Hey do "Homies" vending machines still exist? Or were they left firmly in the 2000s? :(
Do people even know their lore anymore
The short version is that these were made by one mexican american man based on the poor inner city community he grew up in. Most but not all of the characters are latino and every single one has a detailed backstory that's often harshly down to earth; there are homies who struggle with drug addiction, homies who are ex convicts, homies who are sex workers, homies who are veterans with PTSD, everything you can think of. The only unifying thing is that almost all of them are still good people, storywise; they're all doing what they have to or they're trying to be better.
They made millions of dollars for a few years, and then they started pissing off racist cops:
"Since gang members are usually depicted in similar clothes as those of the Homies, the police felt the toys promoted gang life. In fact, the Homies figures so closely matched gang members' attire that an L.A. county district deputy attorney was inclined to use the Homies toys as an example of what not to wear."
This gained widespread attention after the NYT published an article in 2003 which of course is paywalled but here's a copy paste. While overall positive, the article has some pretty cringeworthy statements and is a now surreal look at the early 2000's mindset, especially when it implies that the homies are a sign of a "post-politically-correct" America:
"Two-Inch Latino Role Models,
for Good or Ill
By JO NAPOLITANO
Published: May 01, 2003
Shady, as she is known in the barrio, wears black sunglasses and a gray overcoat to disguise herself. She is ashamed to let friends and neighbors know she works as a stripper to support her son.
Willie G, a former gangster paralyzed from the waist down as a result of a gang fight, has turned his life around. He works as a youth counselor, trying to steer children away from the path he chose.
El Profe, a high school teacher with a master's degree in education, could have left this town long ago, but he vowed to stay and teach the children who face the same challenges he had to overcome.
Shady, Willie G and El Profe are not real people; they are the Homies, plastic figures two inches tall that caricature a segment of urban Mexican-Americans. They have become a phenomenon, finding a place in a postpolitically correct world in which racial and ethnic stereotypes are being embraced in a self-consciously humorous way precisely to subvert them.
The Homies' creator, David Gonzales, a 43-year-old Mexican-American from Richmond, Calif., has watched his product move from gum-ball machines in mostly minority neighborhoods in 1998 to national retail chains like Urban Outfitters, Spencer Gifts and Tower Records. Sales of the figures have grown into the tens of millions. There are about 120 Homies characters, each one with a profile on the Web. Mr. Gonzales has also branched out with new lines and a deal with one of the nation's largest publishers of children's books.
But like Bart Simpson and the ''South Park'' crew, the Homies have not been warmly received everywhere. Some say they exploit Mexican-American stereotypes and are a negative example of Latino culture.
Walter Ornelas, director of the Yollocalli Youth Museum, an outgrowth of the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum here, said that Mexican-Americans might be embracing the Homies because they are one of the few representations of Latinos in pop culture, even though they highlight painful stereotypes. The figures -- with their tattoos, baggy pants, knit caps, short skirts and tight, midriff-bearing shirts -- look like ''little hoodlums,'' he said.
'''For high school kids it's not a very positive image for them to be relating to,'' Mr. Ornelas said. ''Why can't they make little doctors or lawyers?''
The Los Angeles Police Department had a similar complaint in 1999, shortly after the Homies appeared in Hispanic neighborhoods. Police officials said the figures promoted street gangs, and they encouraged stores to stop selling them.
Mr. Gonzales said he was not exploiting Mexican-American culture but celebrating it.
''Not all of the characters are role models, but it is a reflection of real life,'' he said in an interview. ''I have seen a lot of people in bad situations who were good people, like Shady. There is always another story to someone's life, what makes them do what they do. I see no harm in what I'm doing here.''
Mr. Gonzales and fans of his figures argue that Mexican-Americans do not need cultural guardians to tell them what is acceptable.
''There is a certain power statement that says: 'We can laugh at this. We don't need you to protect us,' '' said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University.
He compared the Homies to the two African-American characters who sold stolen electronics out of the back of an ever-moving van on the television show ''In Living Color'': they were stereotypes but also received as sendups of stereotypes. The comedian Margaret Cho similarly played with ethnic stereotypes in her mid-90's sitcom ''All American Girl,'' in which she lampooned fellow Korean-Americans."
--------------
(End of article)
Now I present the only two homies I personally still have:
First, I don't remember what character this was, just that 25 years ago I had a rat that got very old in rat years and passed away and then behind a couch a found her little hoard of trinkets she had stashed away as important to her, one of which was this homie she had chewed down to this nub I've kept ever since.
Second, I was with some friends around that time at a mall that is now gone, and we all decided to get one homie from the same machine, and I got literally death. I didn't even know there was a homie figure of death. We all thought it was SO funny, like drawing the death card when it wasn't even a tarot deck. The death homie. Why did I, of all my friends, draw the death homie!?!?!?
[Gee death I dunno, are you sure???]
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bogleech reblogged lobslobslobs Follow * two emotes i made last night cuz i needed them . sit and listen and slob of joy
bogleech reblogged i-can-play-rough-deactivated202 Some people to also be canceled for supporting her and just being gross in general with their posts-Blackplaaague, badscientist, corpsegods, mutipede, cerviideath, undeadorion, lurkingpuppi (betrayed me), federfleisch, invaderskoodge, bogleech, comikbook, thylacrocuta, chubbymonstah, starstruck-sunshine, akit-draws, cat-yapping, onemillionfurries, leahnardo-da-veggieAdding more later there's a tonbogleech Follow Lol this is the new account of the roadkill girl.Almost none of us on this list ever knew who "jade" was or had anything to do with eachother.Lady, no one is ever going to be cancelled by your crazy fucking posts and asks. You're now quite possibly one of the most hated freaks on tumblr.
bogleech reblogged bogleech Follow Heads up, a bunch of people today are getting spammed with the same copy/pasted message demanding that you participate in someone else's personal drama. And the thing is whether you decline to join the crusade against a stranger based entirely on another stranger's word or you just quietly ignore this user, they will later send you photos of dead cats with their guts everywhere????It'd take a lot more than splatterated animals to rattle me but heads up to those who need a heads up??? If it would severely affect you for this zany brain to send you photos like this you can DM me for the username to block.bogleech Originally meant to censor the name only in case this kook would get creepier and stalkier in response to being outed, but there's been so many targets now it doesnt matter. Plus I accidentally left the name in the first screenshot anyway. It's t3ddygf and don't scroll down that blog unless you also want to see the dead animal stuff.Edit it looks like many people don't know this, you can block users without visiting their blogs. Go to settings, then your blog, scroll to your blocklistcand you can just add any name on the sitecomikbook hey, been getting messages from this person/people for weeks now. been sent gore of both irl humans and animals, varying threats, leaked nudes belonging to people i dont know, eating disorder content, and some other things im sure (ive begun blocking/deleting the messages without looking at images)this is not the only blog. every time i block a blog another shows up and continues the cycle. blocking and reporting has not worked. i do not know the people being talked about. my guess is someone has reblogged something from me and that got me put on a list of people to harass. bogleech Yeah I've heard from a few people now saying that this goofazoid has spent months attacking them from dozens of different accounts.Now that she's going basically tumblr famous for it she's kind of helpless to actually smear anyone though. Everybody already hated unsupported callouts and now everybody knows they might come from the wannabe Roadkill Fairy.If she never backs off she's only going to make a meme of herself. Her only options are to get a life now, or become increasingly famous as a trainwreck and laughingstock.finalgirlgraveyard i also wanted to speak up about the horrible things they've been sending to me as well that have been racist. i believe they are also parading around as a supposed 'victim' accusing me of sinister / malicious things such as pedophilia on a dummy account using my legal last name attached in the username. i haven't spoken up much about this due to fear of them continuing to harass and attack me this way.carnage-cathedral our partner would have more screenshots but here are a couple we've received. this person seriously will attack anyone for anything. they seem to deactivate the burners within minutes of sending the shit so staff can't pin them down long enough to actually terminate them. as you can see this has been going on for a while. trigger warning for eating disorders in some of them (I relapsed recently and I'm very open about that). but yeah. absolutely deranged badscientist im one of the many targeted by this person. in fact, Many people now know my username who otherwise wouldn't have due to this!i have left these unedited besides cropping out the receivers usernames. i closed asks early into this so many of these were spotted being sent to others, but the deadname ask was sent directly to me.these are a few of many screenshots I have of the one whos been accusing me of being fatphobic and transphobic.bogleech I can't believe how many people quietly endured the roadkill fairy for so long?? I have never seen this type of person screw themselves so badly by going after so many people. You can't expect to be slick when you're stalking half a neighborhood at once. It's not even stalking at that point, stalking entails stealth. That's just shitting in the street on live tv.
bogleech Follow Hey do "Homies" vending machines still exist? Or were they left firmly in the 2000s? :(Do people even know their lore anymore
bogleech Follow Funny how depending on who's saying it and where, the words "dark fantasy" could mean that the work contains a hardcore questionably ethical kink scenario, or it could mean that at some point there might be some kind of a Skeleton King.
bogleech reblogged bogleech Follow Oh my god theyre just looking. The amount of two looking with the same window these days in broad daylight is just... the nerve of it !! And out of two little heads like they own the place. This is litetally insane.bogleech IM THE LOOKED?M??? THE LOOKER BECOMNED LOIKED AT. BUT WGERE WAS THE OTHER GO😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱magdaluxe WHAT HAPPENEDFUSEDDIED1,004 votes • Remaining time: 2 days 23 hoursbogleech oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! watch out562 notes
bogleech Follow theslimshady5464 asked:so, after Cheryl got kidnapped by the Dolphin Brothers, we saw a brief shot of her creepy shadow and it's never seen again.What was up with that? It is future foreshadowing or what?We later see her do a few surreal and impossible things; it all just means she's been roaming the zones long enough to establish a lot of "branches," occupying many layers of reality at once in different simultaneous contexts. The same is true of every other human Fern has encountered so far, allowing them to perceive and interact with many more things than we can; more things than we're even seeing through the comic/story at any moment.
It also means that none of them can just "go home" and return to normalcy as we know it though. Anywhere they ever go they'll still experience more to reality than they used to. Jay thought maybe he'd escape the hospital and find "earth" again but he was technically already there, all realities exist at the same exact point and you just perceive different states of that same point. Dr. Man has become such a part of the Hospital he doesn't even know if he was originally human anymore, and Cheryl just doesn't care about anything anyway and thinks most things are funny.108 notes
bogleech reblogged bogleech Follow This whole sequence in jurassic park is so incredibly funny to me now as an adult because it reads so much like a power fantasy written by the lamest most annoying dinosaur guy ever. A child, for some reason, heckles a dinosaur fossil. Totally something children do. And specifically ridicules the dinosaur by saying it looks more like a bird, which he finds stupid. BUT WAIT!! The badass middle aged paleontologist is here to give such a based and awesome lecture about his favorite dinosaur it owns the shit out of that punk ass ignorant child. Just obliterates him on the spot. And everyone clapped.comedygoldatragedy Having rewatched this movie like... a month ago, or so, I felt like the immediate aftermath of this scene really drove home that the 'badass middle aged paleontologist' is acting like a dick here. Immediately after this his fellow paleontologist points out how he's putting on this cringey tough guy facade because he's insecure and awkward around children (and also technology, and also most 'new' things) and he should really work on that.
The entire rest of the movie is about that.I think you could accuse Jurassic Park of a lot of things, and it's not a flawless film by any stretch of the imagination, but I would not list a lack of self awareness as one of its flaws.bogleech No, I know this, it's just that there's little explanation for why that kid is even there, and the way he makes fun of velociraptor looking like a bird wasn't even relevant to most audiences at the time - it still wasn't widely established that dinosaurs were feathered and we didn't yet have the debate over whether that still looks "cool."There are countless ways the same character traits and information might have been conveyed, but they wound up conveyed through a little boy your average palaeonerd might invent as their archest internet troll nemesis.1,438 notes
bogleech reblogged bogleech Follow Heads up, a bunch of people today are getting spammed with the same copy/pasted message demanding that you participate in someone else's personal drama. And the thing is whether you decline to join the crusade against a stranger based entirely on another stranger's word or you just quietly ignore this user, they will later send you photos of dead cats with their guts everywhere????It'd take a lot more than splatterated animals to rattle me but heads up to those who need a heads up??? If it would severely affect you for this zany brain to send you photos like this you can DM me for the username to block.bogleech Originally meant to censor the name only in case this kook would get creepier and stalkier in response to being outed, but there's been so many targets now it doesnt matter. Plus I accidentally left the name in the first screenshot anyway. It's t3ddygf and don't scroll down that blog unless you also want to see the dead animal stuff.Edit it looks like many people don't know this, you can block users without visiting their blogs. Go to settings, then your blog, scroll to your blocklistcand you can just add any name on the sitecomikbook hey, been getting messages from this person/people for weeks now. been sent gore of both irl humans and animals, varying threats, leaked nudes belonging to people i dont know, eating disorder content, and some other things im sure (ive begun blocking/deleting the messages without looking at images)this is not the only blog. every time i block a blog another shows up and continues the cycle. blocking and reporting has not worked. i do not know the people being talked about. my guess is someone has reblogged something from me and that got me put on a list of people to harass. bogleech Yeah I've heard from a few people now saying that this goofazoid has spent months attacking them and has made from 50 to 100 different accounts at different times to spam people with accusations of being terfs, racists, rapists, pedophiles, anything she can come up, telling users that other users have killed themselves or been in jail, accusing people of being "illegal aliens" and hoping they'll get deported, sending pornography to minors and every other freak behavior you can think of, allegedly all just because one user called them on scamming people literally years ago.Now that she's going basically tumblr famous for it, she's kind of helpless to actually smear anyone though. Everybody already hated unsupported callouts and now everybody knows they might come from the wannabe Roadkill Fairy.If she never backs off she's only going to make a meme of herself. Her only options are to get a life now, or become increasingly famous as a trainwreck and laughingstock.1,866 notes
bogleech Follow This whole sequence in jurassic park is so incredibly funny to me now as an adult because it reads so much like a power fantasy written by the lamest most annoying dinosaur guy ever. A child, for some reason, heckles a dinosaur fossil. Totally something children do. And specifically ridicules the dinosaur by saying it looks more like a bird, which he finds stupid. BUT WAIT!! The badass middle aged paleontologist is here to give such a based and awesome lecture about his favorite dinosaur it owns the shit out of that punk ass ignorant child. Just obliterates him on the spot. And everyone clapped.1,438 notes
bogleech reblogged bogleech Follow Heads up, a bunch of people today are getting spammed with the same copy/pasted message demanding that you participate in someone else's personal drama. And the thing is whether you decline to join the crusade against a stranger based entirely on another stranger's word or you just quietly ignore this user, they will later send you photos of dead cats with their guts everywhere????It'd take a lot more than splatterated animals to rattle me but heads up to those who need a heads up??? If it would severely affect you for this zany brain to send you photos like this you can DM me for the username to block.bogleech Originally meant to censor the name only in case this kook would get creepier and stalkier in response to being outed, but there's been so many targets now it doesnt matter. Plus I accidentally left the name in the first screenshot anyway. It's t3ddygf and don't scroll down that blog unless you also want to see the dead animal stuff.Edit it looks like many people don't know this, you can block users without visiting their blogs. Go to settings, then your blog, scroll to your blocklistcand you can just add any name on the site1,866 notes
bogleech Follow Heads up, a bunch of people today are getting spammed with the same copy/pasted message demanding that you participate in someone else's personal drama. And the thing is whether you decline to join the crusade against a stranger based entirely on another stranger's word or you just quietly ignore this user, they will later send you photos of dead cats with their guts everywhere????It'd take a lot more than splatterated animals to rattle me but heads up to those who need a heads up??? If it would severely affect you for this zany brain to send you photos like this you can DM me for the username to block.1,866 notes
bogleech Follow Who else just got all hailed on in the pacifical northwest79 notes
bogleech reblogged bogleech Follow Oh my god theyre just looking. The amount of two looking with the same window these days in broad daylight is just... the nerve of it !! And out of two little heads like they own the place. This is litetally insane.bogleech IM THE LOOKED?M??? THE LOOKER BECOMNED LOIKED AT. BUT WGERE WAS THE OTHER GO😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱562 notes
bogleech Follow Oh my god theyre just looking. The amount of two looking with the same window these days in broad daylight is just... the nerve of it !! And out of two little heads like they own the place. This is litetally insane.562 notes
bogleech Follow Gerrysherry did talk to me a little and in the end we mutually deleted negative posts so if you run into stuff about gerry calling me out ages ago or me clapping back that's out of date. Also I feel like big time chuds tried to capitalize on that disagreement, the kind of concern trolls who really just hate both sides the same
bogleech Follow I don't know a thing about polyamory but some journalist wrote a whole huge impassioned spiel for the atlantic about how it's a sign of upper class bourgeoisie privilege and is getting entertainingly ripped apart for it. Even I know that's a wacky take
bogleech reblogged crankyteapot vamprisms Follow all digital artists like to play a game called what fucking layer is that dot on
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bogleech reblogged mechattack smbhax Follow From Tales of Suspense #33, September 1962. Stan Lee (?) plot, Larry Lieber (?) script, Jack Kirby pencils, Dick Ayers inks, Stan Goldberg colors, Artie Simek letters.Info from Grand Comics DatabaseSource: marvel.com
bogleech reblogged maxwellatoms Follow Anonymous asked:Do you think were any kind of specific aspects of the culture, industry, economy, etc that made making cartoons in 90s / 2000s better or worse than trying to make them today?maxwellatoms answered:They're literally different worlds. As a 22 year old neurodivergent, I was able to pitch show ideas directly to executives. Part of that was because TV Animation wasn't a glamorous profession (quite yet), so the higher-ups were genuinely passionate about the medium. I earned good money for the time and was generally trusted to run my show and tend to the crew. I would periodically be handed portfolios, which I would personally review and pass on to other show runners. For the networks it was always corporate, cutthroat, and ultimately about the money, but as an artist you could still have a voice and make art while being paid a living wage.The pay for a freelance storyboard in 2005 is almost exactly what it is today, but now you're likely to have less time and be required to do an animatic on top of it. Portfolios are online, and (beyond metrics) you'll probably never know if anyone looks at it or not. Animation got big. Too big. The executives got "glamorous", then the talent got "glamorous". By then you probably wouldn't get a pitch meeting unless you were a celebrity or knew one willing to be connected to your project. Animation eventually got so big that it popped. And that's where we are now. Most of the people I know from Kid's TV Animation are currently unemployed. I have been off Jellystone for over a year, and I'm starting to get genuinely worried. Like, "move away to save money" worried. Most of the employed artists I do know are on long-running legacy series, and they're concerned about their futures when/if those series end. Right now is not a fantastic time for "animation as a money-making profession". The "glamorous" part popped years ago.That being said, there are still opportunities out there. If you're just starting out, apparently there's a planned surge in adult and pre-school animation. It's also a great time (as long as YouTube remains sane) to be crafting your own content. But I think that the time of Big Studio Patronage is over for most of the industry. It's up to the individual artist now more than ever, not only to make but to promote their own content.Back at the height of Billy & Mandy, we mostly pulled fours and fives in the Neilsen ratings, but we occasionally got a seven. For reference, E.R. consistently got eights. It's difficult to say exactly how many people that actually was due to how those ratings work, but it was a big deal for the time. Millions. Enough people that if I had a dollar for each person that just watched that one episode, I would have been set for life. Now, nobody gets a seven. A four is huge. Back then there were maybe fifteen or twenty channels of programmed content as opposed to the streaming smorgasbord we were all just enjoying (and which now also seems to have popped). Point being, even though I wasn't paid-per-view, I was able to use those views as justification for an eventual raise. In modern times, streaming numbers are seemingly deliberately kept secret. You'll never really know how well your show was doing until it's over. Or maybe never.In modern times, a million views on YouTube is enough to get you noticed online. It's a lower bar for entry in a way, but you've got to get there all by yourself. Once you're there (hello Hazbin) a network may indeed come and scoop you up. Even if they don't, you can probably make a decent living with numbers like that if you're savvy and willing to take the time.I feel like I could go on all day, shaking my fist at the sky, gray-ass beard blowing in the wind. Was it better or easier making cartoons in the past? It seemed that way to me, but that was a world I knew. There was no AI to sell you out to, and the media was more of a "Wild West" than it is today. I do think that AI is going to continue to displace artists (and soon others), making it even more difficult to get anyone's eyes on anything at all. Culturally, we lack the common cultural touchpoints that bonded our society in the 20th Century. I suspect that the media landscape will continue to become more "bubbly" and disjointed unless some powerful force swoops in to mandate a common viewpoint. Those are two very divergent, uniquely tiring futures, each presenting a different challenge for an artist's survival.Outside of whatever our modern world is, animation was made for a century by photographing drawings. If Émile Cohl could do it in 1908, you can do it now. It's a lot of labor, but maybe that's part of what makes it special.
bogleech reblogged sanktpolypenbourg Follow Top things Japanese civilization seems to have figured out before anyone else: chubby quadrupedal duck/platypus thing for a "monster"One of those big milestones for humanity and without the Japanese we might never have known
bogleech reblogged sparrowlucero Follow drawing a dragon is a high stakes operation that nets you the exact same pedantic comments as dinosaur art but for a totally made up animal
bogleech Follow A west virginia potato chip brand just released limited edition Mothman potato chips??????
bogleech reblogged herpsandbirds Follow Northern Emerald-Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus prasinus), family Rhamphastidae, order Piciformes, Costa Ricaphotograph by Mario Wongbogleech Follow Every bird I've never heard of is always the most made up looking bird I've ever seen
bogleech reblogged dystopianroach Follow “I could never be an entomologist. bugs creep me out” sucks to suck because I’m a real-life pokemon trainer. like look at these and tell me they’re not pokemonlike are you serious. have fun doing whatever you’re doing ill be at the arthropod zoo… also known as the motherfucking pokemon centerdystopianroach hmmm nnnooooo. no not quite
bogleech reblogged dystopianroach Follow [100x Magnification] inspected some more deceased Daphnia underneath the microscope today, and saw this little hungry bastard - around 10-20 μm in length and actively eating the carcass and little tidbits around it. I'm thinking it's some kind of rotifer? but its sooo small. baby rotifer? I could watch these little things for hours. Look at his little "tails"!EDIT: someone pointed out that I accidentally called this little guy unicellular! I was writing a lab report about unicellular organisms while making this post - I meant to say if not a rotifer maybe a unicellular eukaryote. Maybe don’t do three to four things at once and write a tumblr post at the same time
bogleech reblogged dystopianroach a-book-of-creatures Follow Animal: has the coolest adaptations you can imagineScience content popularizer: isn’t that horrifying?????
bogleech reblogged gusherbug Follow you want a fuckin gcup of uh. uh. something
bogleech reblogged gummybearattacktheworldofdespair gayvampyr Follow obsessed with thisgayvampyr reaction image potentialthinkingwithstills The “How could you?!” in that little face is audible
bogleech reblogged demilypyro byjove Follow straight men have beauty standards for men that are completely different than the beauty standards women and gay men have for men and then they get mad when they conform to the beauty standards other podcast bros set for them and women still don’t find them attractive byjove while you were busy arguing about phrenology on Twitter, lamenting your weak jawline and making fun of dudes who don’t go to the gym, beautiful fat polyamorous men with nerdy personalities were busy snatching up the baddest bitches in your town. c’est la vie. luidilovins There's a tiktok trend called "hear me out cakes" where you print out pictures of characters and actors that you basically have to justify wanting to fuck before taping it on a tooth pick and put it on a cake. Most of the men who do this challenge will pick the fish from Shark Tales, Nala from Lion King (this was the one he actually had to fight for his life over), Shego and actors slightly older than 30 there was one guy who had Korra was his hear me out. Meanwhile the girls are fucking xenomorphs, mathematical equations, the concept of Vine, Bananas in Pajamas and the Peanut M&M. One girl sprayed another girl with a water bottle because she put Bowser on cake and he was too basic. If the trend has taught me anything is that girls will fuck literally anything as long as it has a charming personality and a sardonic smile. If you can't convince a girl to fuck you when she's got a centaur from fallout on her smash cake it has nothing to do with not having a jawline or a six pack it's because you're an insufferable human being. three--rings I was going to post a picture of what a centaur in Fallout looks like for people unaware of the games, but uh, I'm literally afraid of people's reactions. Just...google it okay. It's not a centaur like you may be picturing in mythology and I need you to know that.
bogleech reblogged bogleech unfugbilder © Gary Larson, 1982