Hi guys, as title suggests, planning for a new PC setup mainly for gaming, to replace my 5 year old rig (gtx 1060). will be using my current 21:9 monitor and existing peripherals.
These are the parts that i saved through PCpartpicker, but im not sure if im getting the most value (like the CPU,motherboard, RAM etc).
CPU: Intel Core i5-13600K 3.5 GHz 14-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: Gigabyte AORUS MASTER GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB Video Card
Case: Fractal Design Torrent compact
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS PLUS 850 Gold 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Season 4 really did feel like it should have been 10 episodes, that got edited down to 8 at the end of writing them. I don’t feel this way about seasons 1-3 at all, I think they fit perfectly with 8 per season. But season 4 rushes a few moments, that would have worked better with some more time to breathe. Still loved what we got with 4 though. Just a few little moments that were brushed over a little quickly.

First new episode is one between Barry and Sally running of together, and the controversial time jump episode (That I personally really like).

A potential additional episode I think would help ease the time jump into feeling more natural would be an episode where the common theme is characters running away from their problems, after Barry and Sally run away. An episode showing them sneaking out of L.A. And we keep getting mini time jumps, where they establish their on the lamb life, and at first they like it, and Sally feels safe, but as reality sets in, Sally realizes she’s committed to living on the lamb in a terrible home, where she develops her poor coping mechanisms of drinking her pain away, and not being able to have connections with others. Have her get pregnant during one of these smaller time jumps, further locking her to this life with Barry. However Barry loves his new life.
Meanwhile, Gene runs to Israel, and starts finding peace, but regrets immensely what he did to his son, but can’t find the courage to reach out.
Hank in this time grows his empire, while trying to hide his pain and guilt of what he did to Cristobal by theming the empire around his memory, and trying to deny to himself that he didn’t have have Cristobal killed. But his mask is flimsy and all his guys see the cracks in him. Hank has also been shown time and time again to be a bad leader, and cowardly, so maybe his company isn’t as great as it looks from the outside.
Fuches starts building his prison army/gang with their growing respect for him.
And finally Jim Moss goes crazy in these time jumps, unable to find Barry, Sally, and Gene, leading him to get sloppier at his job as it becomes a full on obsession, where he starts thinking Gene had more to do with it than he previously thought.

Second new episode is a trippy one after Moss kidnaps Barry.

To also extend the last couple episodes, I’d have maybe a majority of an episode dedicated to Moss’s torturing of Barry, but way more in depth. This would be the weird experimental “Ronny/Lilly” or “710N” of the hypothetical extended season. We could delve more into Barry’s past with his family, and start of his work with Fuches in this. And fully see how much pain Jim Moss has been in the last decade. Show that this is different from Moss’ other torturings. This one is personal, and from a place of deep deep pain. Make Barry genuinely remorseful of his life, until it ends with Hank having caught Sally and John and telling Barry on the phone. Then the next episode is still almost entirely the same, but it serves as a how Hank got a hold of Sally and John type thing. Basically what was happening during the torture episode in the other characters lives.
Also the singular thing that I did not like about the final season was how easily and lazily Barry got out of Moss’. I mean, his legs weren’t even tied up. If you’re not gonna bolt the torture chair to the ground, you can’t just leave a knife out for him to freely cut his hand straps. Just make it a bit harder for Barry to actually get out somehow. Or actual show that Jim had gotten sloppy at this as he became unhealthily obsessed with the idea of Gene being the true mastermind.
Most of this was originally a comment on another person’s post, but I thought it got too in depth for that, so I made it into its own post. Maybe this is just the super Barry fan in me, but I also do scriptwriting for myself, so these are just potential dumb little ideas of mine, if what I’d like to see in a potential 10 episode final season. Would love to hear thoughts.

With the team coming off of another cross-country flight for another midweek game, Lesesne sent them out in a 4-2-2-2 and considerably took their foot off the pressing pedal. Combined with some tired legs that left them a little more stretched back to front than usual, we got one of the most open-ended games that I can remember the Red Bulls playing in years. Nerve racking at times, but entertaining nonetheless!
No More Mr. Nice Guy (please...)
Miami created a handful of dangerous chances in the first half by going around or over the 4-2-2-2's compact midfield and finding their strikers (mostly Martinez) in the space between our CBs and CMs. You can see a nearly identical CB to LB to ST passing sequence a few times there.
Its usually a priority for the Red Bulls to make sure anyone receiving the ball in that area gets a body on them asap, even if it means taking a foul. But they were way, way too generous in the time and space they gave Martinez in particular. He may have lost a step, but he's still a dangerous player. For comparison, here's how they treated Charlotte's striker, Copetti, earlier this season when he tried to make similar plays.
I loved the halftime adjustments the Red Bulls made here though. They picked up the pressure on Miami's backline for the first ~10-15 minutes of the half, frazzling their inexperienced team, then sat deep and compact after the goal to put our CBs in better 1v1 situations.
Welcome back Luqui!
The flip side of allowing such a stretched field is that we got to put our best dribbler, Luquinhas, in acres of space to do what he does best. Amaya, Stroud, and CCJ do a great job on so many of these plays quickly turning up field and finding Luquinhas. The chance in the 21st minute especially was a perfect example of how the team can be quick and direct while still keeping the ball on the ground.
Other Odds and Ends
Stroud pulls shows amazing coordination as he raises his arm to plead his innocence *as he's fouling the opposing player*. And it worked, he wasn't called!
Another shout out to Stroud for deciding in the 89th minute to launch on an 80 yard sprint
Tolkin went full airbender with this cross, shame it didn't end up being an assist
This is probably the dullest "not quite highlight" yet, but I have not seen the team pass it out of the back like this since the days of Hans Backe. That's 14, 15 passes before even attempting to play it out of our half?

So, we already discussed what DC was doing to match the tenor of the early years of the War on Terror: A grim, smarter-than-it-thinks miniseries full of gratuitous rape that was meant to take the shine off the Silver Age by showing the darker side of its greatest heroes. Marvel, on the other hand, was trying to find a way to capture the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 era of existential threats, constant government surveillance, and the idea that if you weren’t with America, you were against it. A Captain America storyline saw Cap wrestle with the very concept of Guantanamo Bay; like any story arc that involves Cap doubting whether America lives up to its ideals, this made certain conservatives pissy, to the point that bad movie cataloguer Michael Medved wrote an entire article asking if Cap was a traitor. Avengers Disassembled briefly saw the Avengers face down their demons, as the Scarlet Witch goes crazy (again) and starts killing team members, her reality manipulations causing fault lines to form among Marvel’s greatest superteam. But there hadn’t yet been a storyline that would tie the entire Marvel Universe together with the burning question, “Which side are you on?”
Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with the Sokovia Accords. We’d be a lot better off if it did.
Part 1: Mark Millar’s March to the C-Word
Content Warning: Sexual assault. None of this is germane to the topic of the drama, so feel free to skip ahead to Part 1.5 if you don’t want to deal with this. Tl;dr: Mark Millar, the writer of the event, has a near pathological need to be a 3edgy5u contrarian.
Every comics crossover is ultimately a chance for one creative in the stable to shine or falter. The editors pick a writer who has turned out dependable work and give them a chance to try to alter the status quo but good. And for Civil War, Marvel’s EiC Joe Quesada decided the best person to lead the charge was Ultimates writer Mark Millar.
But who is Millar? Well, we could say “edgelord” and leave it at that, but we’re trying to dig deeper. Millar came up in comics alongside fellow Scot Grant Morrison, long before Morrison said the only time they want to bump into Millar on the streets of Glasgow is while going at 100 miles per hour. This antipathy is alleged to have stemmed from Millar copping several ideas from Morrison that went into Superman: Red Son. But after getting a start on Superman Adventures and as a cowriter on parts of Morrison’s JLA run, Millar soon branched out to WildStorm, where he took over The Authority from departing creatowritesex pest Warren Ellis.
The reason I bring up Red Son (for those non-geeks, an alternative universe comic premised on “What if Superman’s rocket had landed in Soviet Russia?”) is to frame a constant refrain about Mark Millar. He has good high-concept ideas… which often get trammeled up in an almost Pavlovian urge to shock, disturb, and/or titillate the reader. For instance, in The Authority, Ellis had introduced Apollo and Midnighter, two close companions who just happened to share the rough power sets and demeanors of Superman and Batman, with a few tweaks. Then he revealed they were boyfriends, which was a pretty bold move for a late Nineties comic book full of widescreen action and lovingly-rendered eviscerations.
In Millar’s first arc on the title, centered on a villainous Jack Kirby clone sending out a team of baddies who totally aren’t the Avengers, Apollo is subdued and is strongly implied to have been raped by someone who’s not Captain America. Apollo gets revenge by destroying EvilCap’s spinal column with his laser vision, then leaving him to the tender mercies of Midnighter, who is strongly implied to have sodomized him with a jackhammer.
In case you can’t tell, Millar loved him some rape. And it kept showing up in his creator-owned titles as well, all of which were basically written as Hollywood pitch docs. Wanted asks the question, “What if the supervillains won and secretly ruled the world from behind the scenes?” Well, an Eminem clone would take the opportunity to step into his dead villainous dad’s shoes and commit a lot of rape (yeah, there’s a reason the movie version replaced this with basically the Euthanatos from Mage: the Ascension getting orders from a magic loom). Chosen asks the question, “What if Jesus were born today?” Well, in a blatantly obvious twist, it turns out he’s actually the Antichrist, and part of his journey into realizing his evil nature involves being raped by all the demons of Hell.
It’s not that Millar can’t write innocent or restrained; he got started on the Superman: the Animated Series comic spin-off, and some of his titles such as Huck and Starlight have been praised for being relatively wholesome (keep in mind Huck is basically “What if Superman was Forrest Gump?” when I say “relatively”). And, as mentioned above, his works are made for high-concept log lines. You might recognize some of his various pitch docs: Kick-Ass, The Secret Service (source for the Kingsman movies), and, as mentioned above, Wanted. It’s just there’s this unctuous contrarian streak to a lot of his titles, a tendency to focus on venality, grotesquerie, and sodomy, with an air of pop culture edge. This also leaked into his image outside of his writing, with comments like “Games are for pedos” and ventures like the creator-owned comics periodical CLiNT (yes, the kerning is intentional). This streak continues to this day, as The Magic Order, a title that emerged from his deal with Netflix, features a magical escapologist who, she feels it very important to tell the reader in a direct monologue, escaped her own abortion. Bottom line, Millar has a sense of vision, but it’s betrayed at times by this reflexive desire to prove he’s smarter than the reader, to rub your face in the contradictions and make you a party to the artifice of it all. Usually with a dash of rape.
But at Marvel, Millar was riding the lightning of the Ultimate Universe. His Ultimates title was drawing on the wide-screen action image of JLA and The Authority, creating the cinematic language that would come to define the MCU. The choice to fantasy cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is why we have Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. He also painted the Hulk as a cannibalistic monster, cemented Hank Pym’s reputation as a wifebeater, and gave us Captain America yelling “Surrender? Do you think this A on my head stands for France?”, so let’s just keep that in perspective.
But the Ultimate Universe was its own pocket universe. Millar was being tapped to write a story for Earth-616, the main Marvel Universe. And he had a vision:

“I opted instead for making the superhero dilemma something a little different. People thought they were dangerous, but they did not want a ban. What they wanted was superheroes paid by the federal government like cops and open to the same kind of scrutiny. It was the perfect solution and nobody, as far as I'm aware, has done this before.”

Yeah. About that.
Part 1.5: What Has Come Before
Ultimately, the crux of Civil War is something that has been explored lightly in the past at Marvel: The idea that, instead of being unlicensed vigilantes who decide the best solution of societal issues is to beat up assholes in spandex, superheroes become licensed government officers that register their true identities with Uncle Sam and solve societal issues by beating up assholes in spandex. In Marvel’s history, it hasn’t gone well. The reality of government liaisons to superhero bodies has ranged from Valerie Cooper, who worked with government mutant team X-Factor but still found herself backing the genocidal Sentinel program as a big “Yeah, but what if…?”, to Henry Peter Gyrich, an inflamed obstructionist asshole who had to be held back from flipping a switch that would depower every superhuman individual on Earth. The idea of heroes themselves bristling against a government they disagreed with had a long history, as there was a period where Steve Rogers quit being Captain America, and the government had to find a replacement while he rode around on a motorcycle in a surprisingly slutty costume. But the idea of registering with the government has usually ended up on the “No” side due to one big cohort at Marvel: Mutants.
Ever since the days of Chris Claremont, a general conceit of the Marvel Universe is that mutants are a stand-in for your minority group of choice. Hated and feared, born different and feeling alienated, painted as an existential menace and threat to the status quo. Of course, it’s long been pointed out that the metaphor breaks down on the general grounds that, say, gays can’t shoot laser beams out of their eyes. I have my thoughts on that which I might share in the comments if someone pokes me hard enough, but it’s been general editorial consensus that people with powers, especially those of persecuted minorities, being compelled to share their true names, addresses, and natures with the federal government is a “That train’s never late!” move. Not only that, it’s a slippery slope. The classic X-Men story “Days of Future Past” is entirely premised on the idea that a government program of genocidal robots built to wipe out mutants will eventually run out of mutants… and then start turning on humans who could give birth to mutants, and then it’s Skynet all over again.
Another running meme in the Marvel Universe is that the X-Men usually exist in a Schrodinger’s cat situation with the rest of the superhero universe, both coexisting and in their own worlds. Yes, mutants have served on the Avengers, and yes, Thor intervened when the Morlocks were nearly wiped out in the sewers under New York. But Captain America, for all his proud statements of living up to America’s ideals, has a habit of missing the plot whenever the US government (or Canada, seat of all the Marvel Universe’s governmental evils - no, really) decides it’s Genocide O’Clock. And when the mutant nation of Genosha was completely wiped out by said murder robots, the Avengers seemed to be all “New phone who dis?” But when the two do intersect, there’s usually support for the mutants. One story in Fantastic Four had Reed Richards - Mr. Fantastic, stretchy man, greatest genius in the Marvel Universe, guy who’s probably being cucked by a fish-man - get tapped by the US government to make a device that detects mutants and other people with powers. He does… and then uses it to show why the government probably doesn’t want it, as it pings several members of Congress as having just enough genetic variation to qualify as “mutants,” even if they don’t have powers.
All in all, while the argument has some merit, for years, Marvel has come down on the position that asking people with powers to reveal their identities to the federal government is something that could go really bad if somebody with a hate-on for superheroes ends up in power. Something that would never happen oh yeah it totally did. But before it all went to Hell, Civil War at least gave an opportunity to reexamine the concept and see if it had merit.
It might have. But not with this argument.
Part 1.75: What Else Has Happened Before?
And now, some things that will ultimately give context for what happens next:

• In the pages of Thor, all of Asgard eventually runs headlong into Ragnarok. Thor and the rest of the Asgardians give their lives to save the earth, taking Thor off the board… for now.
• As mentioned above, the Avengers experience a critical fault due to Wanda going batshit (a common lament). With Avengers Mansion destroyed and the team at odds, it is eventually reunited under Tony Stark, who put the Avengers up in a tower he built.
• Nick Fury has vanished due to doing some skullduggery in the pages of the miniseries Secret War (no, not Secret Wars, this is different). Acting head of SHIELD, the all-purpose super spy squad of Marvel, is Maria Hill, who can’t seem to draw her pistol without shooting herself in the foot.
• Due to Wanda continuing to go batshit, the House of M crossover event ends with her casting a spell: “No more mutants.” While the damage is staunched, Earth-616’s population of mutants (which was recently established to be somewhere around 16 million) is reduced to 200, the rest being depowered or dying as a result of being depowered. This was because, as Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said, the idea of mutants being everywhere made them “boring.” The fact that mutants were starting to be written less as a minority stand-in and more as an actual minority group with fashion, culture, music, and neighborhoods might have had something to do with that. From the wake of this event emerges Sally Floyd, a journalist whose own mutant daughter died before the mass depowering due to having a power that was more curse than blessing. The series Generation M follows her as the viewpoint character as she investigates the stories of former mutants.

Part 2: Connecticut Can’t Catch a Break
The big kick-off for Civil War involves the New Warriors, a team of teen heroes who have, as of a recently canceled series, been trying to make it big as reality TV stars. They get in a fight with a bunch of villains in the small town of Stamford, CT, when exploding villain Nitro goes positively nuclear, resulting in a blast much bigger than any he’s generated. [1] Not only does this mostly wipe out the New Warriors (save for kinetic energy-absorbing goofball Speedball), but it also happens to hit a nearby school. In the end, 612 people are dead, many of them children, and the nation wants answers.
With public opinion turning against the New Warriors, former member Hindsight starts leaking secret identities to get the heat off his back. This only makes things worse. Secret identities have only recently stopped being a thing for some heroes: Captain America only came out a few years ago, it was only recently that Tony Stark stopped pretending Iron Man was his bodyguard, and Daredevil was almost outed in the pages of his book. But something needs to be done, so Tony helps work with Congress to pass the Super Human Registration Act, which requires that all people with powers or working as vigilantes register their identities with the government to receive training and oversight. If you don’t? Believe it or not, jail, right away.
Fault lines quickly develop in the superhero community. While Tony is leading the “pro” side, alongside Reed Richards (yeah, we’ll get to that), Captain America, usually painted as the embodiment of the dream of America despite its compromised history and many sins, is against it. He’s lived through Richard Nixon being a secret fascist and shooting himself in the head after being fingered as mastermind of a vast criminal conspiracy (yes, that happened ); he knows how badly this could go in the wrong hands. Needless to say, Maria Hill and SHIELD hear his concerns, understand his problems with it, and are willing to iron out the kinks through reasoned debate.
Just kidding. Before the law has even been signed, Maria sics SHIELD’s elite Cape-Killers squad on Cap with the intent of getting him behind bars. Cap swiftly goes underground and starts his own group of anti-registration superheroes.
The fight continues for the next few issues. Spider-Man, caught in the middle, reveals himself to be Peter Parker at a press conference, declaring his support for the SHRA. Doctor Strange is so powerful that he tells the government to fuck off, and somehow, Maria Hill doesn’t decide to go charging up his asshole. Ben Grimm, the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing, is so sick of all the conflict he goes to France. But things are still at a stalemate, and while SHIELD may be acting like a bunch of merry assholes, it seems like there’s a debate to be had that could still be resolved reasonably… except for one key factor.
Part 3: I Fought the Law, and the Law… Huh?
No one ever really defined what the Super Human Registration Act, the legislation that tore the Marvel Universe’s superhero community asunder, did. Every book that had an issue that touched on the event seemed to have a different understanding of its principles, as well as just how fascist it might be in the long run. In the pages of She-Hulk, attorney Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk argues the law is a net good, as it gives heroes the backing and resources they need to not have to go it alone, while also having some measure of government oversight. In the pages of Civil War Frontline (oh, and we’ll get back to Civil War Frontline, don’t you worry), Wonder Man is told by the government that he needs to do a job for them, and if he refuses, well, one thousand years dungeon.
Which then leads into the other issue behind the SHRA. Namely, that everyone in favor was either starting to swing towards fascism or embracing bootlicking as a lifestyle, not a kink. In the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter asks Reed Richards, who has always bucked authority and once stopped the US government from doing something just like this with mutants, why he’s pro-registration. Reed then reveals that an uncle who has never been mentioned before was called before HUAC; he refused to name names, his career was ruined, and he killed himself. From this, Reed - the man who stole a rocketship because the government said “no” to his planned space voyage - has learned that the government is always right, especially when they could step on your neck (this was received so badly that a later comic revealed he’d actually borrowed the concept of psychohistory from Asimov’s Foundation, he’d made it work somehow, and his calculations showed that this was the only way to avoid a greater disaster). This comic also revealed that people who were in violation of the SHRA were sent to a literal extradimensional Gitmo, a prison in the Negative Zone that later comics would reveal was overseen by… Captain Marvel. No, not that one. No, not that one. The Kree superhero Captain Mar-Vell, who had famously died of cancer decades before. How did he come back from the dead? Fuck if we know.
This “the law says what you want it to say” approach spread across various books and miniseries meant to cross over into the event. In the pages of a crossover mini between the Runaways and the Young Avengers, this meant SHIELD Cape-Killer squads were using lethal force against teenagers. The second-to-last issue of the mini ends with several members of both teams in extradimensional Gitmo, about to be dissected by a guy who’s horny for torture. The fact that all the captive heroes were the queer members of both teams? Total coincidence. Honestly.
So, it quickly becomes clear that the editorial control on this event is less than cohesive. There are different ideas all over as to what the SHRA does, and some of those ideas are tacking pretty fashy. But if the law is being painted as that bad, then clearly, there must be some greater statement of freedom vs. security. Maybe Millar’s really painting a subversive picture of what happens when you trade liberty for control, right?
Part 4: Why Do You Hate the Good Thing?
After the publication of Civil War #3, Millar would say in an interview he was actually pro-registration. I can’t find that interview, but here’s a similar sentiment shared years later:

“Weirdly, some of the other writers would often make Tony the bad guy, which I thought was a strange choice because I was actually on Tony’s side... In the real world, if somebody had superpowers, I’d like them to be registered in the same way that somebody who has a gun has to carry a license. But a gun can kill several people while a superhero can kill several thousands of people, so on a pragmatic level I’m 100% on Tony’s side. Maybe on a romantic level, Cap’s position makes sense but I don’t think anybody in the real world would really want that."”

And again, here’s the thing: He’s not entirely wrong. As said above, the idea of civil liberties for all and “free to me you and me” falls down a little when one of your neighbors can blow up a city block by thinking real hard. But Millar is fighting against years of ideological inertia in the Marvel Universe, as well as painting Captain America, the guy who has always embodied the ideal of a righteous, just America, as in the wrong. He needs to make one hell of an argument.
So here’s what happens in the pages of Civil War #3 to sell the audience on the SHRA:

• Thor comes back from the dead… and he’s on Tony’s side! Well, not really. Tony and Reed both realized that having one of the most beloved gods of the Marvel Universe come out on their side would be a big win… if only he wasn’t dead. So, they cloned him. Or rather, they T-800’d him, putting cloned divine flesh on a robot skeleton. But I’m sure he’s perfectly under control, and - oh, he just killed Goliath. In the next issue, one of Marvel’s black male heroes, frozen at the size of a small townhouse in death, will be buried in a gigantic ditch, wrapped in a tarp and chains. You’d think Hank Pym could grow a large enough coffin, at least.
• With Cap and the anti-registration side escaping once again, Tony decides he needs a dedicated team that can track down fugitive superhumans. To do so, he creates a new version of the Thunderbolts, a concept long associated with “villains acting like heroes.” And who does he put on this team? Venom, the Spider-Man villain who eats people’s brains; Bullseye, the Daredevil villain who will kill anyone for the lulz; and Norman Osborn, a.k.a. The Green Goblin, who famously murdered Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Again. Tony’s in the right. The SHRA is good.
Part 5: Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
The next few issues of Civil War might best be described as “They fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.” The anti-registration side picks up The Punisher, Marvel’s most avowed murderer of criminals - and Cap is somewhat shocked but not entirely surprised when two minor villains join the anti-registration side and Frank promptly kills them on sight. Spider-Man starts realizing things are weird on the pro-reg side and defects, after he has set his entire life on fire. The X-Men have continued to stay out of this whole mess. In the lead-up, Emma Frost called Tony out on the Avengers’ complete absence when Genosha got nuked. Later, Carol Danvers (then Ms. Marvel, now Captain Marvel) will show up at the Xavier School to pitch the SHRA just after a massive terrorist attack kills dozens of students. Emma responds by telepathically dogwalking her.
By the final issue of the miniseries, the SHRA has expanded out into the Fifty States Initiative, wherein each state gets its own superteam. There’s a big final battle, Hercules kills Robo-Thor, and Cap nearly takes out Tony, only to be stopped by… the heroes of 9/11. No shit, Captain America is subdued by cops, firefighters, and paramedics. And when that happens, Cap finally takes a look around, realizes their big ideological street brawl has resulted in collateral damage, and surrenders. The SHRA wins, though Tony feels a little bad about it. Cap is ready to stand trial and to argue that, while he may have done something wrong, he did it for the right reasons.
Once again: Yeah. About that.
Part 6: MySpace Tom Didn’t Die For This
Running alongside Civil War is Civil War Frontline, a street-level book written by Paul Jenkins that managed to capture this world-breaking conflict through the eyes of people on the street. Though it has side stories, its main leads are Ben Urich, Peter Parker’s journalist buddy at The Daily Bugle, and the aforementioned Sally Floyd. Throughout the series, they start to realize there’s a story underneath the SHRA, as if somebody is playing the angles.
Before we talk about that conclusion, let’s talk about a side story. Remember how we said part of the comics community saw Identity Crisis as a driven effort to make things less “wacky” and intentionally darken the DCU? Well, that same tonal approach led to one of the more laughable moments of a pretty laughable arc. See, despite the fact that, as established, it was Nitro who blew up Stamford, it’s Speedball, the only survivor of the New Warriors, that views himself as responsible and is held up as a scapegoat by the general public. In addition, the blast screwed up his powers. Now, he doesn’t absorb and reflect kinetic energy; rather, he generates energy based on pain. So, he builds himself a new, extreme outfit lined with 612 spikes, one for each person who died in Stamford. This will drive his crusade to make things right - not as Speedball… but as Penance.
It was so laughably DeviantArt “OC do not steal” that no one could take it seriously. Look what you did, you took a perfectly good goofball and gave him an emo streak. The turn is swiftly mocked in other Marvel books, and it’s eventually revealed that Speedball still had his original powerset and always intended to put Nitro in the Goofy Suit of Dark Inner Torment as punishment for his crimes. But this turn gives you a sense of the tone and heft Jenkins was bringing to the proceedings.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Ben and Sally follow the thread as Namor, as he is wont to do, declares war on the surface world after an Atlantean diplomat is shot. But it turns out the assassination was arranged by Norman Osborn, who decided it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission and manipulated Atlantis into war so that Tony could have another piece of evidence for getting superhumans on a leash. And the two journalists deduce that, on some level, Tony had to know this would be an inevitable outcome of giving state backing to an unhinged mogul who dresses like a Power Rangers villain. Weighing what to do with this information, Ben and Sally, who are kind of sick of the collateral damage by this point, sit on it while they go in for an interview with Captain America, now in custody and willing to tell his side of the story.
And then. And then. The monologue. If you want a lesson in how to assassinate a character in 30 seconds or less, this monologue is a great example. Sally Floyd calls Captain America out as completely divorced from American values. Now, again, Captain America has long served as the beating liberal heart of the Marvel Universe. He has always represented an America that reckons with its legacy of things like internment camps, Manifest Destiny, and Jim Crow, in order to transcend these scars and embody the promise offered by Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus, carved on the side of the Statue of Liberty. Why is he out of touch with Americans at the dawn of the 21st century?
Well, he’s never heard of MySpace. [2] He doesn’t watch NASCAR. He doesn’t follow American Idol. There are pop culture moments that have aged like milk; this one had all the permanence of an ice cream cone in a blast furnace. But despite the inanity of Floyd’s argument - and trust me, there are fan edits dedicated to Cap pointing out how full of shit this argument is - it’s clear it represents something else. This is a post-9/11 world. Fuck civil liberties, we have a no-fly list and Gitmo, and if the American people really cared, they’d do something other than watch Simon Cowell read aspiring singers to filth. What does Captain America stand for in this moment of crisis?
Nothing. Because he just looks away from Sally Floyd. No doubt thinking, “Oh my God this bitch.” But to underline the argument in question, Sally storms out of the interview, Ben in tow. She still has that information on Norman Osborn’s false flag operation… and while she and Ben confront Tony on everything that went down, they decide the story should never see the light of day. Because they wouldn’t dare jeopardize the SHRA, because security is more important than the truth.
Oh. And then Cap gets shot. And dies. He totally dies (except he doesn’t but we’ll get to that). If ever there was an unintentional thesis statement for this event, running in the late stages of the Bush era, it would be this: “It’s better to trust that the powers that be who oversee the new America will keep you safe, even when they stage false flag operations, stick you in a gulag, and put their trust in monsters. All that civil liberty stuff was the old America. And the old America was hopeless. It wasn’t even on MySpace.”
Epilogue: Consequences Keep Consequencing
As you can tell from that last paragraph, a lot of the fan reception to Civil War likely had a lot to do with the period. This was the Bush era, a time where you were for America or against it. We were in the shadow of the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and widespread wiretaps, paranoid about what civil liberty we’d be asked to put on the pyre next in the name of Freedom. A story all about the warm, clenching fist of government control that tells you to ignore the collateral damage… well, it wasn’t great for the cultural moment.
The ideas of Civil War aren’t necessarily bad ones. I frame Cap as the liberal dream of what America could be, but there are good arguments to be made that America has never been that and Cap is just copium for liberals. His most recent title, Sentinel of Liberty, opens with Steve saying he is out of touch with the average American - not because he doesn’t watch NASCAR, but because he’s a WWII veteran who looks maybe 30 years old at most and whose best friends are all superheroes or spies. A narrative that has him on the wrong side of the issue and detonates his beliefs isn’t impossible, but it probably shouldn’t be one where people who got powers due to a fluke of birth or a radiation accident are told by the government, “Join with us or we’ll send supervillains after you.” Hell, as the Civil War movie proves, there is a way to tell a story about a superhero community torn in half by the idea of mandatory registration as government-controlled actors, and just why people would think that could be a bad idea (“Hey, remember when a good chunk of our intelligence apparatus turned out to be Nazi stay behinds?”).
But in the context of the era, and coupled with the execution, Civil War felt like a hard sell, and you could feel the thumb pressing on the scale every second while reading it. The moral center of the Marvel Universe is wrong, the winning side employs sadistic murderers and has an extradimensional Gitmo, and the writer is telling you that any sane individual would be on Team Green Goblin Employer.
So how did that all work out? Well…

• With Cap seemingly dead, shot by his brainwashed love interest Sharon Carter as part of a plot by the Red Skull, Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier becomes the new Cap. Only it turns out Steve wasn’t killed, but shot with a time bullet that Billy Pilgrims his ass. He eventually comes back.
• Thor comes back, finds out what Tony did, and beats his ass all the way across post-Katrina New Orleans.
• The Secret Invasion event happens next, which leads to Skrull infiltrators hitting everything (this is also the explanation for Captain Mar-Vell’s miraculous resurrection: He was a Skrull all along). With Tony caught with his pants down and Norman Osborn seeming to save the day, Norman - who has been losing his shit for some time - takes over the Initiative and forms his own fascist cabal, HAMMER. To try and stop Norman from learning everything on every hero ever, Tony goes on the run and actually starts deleting his own brain, which he then reassembles with a backup from before anyone even thought of the SHRA. The fact that getting rid of Tony’s “Oops I did a fascism” period came out alongside Iron Man hitting theaters is a coincidence, I’m sure.

As for Spider-Man? It might not shock you, but having a hero without the resources of Tony Stark out himself to the world carries liabilities. An assassin who tries to kill Peter instead hits Aunt May, and it appears she’ll die of her injuries. All this leads to One More Day… and if you thought the fans hated Civil War? Oh, BABY.
[1] This is eventually explored in the pages of Wolverine, of all books, as Wolverine decides maybe somebody should track down the person who actually killed hundreds of children. It’s revealed that Nitro was given power-boosting drugs by the CEO of Damage Control, Marvel’s designated “clean up after the super-battle” corporation, as a way of generating business. In a sign of how little this matters, Wolverine tells Maria Hill to her face that the person responsible for a mass casualty event is the pawn of a powerful conspiracy, and she basically says, “Not my problem.” Cobie Smulders must thank the gods that her Maria Hill is written as somebody with basic human decency.
[2] Hilariously, when Sally Floyd was brought back during Nick Spencer’s Captain America run because no one had piled enough dung on her corpse, this line was retconned to her asking him about Twitter. Given everything Elon’s been doing lately, we’ll see if that ages just as poorly.

Currently rewatching “Test Dream” in season 5 and it’s finally dawned on me how many times people in the series are given food and then give it away to someone right after as if they made it. The example in this episode is Tony’s new maid makes him enchiladas that he immediately gives to Tony B in the following scene. I also recall a similar thing happening in season 4 when Jan gives Carmella’s lasagne(?) to Bobby, passing it on as her own. Any other examples?

With Jim O’Heir and Greg Levine hosting, this rewatch podcast has really become excellent! They’re offering fascinating behind-the-scenes tidbits, like how Greg was himself actually misnamed for quite some time (like Jerry/Terry/Larry/Barry/Gary!), that the party with the end of the world was really filmed all through the night until dawn, and much more. Jim and Greg are clearly so fond of the show, and they really do their homework. I’ve gained a new appreciation for episodes I’ve watched countless times. The vibes are just good…and besides, don’t we all want to hear what happened to Joan Calamezzo’s portraits after the show was over?
If you stopped listening under the previous hosts or haven’t gotten into it, I highly recommend it! Since the start of season 4 (episode released April 18), Jim and Greg took over and have really taken the show to a new level.

It's time for another episode discussion! Provide your thoughts on this episode in the comments, and come back tomorrow to discuss the next episode: People Who Use People!
Season 1 Episode 17: Torn Between Two Hannahs
Aired: October 14, 2006
Description: Miley's look-a-like cousin Luann comes to visit from Tennessee. Miley believes she's "the devil’s little helper" because Luann once pushed her into a well. When Luann arrives, she is sweet to everyone, which Miley believes is an act. Meanwhile, Hannah Montana is invited by Traci to a Hannah-themed Halloween party, which Hannah plans to attend with Lola (Lilly). Miley becomes increasingly paranoid about Luann. They seemingly reconcile, and Hannah and Lola prepare to go to the party; however, it's really Luann dressed as Hannah while the real Hannah is bound with ropes in her dressing room. Luann fools Lola, and at the party, Luann tries to embarrass herself as Hannah. Miley, the real Hannah, escapes and hurries to the party, believing Luann will ruin her secret. When she finally convinces Lola of the situation, she finds Luann on stage, giving a speech as Hannah and getting ready to take off her wig. Oliver turns off the lights just in time, and off-stage, Luann begins claiming that she is the real Miley. Both dressed identically as Hannah, Oliver comes up with an idea to figure out who is who – he says both of them have to kiss him. Luann excitedly accepts, but Miley is disgusted, instantly revealing who the real Hannah is. In the subplot, Jackson and Robby Ray try to out-scare their neighbor, Mr. Dontzig, for Halloween, who tricks them into scaring all the children away.

The Boys is my favorite series. Other than just the plot I love expecially the allegoric plot elements and the use of background details to make callbacks, forshadowing or just cool references. I periodically watch the series from beginning to end just to find new ones. I have began my fourth re-watch and here's some stuff I found (some of it I found them my previous times but I wanted to share them nonetheless):
1) Black Noir is in the "Supes club" just dancing.
2) in episode 3 when Hughie's home after killing translucent he shouts at his dad he hates pizza-rolls and that he like them when he was 7. Later we found out his mum left when he was six. I think pizzarolls for him were a confort food and at the moment he hates them because it would remember him how he just got over his mum leaving and doesn't want to do it with Robin
3) A-train whispers "fuck" react at his fuck up telling about the V to Popclaw and her letting some people find out. Homelander does not show reaction to this but completely blow up in season 3 and I think this shows his self mental health deteriorating
4) We can see Billy Zane both in "Terminal beauty III" and in " the mesmerizer". He'll later be in "not without my dolphin". That guy cashes big in Vought movies
5) there is a Lady injured by Tek-knight in the support group (episode 6). I wonder if there will be a callback like the no-dick executive
6) Shockwave is at the Mesmer convention. This means that despite being a speedster (and considered for a position in the 7) he is actually a C or D Lister
7) Frenchie talks about how the first woman he killed her was a beautiful woman with dirt under her nails. And he finds a bottle of nail polish in Kimiko's cage. I think this probably stuck to him as a remainder that they are doing a fucked up thing to a person he does not not know and probably contribute to make him see her as innocent
8) Butcher esplains that their truck is Just a truck on the street while a black truck with "flowers on the side is conspicuous". And realize the Boys have been taken by seeing one. There's also a line how the Feds did Vought dirty work
9) in episode 8 Hughie tells Annie about she saved him from a dark place. She answers that was not saving him but *just being there* and this my guys is the ENDING MESSAGE OF SESON 3
I'll post about other seasons as soon as I watch them

Hey fellow warriors, how are you doing? I made a post a while back asking you how would you upgrade our dear cast and their powers. I've been thinking about it since then and this is how I would do it.
AELITA:
This isn't exactly a power-up but rather a derivation from her creativity powers, what I would have given her is the ability to summon/create Xana monsters. Since she is the opposite of Xana, it makes sense that using her power to alter the Lyoko landscape and make copies of the Lyoko warriors if there's a guardian attack, she would be able to make a copy of any of Xana's monsters to help increase our numbers when needed. The monsters would have a different color scheme and it wouldn't look exactly the same so the warriors could differentiate the allies from the enemies, but it would be a very cool addition to her skills. This skill would need a very big amount of energy from Aelita to not make it too op, and she would discover it after the Marabounta episode in season 2. In the next seasons, it could still appear from time to time but since she gains actual weapons, the Monster Summoning would be a last resort kind of thing, since it requires a lot of energy.
Also, as an extra thing since her wings are made from the same thing as her energy fields, it would be cool to see her use them as weapons too, and not just as a vehicle. Also, the monster ability would help explain why she doesn't get an actual vehicle till she gets her wings because she can summon a monster and use it as a vehicle.
YUMI
I think it was really unfair how only Aelita and Ulrich were the only ones to actually get power upgrades while Yumi and Odd just changed their outfits in season 4, so this would be kinda related to that. Since her outfit changed from a geisha to a ninja, I would give her invisibility powers, it would use the same source as her telekinesis and be activated with those silver eyebrows/pills she has in her forehead. It would give her more options when strategizing, and with some extra power and time in the season, making a second object invisible too, whether is her fans, the object she is moving with telekinesis, or a warrior. Also maybe giving her an extra pair of fans so she isn't defenseless if they're in the air.
ODD
As I said, Aelita and Ulrich being the only ones with a power-up is really unfair, and besides that, unlike Yumi, who at least had her telekinesis powers, Odd only has his arrows. So in Season 4, I would give him the rapid-fire gauntlets he receives in Season 5, while still having his regular arrows. That would give him the ability to use his arrows however he saw fit in each moment, a precise stealth attack on the target or charging straight into danger if he is being a diversion/bait. Also, take back one of the unused concept designs and give Odd's claws the ability to actually scratch the enemy to give him a chance in close combat.
If I were to give him a magic-based power it would be slowing time like on Quest for Infinity. But a last-resort kind of thing.
ULRICH
He is the one with more powers: 2 katanas, super sprint, triplicate and triangular, and also the one that has killed more monsters in the show, so I would either let him be or add the options of unleashing energy slashes with his sword like in the season 2 episode Franz Hopper. I wouldn't make them as powerful as Xana-William's energy slashes, and also, I would make it so he needs to charge up the energy slash with the attacks of his opponents, both ranged attacks like lasers or direct hits, then he uses that same energy to strike back. This would obligate him to use his head to strategize a bit during the battles. So during a battle, he would use both of his katanas to block attacks and then when he sees fit, unleash a super powerful strike, each katana would have it's own charger, so it would be 2 strikes that he can release whenever he wants and if he were to use his triplication, it would be up to 6 energy strikes.

I wish the main focus was the sheriff getting clues about the outside, find out that the oxygen bottles they carry when they want to go outside is actually poison, get someone to go outside without the bottle, but instead the show became about old relics, photos of the past, people dying. Episode 3 to 6 should have been just 1 episode. Cliffhanger of episode 6 should have been at episode 4. Show is running way to slow and makes you not want to watch season 2. They take the story and stretch it so much so they can make few seasons. Just tell the story in a compelling flow and get creative for season 2 instead of stretching the whole thing because they don't want to get creative.

I am currently on episode 4 of season 2. It is definitely a great show (from background music and story arc to character development and direction). However, I noticed that nearly all the major characters say "un-huh" repeatedly (sometimes 3-4 characters use the word within a single episode). I am not trying to take anything away from the series, but the repetition, once noticed, makes me wonder about the why and how of it. Did anyone else notice/experience this too?

So, I've been trying to sort the mess that is the Futurama episode order in theTVdb so that everything shows up in production order in Plex.
Up untill this point, I could sort of make the production order make sense by using the DVD order, then putting the 4 movies as specials, then Spliting seasons 6 & 7 into 4, 13 episode seasons, comprising of seasons 5 trough 8.
Thing is, there's a new season coming up (yeeyyy!! :D) that is labeled as "season 8". So where does that leaves theTVdb and Plex?

40 moments for Jelle’s 40th

1. The MVP (500m race): Comet’s original race in the 500m that put JMR on the map
2. Dawn of a new era (ML16 Balancing): The one that started it all, Marble League 2016 kicks off with 16 teams making their debut in the very first event, Balancing. The Rojo Rollers would claim the first gold.
3. The Final Four (ML16 Hurdles): In an unbelievable twist of fate, the top 4 teams were the final four teams in Hurdles to decide the title. In perhaps the greatest finish in Marble history, Speedy from the Savage Speeders defeated Yellup from Mellow Yellow to win the inaugural Marble League
4. Momo Oh no (ML17 Collision): Perhaps one of the best known moments, Momomomo collides with a spinner and get sent straight to Wispy losing a chip in the process. Momomomo would sit out the remainder of the ML while Mimo would sub in getting a bronze at High Jump.
5. Foreshadowing? (ML17 Underwater Race): Wospy & Kinnowin having back to back battles in the underwater race, the first having Kinnowin setting a record, the second having Wospy steal the gold for the Midnight Wisps.
6. OOOOOO (ML17 Sand Rally): A two team battle between the fan favorite O’rangers and the defending champs Savage Speeders. With the Speeders knocked out in their heat, the O’rangers needed a podium finish in the final to win the title. They would get it with a silver after a late charge from Starry clinched their second gold.
7. As close as possible (SMR17 R5): The closest finish in a sand race saw Quicksilver defeat Nemo by 0.01 second in a photo for the ages.
8. A controversial finale (SMR17 Final): The last race saw double points amongst a longer track. Season leader Quicksilver DNF’d and Dragon’s Egg runner up finish to H2 Blue with the double points gives them the title.
9. Ice Cold (ML18 E1 Ice Dash): The 2018 ML was a winter edition and the ice Dash kicked it off. Sea from the Oceanics secured the gold in a tight final.
10. For Momomo & Momomomo (ML18 E7 Snow Rally): A late push from Momo in the Snow Rally gives them one of the most memorable golds in Marble history after injuries to two members resulted in Team Momo merging with Team Primary, this medal was the first following the merger.
11. How? (ML18 E8 Snowboard Cross): Sublime from the Limers of all teams makes a rally to secure gold. To date, it remains the Limers only gold medal, a team most commonly associated with trash.
12. An event for the ages (ML18 Ice Hockey): A personal favorite, Ice Hockey was a bloodbath that saw all marbles in action with all the atmosphere of real hockey. Midnight Wisps would defeat the Minty Maniacs in the final.
13. The Midnight Miracle (ML18 Sand Mogul): Ten teams had a chance to win the title coming in. Wispy from the Midnight Wisps would prove to be the Killing Moon and complete the comeback started from the prior event to defeat Whizzy from the Savage Speeders in the final and win the title by one point, the smallest margin to win the title in Marble history.
14. A Marble First (ML19 Funnels): The Speeders won the prior event in the Underwater Race, but combining that with Rapidly winning the funnels made the Savage Speeders the first team to win two golds to start a ML.
15. Records Falling (ML19 Balancing): A Marble League record was broken three different time in this event, first by the Crazy Cat’s Eyes, then the Thunderbolts, and then once again by the Hazers. These three would be the podium.
16. Summer Showdown (ML19 Biathlon): Hop defeats Bonbon in one of the closest finishes in Marble League history.
17. A Dirty Comeback (ML19 Dirt Race): Pinky Toe comes out of nowhere in the final race to win the Dirt Race for the Pinkies first ever gold, the event was also notable for the insane number of DNFs.
18. A Robust Coronation (ML19 Sand Rally): Razzy from the Raspberry Racers did enough to secure the record breaking Marble League season with 216 points and 8 medals, both which stand to this day, by getting bronze to win ML19. The event also saw the Oceanics fans riot with signs saying Noceanics after their dreadful host campaign.
19. A blowout to remember (SMR19 R5): Red Number 3 being the defending champion would take the lead and never look back, winning by a record 8.07 seconds for the sand rally.
20. A New Direction (M1S1 Savage Speedway): Marbula One launches and begins with a photo finish between Starry from Team Galactic defeating Hazy from the Hazers.
21. Rivalry Renewed (M1S1 Momotorway): Balls of Chaos and Team Primary rivalry hits a new high after Clutter holds off Prim at the very end to secure the first wire to wire win.
22. Savage Star (M1S1 Midnight Bay): Needing a win, and some help, Speedy from the Savage Speeders would come back in the race to secure gold and with a poor showing from Hazy, made the Savage Speeders M1 Champions. Speedy would be named MVM.
23. John Oliver sponsors ML20: During the Covid lockdown, sports all over the world shut down. John Oliver saw the opportunity to give fans something to watch and sponsors all of ML20 and donates winnings to food banks. The sponsorship saw an influx of fans.
24. A Minty Comeback (ML20 Funnels): Minty Drizzel was the first marble to enter the final funnel, they would also be the last marble to leave it giving the Minty Maniacs a stunning victory and their second gold in three events.
25. The Reserve (ML20 Hurdles): Razzy sets a record twice (which later got broken by Yellow Eye) but proceeds to get injured at the end of the semis. The Raspberry Racers sub in Ruzzy to go in the final and pulls a massive upset to get gold.
26. Out of the Fog (ML20 Triathlon): The event was one of the best, starting with Momo rallying on Pulsar to advance to the final. That was topped by Foggy’s massive rally in the water for gold.
27. Redemption (ML20 Sand Moguls): The Oceanics end a 27 event drought by getting gold in the Sand Moguls, winning every round.
28. The Miracle in the Waves (ML20 Aquathlon): Although the Midnjght Wisps defeating the Savage Speeders in a photo final was fun, it was nothing compared to the Oceanics rallying on the O’rangers to stun them. It was the start of a massive downfall that saw the O’rangers blow a 35 point lead with three events to go and eventually leading to the Savage Speeders second Marble League title.
29. Yellup is Gone (M1S2 Aquathlon): Yellup would fall off the track altogether, providing one of the best Greg Woods lines.
30. Red Eye ascends (M1S2 Savage Speedway): Really, the entirety of CCE’s S2 could be an entry but it’s hard to ignore a marble making a historic effort to win the title with a gold by over eight seconds while also securing pole and FL points. It ended up being one of five golds for CCE that season en route to a historic title.
31. Battle of Champions (SMR S5 R9): A short race featuring two former champions in Dragon’s Egg and Red Number 3 go head to head with Dragon’s Egg winning by 0.02 seconds.
32. Four Felynia (ML21 Sprint): The record would fall a whopping four times, the last of them being by Green Eye winning gold for the hometown Crazy Cat’s Eyes
33. Here Come the Speeders (ML21 Relay): The Speeders dominate relay, having won it five times. This one was perhaps their best, performing an incredible comeback in the final that saw Greg’s line come to life.
34. A mob for the podium (ML21 Sand Rally): Blue Eye would hold off a large ground of marbles trying to get on the podium. Alpine and Shimmer would come out of that group with medals.
35. A Race of All Time (ML21 Marblocross): ML21 was the best tournament, one that saw 11 teams having a chance to win the Marble League. Implications changed nearly every lap of the whole race and while Minty Fresh won the race, it was Yellup and Mellow Yellow who would come out victorious by getting bronze and securing the title.
36. Solidifying a legacy (M1S3 Mellow Meadows): Red Eye would complete a comeback in the final lap by jumping the bumpers over Clutter marking the first successful last lap overtake to win a race.
37. One Lap Away (M1S3 Mirage Meowtain): Easily the two best teams were the O’rangers & Crazy Cat’s Eyes in S3. The final lap saw Royal pass Red Eye at the start of the lap to steal the title from CCE and hand it to the O’rangers. Had the race been one lap shorter, CCE wins instead.
38. Four in a row (ML22 Sand Rally): Before 2022 the Shining Swarm were known as the ? team being forgettable. This stretch changed that by winning four straight medals in a row, never done before in a single Marble League. The latter saw them hold off Aryp and Bonbon in the SAND. The Shining Swarm would climb from last at one point to 12th before the event stretch began all the way to 2nd at the end.
39. Pinkies defy expectations (ML22 Elimination Race): 2022 cant be written without the surprising domination of the Pinkies. They would win seven medals and secure the title in this event once Galac5th happened. The 13 point margin is the largest in ML history and the unlikely story considering they were dead last in 18, 15th in 19, and failed to qualify in 20 & 21.
40. Zapped (SMR S6 R2): Silver Bolt charges at the home stretch to rally on Slimer by 0.01 seconds. Slimer however would get the last laugh winning the season.

Happy 40th birthday Jelle!