anarglitch

[anarglitch]

[anarglitch]

arcane season 2 really is the best piece of joker media coming up this year huh

[anarglitch]

shadow is so cool man I wish roller blades were real

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does anyone have, like, a huge repository of mask designs? like hard, wooden or metal masks, from various sources, with or without cultural significance, real or fictional, high fashion or DYI, I just wanna see a bunch of masks as reference

[anarglitch]

can [character who's not from the boys] beat homelander? yes. obviously. easily. comfortably. whoever you're thinking of, yes. dora the explorer, big the cat, the adipose, blitzo, poppy from poppy playtime, poppy the singer, maschinenmensch, kid vampire, akinator, pickle rick, miraculous ladybug, aggretsuko, xkcd black hat, vriska serket, char aznable, gary oak, hatsune miku, john malkovich, princess fiona, ForgetMeNot, jesus christ (xenoblade), spectra phantom, freddy fazbear, huey freeman, miyuki hoshizora, gaz membrane, i don't care, yes. they all can. homelander sucks

[anarglitch]

hazbin / helluva boss wasn't really doing it for me (I loved that it exists, such a win for indie artists, it just didn't really capture me like that) but apology tour honestly won me over

maybe it's the songwriting and scene composition consistently improving, maybe it's the characters getting more charismatic over time, maybe it's just stolas being such a vibe, I'm fully on board now

got All 2 U in my breakup playlist and everything, I'm reluctantly invested in these slightly overdesigned drama demon furries

[anarglitch]

No one asked but here's how I'd bring back Gallifrey, address the timeless child and still keep the thematic relevance of its commentary:

We know nothing about the doctor's original people other that they're near a portal and can regenerate naturally, so keep that. Don't make them a godlike super-dimensional species, just a civilization with a neat biological defense mechanism that lived near some dimensional rift. The doctor isn't some special chosen one, just a curious kid that happened to fall in the lions' den.

Say that at some point the time lords managed to find them and colonized their planet. Maybe that part of their history wasn't in the matrix because it's too secret or whatever. Gallifrey got access to the rift and just ruled over those beings for eons. Over time and with a lot of killing, the planet became mostly populated by descendants of gallifrey who still feel oppressed by the mainland, but also see themselves as superior to the native species.

When gallifrey got wiped out in the time war, maybe one of the things that contributed to their downfall was the fact that they weren't just fighting skaro, they were also fighting multiple colonies that were using the instability of the time war to free themselves from their colonizers. Make it clear that the time lords are just as supremacist as the daleks, they just prefer to conquer and exploit than kill everyone. They don't find the daleks morally disgusting, they find them uncouth. They prefer their sense of superiority coated with opportunistic politeness.

Make the new planet rule most of the universe. They built an empire when gallifrey got wiped out. They're now crossing the rift to expand their empire to our side of the universe. Maybe they got access again when Sutekh was scratching the walls of the time vortex. They're the new villains, and they seem unsurmountable. In case the analogy isn't completely obvious, the time lords are the british monarchy (as always) and the new empire is america.

They seem more modern than the time lords. Their decor isn't as tacky, most of the people living in the main planet don't see them as oppressive or even an empire, but for the natives, and for most of the rest of the universe, it's very obvious. There's a resistance forming inside, a movement by natives and allies to take their, uh, land back, if you will. But the empire dismisses them, and mostly worries about the "real threats" - go wild: Skaro. Mondas with super updated Cybermen that can teleport and shit, the pantheon, hell, whatever the fuck swarm and azure were supposed to be. Make them all fight the empire.

I know, it's not an action show, you can just imply that they're fighting while the doctor monologues through debree or tells us about how the hallways they're reusing for the 400th time are inside a cyber-armada spaceship or something. The important thing is that they all try to fight the empire and fail.

Then you bring back Gallifrey.

The timelords are now back, in an universe that barely remembers them. With no real status or power, desperately clinging to their perceived position through overvaluing ancient rituals and artifacts. A collective ego held together with bloated arbitrary ettiquete. The new empire completely owns these shoulderpadded dorks. They're pathetic and we can all see it. They barely even understand the post-time war, post-flux universe. Everything changed. Political affiliations, cultural norms, even time itself. They're silly little relics, a tourist attraction, clowns in embarrassing robes.

They try to fight the empire and... lose miserably, obviously. Get put in their place. The empire's got tech that can shut down rassilon's stupid glove with a single gesture. So they try to get the doctor to fight for them. Maybe the master / missy tags along. They offer the doctor everything - an army, a bunch of sci-fi weapons, the goddamn moment if you wanna get wild. But timelord tech isn't getting them out of this. Instead, the Doctor goes to the empire's main planet, finds its native people, his people, and helps in the revolution. Ideally he isn't the main star of it or anything, it was happening anyway.

The revolution wins, obviously. They have people inside the empire's ranks, they know their enemies, they were being underestimated in every step, and, you know, they regenerate indefinitely. None of the anti-regeneration techniques work on its originators. They're thoroughly made of life. "If you represent death, then surely I must represent life." They do what no one else in the universe could, and demolish the empire from within. The victory must come from the oppressed, or it's no victory at all.

It's doctor who, so most of that would have be crammed in the finale. A two-parter if we're lucky. But I think it could work. After that you have new story possibilites with the doctor learning more about his people as they rebuild, maybe taking susan! Meanwhile, you got the time lords pulling stupid stunts to regain relevance. Plus, you know, the usual stuff, fighting CG ostriches with blackbeard, uncovering a conspiracy in a reality show in pluto and whatnot.

There! A new dynamic that's not like the last 20 years of modern who and not quite like classic who either. New possibilities for commentary and thematic relevance. Is this me just coping with not having time to write a whole fanfic? absolutely. This ended up like 3x bigger than I expected and I need to work oh god oh no

[anarglitch]

Oh absolutely, I wrote a whole followup about dial H for hero (it's in the reblogs) but the main post is already outside my control lmao

The wildest thing about Ben 10 is that it took until 2005 for someone to have the idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of aliens" like this isn't obviously the coolest and most marketable premise for anything ever. Each design is a new toy. A new powerset. Come on.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

The execution has its highs and lows, but the idea??? Game changing. So self-evident that it seems inevitable. If Ben 10 didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

[anarglitch]

DIAL H FOR HERO MENTIONED and just like that I've been summoned again. Yes! Ben 10 is, in fact, somewhat inspired by a 60's DC Comic about some dork named robby with a magic phone dial that lets him become random superheroes. He's the most original character in comic history. ...their words, not mine.

You dial H-E-R-O and become... superhero ideas that even DC comics in the 60s, the decade of bat-mite, thought was too silly for a solo title.

anyway here's pendulum man

whoozis, howzis and whatsis

and, of course, the one and only magneto

this guy precedes the marvel one btw

The H-Dial keeps showing up every now and then in DC, even getting edgy runs like 2004's H-E-R-O or the New 52's Dial H in 2012. It turned into the flash once. It turned into plastic man once. It's fun!

But the real reason I'm talking about this is because Dial H is the perfect point of contrast to compare to Ben 10. The idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of X" is there, but they're fun for diametrically opposed reasons: Dial H is a charming mess, Ben 10 is clinical perfection.

Ever read a fanfic, or indie comic, maybe an obscure manga, that is enthralling because of its off-kilter choices, the times it gets too personal or too weird in specific ways that betray exactly the references the author's drawing from? Sure, you can see some of the gaps in their perspective, but that just makes it more honest? You read it and get an overwhelming feeling of "a human being made this". Not a committee, not a computer, someone with flaws and eccentricities took a ridiculous amount of their time to spill their unmarketable mind into a piece of paper and you get to see it.

...The thing is, Ben 10 is a much rarer breed. What it represents to me is something almost impossible. Every choice is exactly right. Every decision, from premise to identity, is so... optimal.

If we take just the original inspiration, in some other universe, we probably got a cartoon called Benny Alien or something, about a kid that can turn into 27 aliens with wacky designs using a flip phone. That cartoon probably got canceled midway through season 2, and these days we'd only see it brought up when some youtuber like billiam or negative legend makes a video called "Benny Alien was WEIRD" or the like.

Instead, we live in the Ben 10 universe, where we got something so viscerally appealing execs would get on their knees and cry. And the twist is that this form of true optimization is JUST as human. See, execs and machines may strive for this, but they're not good at it. They suck. They try to achieve mass appeal by watering down works until they're eroded of any originality, but true mas appeal comes from having your finger on the pulse of a culture you participate in and having the repertoire, the sensibilities, the timing and the luck to make something that resonates with so many people because it's pulling vectors from the culture that helped shape them (and that they helped shape!)

Ben 10 wasn't an accident. Ben's middle name is Kirby as a homage to Jack Kirby, the man responsible for the comic aesthetic present in so much that the show draws from. The Kirby Krackle (or kirby dots) are an obvious one, the others being more intangible. The cosmic lore. The whole "hero time" thing. Ben 10 feeis like a superhero comic book so much because the writers know what they're doing. They're participants in that culture. They're using jack kirby's silver surfer-era aesthetic elements because it's about aliens, they're pulling sound design queues from things like X-Files and Doctor Who, everything connects cohesively because they understand our previous cultural associations in a way only real insiders do.

Lesser shows would try to communicate this kinship with comic books by pulling some generic surface-level aesthetic tricks like throwing some onomatopoeia, ben day dots and panel layouts for scene transitions, the equivalent of going "hey!! comic boooks!!!" and that's fine, that has its uses, but it's mostly distracting.

With Ben 10 we go "Yeah, of course the theme is all like ooo-wee-ooo, it's about aliens! Yeah, of course the theme is all green with a bunch of dots of various colors, that's space, but also molecules! Yeah, of course he transforms with a watch, I've seen power rangers, that's just how people transform", you don't even think about it. It's so obvious that we don't think about how hard it is to figure out what the "obvious" is so many times and make them all fit together as well as they do in our minds, as if they had always been one singular thing.

As if it would be silly to even try and separate them.

The wildest thing about Ben 10 is that it took until 2005 for someone to have the idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of aliens" like this isn't obviously the coolest and most marketable premise for anything ever. Each design is a new toy. A new powerset. Come on.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

The execution has its highs and lows, but the idea??? Game changing. So self-evident that it seems inevitable. If Ben 10 didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

[anarglitch]

The wildest thing about Ben 10 is that it took until 2005 for someone to have the idea "what if a kid could turn into a bunch of aliens" like this isn't obviously the coolest and most marketable premise for anything ever. Each design is a new toy. A new powerset. Come on.

But to prove that it wasn't a fluke, they continued to have the best ideas for every aspect of it. How does he transform? A cool watch you can also sell as a toy. That watch's name? Omnitrix. Say it. It's so satisfying. How many aliens? Ten. Nice round number. The kid's name? Ben. The show's name? Ben Ten. His full name is Benjamin Tennyson, a normal, plausible name, but he also turns into 10 aliens.

Bigger brands dream about this synergy. Better writers would kill for this coherence. So holistic. So intuitive. The identity alone!!! The retro alien sound motif? Chilling. The green? Any other color would be wrong. The kirby krackle pattern? It seems so obvious in retrospect. The roadtrip format? Genius. Lesser writers would've done the spider-man high school thing. His arch nemesis being Cthulhu darth vader? Inspired, iconic, intimidating!

The execution has its highs and lows, but the idea??? Game changing. So self-evident that it seems inevitable. If Ben 10 didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

[anarglitch]

Honestly I've never seen someone love wordplay more than RTD. If a word kinda sounds like another word, or has a double meaning, a quirky translation in some language, an anagram, acronym, homonym, portmanteau, whatever - that's not only gonna be in the episode, but it'll be the crux of the entire plot, maybe of the entire season, every time

from bad wolf to bigeneration, from YANA to whatever the donna / new rose nonbinary thing was (listen I'm nonbinary and I was still confused), from twist to Sutekh. Russel T. Davies is the god of an universe held together entirely by bad puns

I say this as an admirer, it's not how I would do it but I respect the vision, it's the syntax of his magick system, it's oddly consistent and holistic, silly words are his chakra, his nen, his allomancy. Anyone can be corny, few can weave corniness into a clockwork mechanism, the cogs and levers that move the clouds and grow the tides.

In the beyblade world, you solve everything with the right beyblade. In RTD's doctor who, you solve everything with the right turn of phrase. Go off, king, make your science fantasy show for cruciverbalists. You probably even know what that means.

[anarglitch]

NETCHASERS | File 01 - Red.flv [Part 1]

[anarglitch]

NETCHASERS chapter 8 is out on webtoon!

this one is sad, folks

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recognising your parent's mannerisms in yourself and physically feeling psychic damage occur

[anarglitch]

So I am beyond thrilled that the doctor's got a male love interest he's even kissing on screen, it's super refreshing and I don't wanna dismiss the sheer cultural significance of this moment, especially in a fundamentally repressed institution like british television, and rogue seems like a potentially interesting character and I look forward to seeing more of him, but I just

I just have to say it

it should've been the master

DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG WE'VE WAITED

[anarglitch]

Dot and Bubble really made me go from "alright, another black mirror-lite ~phone bad~ critique, RTD means well but his age shows sometimes" to "alright, it's more a critique of rich kid cognitive dissonance and not some petty jab at post-work tiktok or whatever, I can vibe with this" to, finally, "oh wow okay that's exactly what modern doctor who should be doing as a series and I'm sorry I didn't see the vision"

good job rusty D sorry I ever doubted you

also as a fan of Gatwa's acting ever since... well, boom, this was so GOOD

[anarglitch]

All these billionaires who invested in the metaverce and Neuralink must be questioning their life choices looking at what what furries are doing in VR chat.