bastards notices and recognizes an actual Canadian bastard, as they did this week with Romana Didulo, Queen of Canada (Part 1, Part 2).
Her Majesty is not a successful cult leader by American standards; she basically ruined the lives of a few dozen people and hasn't directly killed anyone that I know of, though in terms of indirect deaths through encouraging the spread of covid, she's likely ended at least a few lives. She's a fascinating study, though, in Why People Believe Batshit Things Against Obvious Evidence and Logic, and she's worth learning about for that alone. This is an obvious mentally ill person with no charisma, elevated to fame by some rando on the internet, and enabled by a media ecosystem that considers all opinions equally valid unless they're left-wing opinions. In a better society she'd be given the help she so obviously needs; in ours, her worst tendencies were encouraged and rewarded.
Of course, this is all ancient history from the early 2020s and is of no instructive value now. Just, y'know, interesting to listen to.
ETA: I am remiss in not mentioning that there's a third part to come next week. I had like 10 minutes left in the second episode and did not realize there was MORE ROMANA to come.