#I'm a 90s kid we had weird cartoons

[arainmorn-art]

Guys, I just had right now a weird memory unlocked. Does anyone of you remember an animated show about little amphibian kids (they were anthopomorphic, I remember one of them, a boy, having blond hair with bangs) travelling through the swamp and being stalked by some evil force that might turn them into toadstool fungi? And in some episodes they met their old friend, and a little girl was screaming: "Oh no! He turned into a toadstool!" - looking at the mushroom. It felt really dark. It wasn't a dream, I know it, because there were couple of times when I've seen it on TV, but never could catch up the schedule to watch it fully. I was in the kindergarten, but I swear it wasn't a dream!

I'm currently watching a video about fungus for my comic and my brain is telling me weird stories from the past.

[fuck-customers]

I guess I didn't get the memo about today being Raging Bitch day because holy fuck these people were intense.

First, a Karen comes to my register and announces that she has a return.

As per store policy, I ask if she has her receipt, she does not. I tel her that without a receipt, we can only give her the lowest price in the last 90 days, as per store policy. But she is welcome to take her items and come back another time with her receipt.

Her: So how much would I get back from the lowest price?

I scan her items and tell her the price. I forgot the actual dollar amounts, but you get the idea.

Me: So the lowest price for this item is $19.99 and this one is $21.99 so you'll get $45.36 for your entire return.

Her: That's UNACCEPTABLE! I paid $75 for that! You're STEALING from me!

Me: I'm sorry, but since you don't have your receipt, I have no way of verifying what you paid, and store policy says that without a receipt, you can only get back the lowest price in the last 90 days. But again, there is no time limit, so you're more than welcome to do the return later when you find your receipt.

Her, going Karen mode: NO! You're going to give me back what I paid. You're STEALING FROM ME!

Me: Ma'am, when you purchase something from a store, it does not go directly to the employee. I couldn't steal it from you if I wanted to.

This goes on for a minute or so of me telling a grown woman no and her throwing a temper tantrum, then I call up a manager and a lead arrives. The lead tells her nearly word-for-word what I told her and ends up in the same argument loop for 10 minutes or so, during which I ring up other customers. Lead eventually calls up store manager, who, shocker, tells the woman the exact same thing that I and the lead before her told her.

Eventually, after a combined total of around 30 minutes, she gets it through her stupid head that she's not going to get her way and leaves without doing the return, yelling weird vague threats that sound like a cartoon villain. She didn't say "you'll rue the day!" but it would fit better in the story if she did.

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

About 5-10 minutes later, she comes slinking back into the store. Guess who found her receipt? You'll never guess. Of course not a single apology was uttered or even an acknowledgement of how ridiculous she was acting was made. I processed her return with receipt and she was on her way. She didn't utter a single word the entire time. Just to make her feel like the asshole that she is, I was sickly sweet in my tone of voice and overly friendly just to emphasize what a bitch she was being. I felt bad for the kid that was with her, I'm not sure if he was her son, grandson, nephew, etc, but he seemed all too used to her being a Karen in stores. I sort of wish he had the guts to stand up to her and tell her to knock it off, but I can understand why he didn't.

Then I had several other smaller interactions that basically amounted to: stupid customer can't read ->customer is already in a bad mood ->takes it out on me->I'm not a pushover and I'm one of the best and most knowledgeable workers at this store and everyone knows it so I am unlikely to get fired unless I do something extreme, so I push back-> customer argues for several minutes and eventually either gives up or demands manager->manager can't do thing for them->argue->eventually accept fate and leave.

Posted by admin Rodney

[night-lie]

so while i was making this gif for my deathnotetober entry for "chess" i noticed something... weird. i mentioned it in the tags but i can't not elaborate.

do you see it too? the side closest to us has TWELVE squares. that's not a standard grid size. there are EIGHT squares going in the other direction, which IS standard.

"surely that can't be right," i said.

well. buckle up.

here’s a quick edit with a neon green outline for the edge of the board and the vertical row that's easiest to count. it really is that size. can this be anything but an error?

EDIT: just for clarity, here's another sc with brightened colors so you can see that the surface in the gap between his face and shoulders is the floor, not the board.

what if the animators were just copying what obata drew? i went to find the corresponding scene in the manga. volume 11, chapter 90.

6x6. not a chessboard size, but heaps more normal than the anime one, even without half of the squares colored in. (they are colored in the color version of the manga.)

the board has some... noneuclidean properties, though.

these are from the same page. on the right it still looks like 6x6 at least from the horizontal row i can see, but the left seems much bigger to me. or maybe i'm starting to lose it?

the board makes another appearance in chapter 93 with this being the best angle of it. unfortunately it's impossible to say how far behind the speech bubble the grid extends.

it's also difficult to count how many squares the rows we do see are. the third row from the left with misa looks like it 7 squares? because why the hell not.

it shows up one last time in chapter 94, after which near stops using it. probably got tired of it changing sizes.

let's check for more apperances in the anime, since we've looked at episode 33 already.

episode 34 and it's. it's freaking 6x6 like in the manga!

the noneuclidean properties strike again. peep the blue arrow pointing to another white square. the row is at least 7 squares.

LUCKILY the board makes no futher appeances after this. the 12x8 scene has not been fixed in ReLight 2.

*deep breath*

so. we've established it's not a chess board, or if it is, there's an error with it. (i'm not gonna blame animators who probably had someone breathing down their neck to work faster. errors happen. obata drew it wrong originally, too, if it's supposed to be a chess board).

but i'm still not fully satisfied. is there anything this could be, diagetically?

my best guess, a checkers board (though i suppose the wammy's kids would call it a draughts board). i have a reason for that, other than the 8x8 boards being interchangeable between the two games.

this quick moment of near knocking down the kira legos with a cork gun.

both in the in the manga and anime he fires two shots BUT it looks like the cork bounces from kira to x-kira, knocking them over. with one move, near knocks over two figurines.

this is called jumping. you've probably seen a cartoon where someone comically jumps over all of someone else's pieces and cinches the win. i would have put a gif of that here but i couldn't remember any.

checkers is often seen as a more juvenile version of chess, like how near is younger than L. L plays chess, near plays checkers. checkers is the "easier" game. it's not a fair comparison, though. they use the same base concept, they have pawns and a king (/queen, depending on language), but the differences are too big to really claim they're the same.

just like L and near.

checkers is, in fact, older than chess. they played a variation of checkers in ur. freaking UR. ancient mesopotamia. 3000 BC. a variation of chess can be tracked back to only the seventh century. that's AD. did you know that?? i wouldn't have if i didn't look it up.

so, now i just need to find a variation of checkers with a 12x8 grid on the board from the wikipedia list. be right back. shouldn't take long.

*genuenly, a two hour long rabbit hole later*

so. bad news.

there's no 12x8 board. there's ARE 12x12 boards which is great, but not what i was after. there's only ONE variant with an uneven grid, a 6x4, in a game called tobit. it looks like this.

...i give up.

post cancelled. thanks for reading.

i'm gonna go mahjong.

[gothicprep]

i'm currently reading a book called "you are what you watch" by walt hickey. the chapter i'm on right now is called "commerce and culture and commence", and what hickey is describing in this chapter is something similar to a flywheel – the idea of a book or movie or tv show leading to people buying merchandise, which in turn leads to them going to amusement parks. he's zeroing in on a very specific part of pop history that i had completely forgotten about, the warner brothers' studio store. it's discussed as the missing link between the entire history of pop culture before the 90s and everything that's followed since then.

hickey explains that, before the wb store was innovated, pop culture merch was for children. tv shows about batman, for example, didn't lead to adults wearing shirts about batman. it was all targets to kids. disney locked in on this idea of connecting merchandise to films very, very early. the empire strikes back was the one that really capitalized on this in particular, but star wars in general realized again that you can sell toys to children based on the thing they'd seen. but the thing that warner bros studio store did is that they tapped into the aging boomer audience that had money and were nostalgic. bear in mind, this is 1991, so boomers at the time would have been in their 30s and 40s.

after batman came out in 1989, it was the biggest movie of the year, so wb produced a little bit of adult merch for it, and it sold out almost immediately. then they quickly realized that there was a big demand for batman pins and memorabilia from those boomers. this wasn't just nerds in fandom spaces, these were genuinely mainstream individuals. again, this was the biggest movie of the year.

if you look at the warner brother's library, it's not the cuddly mickey mouse stuff. it's the snarky looney tunes stuff. so wb thinks to themselves, "hey, we're in the 90s. this could work." hearing the people interviewed in the book talk about the development of the store is so interesting because they immediately realized where their strengths were – ignore kids entirely, try to poach people from department stores and design studios instead, and make the kinds of things that people will want to actually buy, except it has daffy duck on it.

what really jumped out to me was that the pop culture artifacts became representations of identity, and wb basically discovered this accidentally. there's a moment in the book about the specific looney tunes characters being targeted to specific groups of people. the consumers didn't want all the looney tunes on their shirt, they wanted one specific character. they had no idea this identity component even existed until they started selling stuff.

the architect of this was a woman named linda postell, who's interviewed in the book. she mentions that, early on in development, all the men who would buy foghorn leghorn stuff would all basically look the same. if they bought harley davidson, they were a taz guy. etc.

there are a lot of looney tunes characters, and wb mined their archives to appeal to more people. before the store concept, marvin the martin was only in about 20 minutes of the cartoon in the aggregate. they slap him on merch, and suddenly, the IT guy has him on his mug because he's persnickety. within a few years, marvin is refereeing space jam. the people who pulled this off were fucking geniuses. you're not only evoking memories of someone's childhood, you're doing it in a way that articulates something about that person in the process.

i'm a millennial, and my generation sorted itself into one of four hogwarts houses. we had that burst of post-apocalyptic fiction that required people to sort themselves into one of five classes. there was star wars and their weird "are you the light side, or the dark side?" campaign. this strategy has been employed by people in the entertainment industry where content design is all a downstream of this.

this next bit isn't in the book at all. it's just my hot take. but i feel like this has been actively destructive to the world of culture criticism, consumption, and enjoyment in very real and specific ways. in what we see in so many of the arguments over things like star wars, there's this thing that's like "star wars is my identity, so i have to defend what i believe to be the correct version of star wars". or, "marvel is my identity, and i can't stand dc people". or vice versa, "dc is my identity. i love zack snyder movies. these marvel movies are trash. put them on the curb". the adaptation of culture around this tribal behavior, imo, has made it very difficult to actually make culture that's resonant while also not allowing itself to give in to that competitive nature.

if you were to consider the release pattern and the mentality around the snyder cut, it becomes difficult to disentangle it from this. there was an underdog perception around it, despite the fact that these are fans of one of the two biggest comic book universes in the world. "i have been wronged. i have ought to be compensated for this in the form of a film made to my specifications."

there are elements of it that, ugh, good isn't the word... i guess allowed us to understand a deeper reason why some things resonate with us and others don't. with sitcoms and relating to a specific character, rather than the entire ensemble cast, is sometimes how people get clued in on a specific show. that was the case with friends and cheers. having on-ramps into pop culture for different people isn't the worst thing in the world. and understanding that people do take this seriously enough that they can articulate an element of their identity through it is not bad.

that being said, these are publicly traded corporations that have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize value. as a result, sometimes we're gonna get things that play off this instinct in a way that are unhealthy for pop culture and culture as a whole.

so, impressive as the development process was was, they were cracking something open there in the desert that cannot be put back.

[tmnt-tychou]

Hello again!!

I have another character for you!! How about Splinter?? 😄

Thanks as always!! 😊

Sorry this took me a while to get to, it's been a busy week. But I am LOVING these and thank you to everyone who submitted asks. This is the most asks I've ever received and I have greatly enjoyed this. A Tier: 90's movie Splinter: This is a rat Splinter. He is a good dad and tries his best. This man loves his sons. Also, easily the most frail of all the Splinters, but still manages to toss Shredder off a building.

2003: Another rat Splinter. This man loves his sons and also loves his father, Hamato Yoshi. He is wise, caring, and very invested in in his sons' lives.

2012: A Hamato Yoshi Splinter. I love this Splinter so much. I think he is my favorite thing to come out of 2012. This man is Dad Vibes so much! He loves his kids and he wants them to have the best lives he can provide. I also love that we got this massive more human-sized Splinter. Just love him all around.

B Tier: 80's cartoon Splinter: A Hamato Yoshi Splinter, he has a great design and amazing voice actor. He is calm, he is zen and fatherly. He looses points because he never calls the turtles his sons. They are always "My turtles/pupils/students." The very first time I heard Splinter call the boys his sons was in the 90's movie and it blew my little mind. (Note, I'm not sure if maybe they changed it in the last seasons where they were trying to be more like the live action movies. It's been so long, I don't remember.)

2007 Splinter: I THINK this is a Hamato Yoshi Splinter? This is a hard one for me because everything in the movie is good. I love his design, I love his VA, I love his lines and how he interacts with the turtles. But there was just something OFF about the whole of the 2007 movie and I figured it out by reading the comics that take place before the movie. In which Splinter picks Leonardo ONLY to go on this world tour for vague reasons while the others are stuck at home. Raphael is immediately hurt and angry at the blatant favoritism. Don and Mikey look like they are so used to it, they don't even argue anymore. Leo is so much the golden child in this movie it hurts me in my soul. Splinter is a terrible father, but he was fine on screen if you take the movie at face value.

C Tier: Next Mutation Splinter: I don't recall if it was ever clear if he was a ran or Hamato Yoshi. He knew Venus' dad, so maybe Hamato Yoshi? He gives off these prancy, gay dad vibes which are kind of fun and fresh for a Splinter. (He plays chess out in the park late at night with his blind boyfriend.) He doesn't do too much to parent his extremely dumbass kids. Maybe since they're 18 he's decided they are their own problem now. And while the turtle suits are pretty nice for a TV production, the rat suit is BAAAAD.

Bayverse Splinter: This one makes no sense. Any Splinter that takes out Hamato Yoshi completely really throws off the universe. Why is he so Asian coded when he has no Asian influence in his life aside from finding a book on martial arts? It's weird. Other than that, he's fine in the movies.

Rise Splinter: A Hamato Yoshi Splinter. I like that we got a Splinter where you can really see the depression from being turned into a rat. And you can see how the turtles turned out to be different people: Leo and Raph especially, without Splinter there to be an influence on the group dynamic. But the characterization doesn't make sense. He says he loves his boys, but he doesn't always know their names? I know this was played for laughs, but the characterization wasn't there. Also minus points for the god-awful character design. Again, I know dad-bod Splinter was played for laughs, but...we had to look at it.

Mutant Mayhem Splinter: Again, another Splinter without Hamato Yoshi that makes no sense. However, he is a GOOD dad who loves his sons and does his best to keep his family together. I love this idea that he is a shut in because he is actually scared of the surface. I do have a hard time buying he is a martial arts master from merely watching kung fu movies. And also minus points for the god-awful character design.

[ilovescaredysquirrel2]

Nickelodeon owes the "fans" an apology...

I'm only saying this because apparently it's the 45th anniversary and Nickelodeon has been hiding some sneaky crap that they still haven't addressed, even after the documentary has come out. Dirty Dan gave a fake apology that sounded scripted, but that's not what we want. We want Nickelodeon, a well known CHILDREN'S network, to apologize for the most perverted, fetishy shows in existence, and also putting child actors at risk for over 20 years! Dirty Dan Schneider was working for that network since the 90s and he came out with a fake apology right after the documentary came out. We just want Dan Schneider to be IN PRISON, with John Kricfalusi, Chris Savino, James Charles, and Colleen Ballinger.

Nickelodeon needs to apologize by having a restriction against hiring children for live action shows, and also make a public announcement and apologize to all the kids who were involved in the shows, and also the fans. Apologize for putting the most fetishy, disgusting content in shows for a children's network, and also get rid of everything that isn't suitable. Not just the Dirty Dan shows, but also some of the cartoons (Like Ren & Stimpy and Loud House) should be banned as well. It's sickening that Nickelodeon even allowed that stuff in the first place. I think the Dan Schneider stuff is the worst, though. Also, inform people that you will no longer hire minors for live action shows, if you make any at all. I think Nickelodeon should have a restriction against being allowed to make live action shows after all they've done. Last of all, there are other changes that need to be made! Now that the perverted stuff is gone, it's time to bring back the shows that were more suitable for kids.

Early SpongeBob episodes were amazing, but there's others I hope Nickelodoen should bring back too;

CatDog (even though it had some subtle dirty jokes, and some episodes got a bit too heavy, it had some good messages. It was also ahead of its time)

Doug (It was made by Jim Jinkins, same guy who worked on Pinky Dinky Do so of course it's family friendly)

Rugrats (Some things didn't age well, but at least it was better than Dirty Dan's stuff)

Robot & Monster (It was weird at times but mostly family friendly)

Harvey Beaks (This show was literally so cute and the episode I watched had a decent mesage)

The Wild Thornberries (Extremely ahead of its time, I heard form someone on YouTube that they did a better job teaching about other cultures than Disney did).

Hey Arnold (I think some episodes get a bit too heavy, and the show can sometimes be straight up sad, but it's relatable and teaches serious issues)

Invader Zim (I know this one was dark and not the best for kids, but at least it's entertaining and not fetishy)

SpongeBob Squarepants, seasons 1 and 2 (it was way more family friendly back then)

So yeah, Nickelodeon! That's only 8 shows listed! You should be able to play them if you remove the Loud house, Ren & Stimpy, and EVERYTHING that has Dan Schneider's name credited. And like I said, NO MORE LIVE ACTION SHOWS PLEASE!

[soleminisanction]

What do you think Stephanie does when she’s alone? Does she have any canon hobbies besides crime fighting and linking up with various vigilantes?

Not that I'm aware of, at least not canonically.

I mean, there's sewing of course -- unless you're Brian Q. Miller and that's too girly a skill for your special Not-Like-Other-Girls hero. And journaling, possibly including art/cartooning embellishments since she has been shown to draw or doodle on occasion, though it's been a very long time since we last got a "Dear Dairy" " caption from her. (Which really is a waste given how elaborate journaling as a hobby has gotten -- imagine the fun that could be had from like, filling the gutters with her bullet-journaling notes)

And there's been the occasional one-off hobby the only gets mentioned in passing. She's shown playing ping-pong in an issue of her Batgirl run and as a member of her high school gymnastics team in some special somewhere.

Aaaand at least once in the 90s she was shown hanging out at the mall. Which I file in a similar vein as the two or three times recently writers have sent her and Cass (plus or minus a random assortment of Babs, Tim, Bernard, Harper, etc.) to "the club" for some nondescript dancing -- less of a hobby that says anything about Steph herself and more of a Generic Thing that Cool Kids These Days Do, so Steph does it because She's Cool.

And... That's it. So far as I know. Like I've said in the past, they don't really put much focus on who Steph is and what she wants outside of the caped life, and after 30 years, a solo series and a series where she was functionally the deurotagonist, it's a little weird.

[jupitercl0uds]

im in a 'screw you tails i love you so much mood' so heres a random thought i had about his name. maybe it strives from canon cause theres always more sonic lore i dont know but i dont care. id imagine tails has backstories i dont know/cant think of right now but most of those probably arent canon anymore, due to being from additional media (comics, cartoons etc) from the 90s. anyway, here's my take:

mildly linked to my weird sonic timeline theory. you dont have to read the whole thing, but you'll need to know that i like to think that sonic is 11 and tails is 5 in the classic games

obviously his name, miles prower, doesn't fit the typical mobian naming structure. he should be miles the fox. so maybe he wasnt raised by mobians.

i'm going to abuse this.

his mother, miss prower, whatever her name was, was a single mother. she adopted him as a baby and named him miles. she mostly overlooked her son's birth defect because he loved her so much and thought the world of her. she tried to as well, but in the back of her mind, her son was a freak

when her son grew a little older, she noticed more oddities about him. he didn't understand the world. perhaps that was just him being young. he couldn't stand half the food she fed him. probably just a picky eater. he couldn't speak as well as his peers. that could happen sometimes. he would fidget all the time. he could just be hyperactive. he had an obsessive fascination with engineering - he would rant to her for hours at a time (if she let him) and could build so many little... things. things a 4 year old shouldn't be able to build.

it was too obvious to ignore by this point. he was definitely autistic. she tried to love him - after all, he loved her. but she couldn't. he was a freak. so, one day in november, she went out with tails and came back home alone.

eventually, tails was found by sonic, aged 5. sonic protected him from bullies. you know the story from there.

occasionally, tails talks of his mother. it's always loving. one day, aged 13, sonic decided to find 'prower' in the phone book and called his mother. surely, if her son loved her so much, she did too! he didn't want to say goodbye to his brother, but it would be for the benefit of tails and his mother.

tails was fast asleep in another room. after all, he wanted to surprise his brother. sonic dialled the number.

'hello?' 'hi! this is sonic the hedgehog! are you mrs prower?' 'miss. i've never married.' 'sorry, miss. uh, your son, miles-' 'has he bitten someone at nursery again?' 'no miss, miles! the fox with the two tails? the one that went missing? he's alive and well!' 'he is?' 'yeah! he's asleep right now, cause i wanna surprise him. we can arrange a date, place, time, and get together, if you-' 'i abandoned him.'

this was the first time she had ever admitted it. she knew it was wrong. plagued with guilt. but admitting it felt good. that weight had been lifted off her shoulders. and placed onto sonic's.

'what?' 'i tried to love him - after all, he loved me. but nobody wanted to see me with a weird mobian fox baby. i hated that freakish second tail. and he was just so... weird. i have a different miles now. in my eyes, that other one is dead in the alley i "lost" him in.' 'but- mrs-' 'miss' 'miss prower... how could you even do that? he's not weird, or freakish, he's' 'goodbye'

sonic decided he wouldn't tell tails until he was old enough to realise kids don't get lost that easily. whenever that would be.

for now, he'd be blissfully unaware.

[veryimportantsparkles]

I had this idea in my head for months and never got around to it. From the Laserwing villain cast, Tina is the insufferably quirky memelord one. So of course her spotify playlist was going to have Caramelldansen on the cover. Of course.

Laserwing character playlists are ongoing works in progress that I add stuff to sporadically. Not everyone has theirs yet. Some don't have their covers yet. So far we have:

Tony: Anime and video game themes, Queen, and for some reason, ska. All the hallmarks of a nerd who isn't actually into music.

Matt: 70s and 80s rock, with a sci-fi theme whenever possible, with a few more modern things peppered in when they really speak to his personality.

Josh: Emo and goth and pop punk with a lean towards bad relationship songs.

Mistaire: Basic Becky 80s tunes you can dance to, with very little further depth to be found.

Clarisse: Chaste churchgirl 90s pop with a few anime and cartoon songs peppered in. The music you'd hear on the mall speakers when you went to buy your Neopets merch from Limited Too in the year 2001.

Marjolaine: Classic goth and a little metal, with modern goth and emo mixed in if they're 'sophisticated enough' (has piano in it). She likes to hear songs about how amazing a girl is and pretend she's that girl.

Contrabrigands: One song for each of the villain kids, this was their team playlist from before I split them up into their own individual playlists.

Lance: Cynical punk and ska, with some covers of 80s songs that would be on his mom's playlist...if she had one. Songs about questioning authority, and occasionally feeding Lance's messiah complex.

Renei: Any song you'd hear accompanying a rad action scene in an 80s move. Songs you can punch bricks to. Songs for overcoming opponents to. Songs with no emotional vulnerability or time for contemplation. Karate!!!

Eli: A complex blend of light, airy, new-age relaxation and dark, plummeting violent crisis. Songs about magic, the supernatural, and general paranoia are constant. The only light that cuts through the darkness is love.

Marina: The kind of playlist that serves as a warning, don't date this girl. Unstable, troubled, constantly oscillating between the victim and the abuser, and kind of pretentious on top of it all. As many nautically-themed songs as I could keep within that mood.

Heather: Songs about stardom, fame, and beauty punctuated by screaming feminist punk. Lyrics you can photoshop onto a grungy selfie after you let your mascara run.

Zack: A political edgelord in a fine tailored suit, with a historical hyperfixation on East Germany and the Cold War. Zack feels most comfortable when you aren't sure what he actually believes.

Draco: Metal, both regular and nu, with a little anime (also metal). Hits incredible synergy with Zack somehow, because a weird number of songs on the Zack playlist have nu-metal covers.

Tina: Upbeat danceable memelord jams. The kind of insufferable shit you'd put on blast before trotting onto the convention center floor in your best cosplay and/or fursuit. Peppered with some songs I actually think suit her, which are nigh-indistinguishable from the meme songs in most cases.

Characters without playlists yet who will definitely get them at some point: Pauline, Taylor, Jenny, Sylvette

Characters who should get playlists but I have NO idea what I'm gonna put on them because this character is hard to pick for: Trieg, Victoria

These genuinely help me focus on making Laserwing, most of the time. Sometimes. When I'm not doing other things, like picking songs for the playlists.

[patrickmdunn]

every simpsons ever: the simpsons christmas special, or, not quite episode one

If you’re a person of a certain age—cough 43—this was probably your initiation into the wild, wonderful world of Springfield. Everyone watched it. And by everyone, I mean my entire second-grade class. The day after it aired, we gathered like a council of cartoon critics in the school cafeteria during indoor recess. Because, naturally, in cold New England, that’s where we burned off our winter wiggles, and dissected this bizarre new show. Back then, we didn’t realize it was the start of a series; we all just assumed it was some weird one-off fever dream. I mean, I was way too young to even know what The Tracey Ullman Show was, so these wacky yellow characters were completely foreign to me.

But there was one thing we all agreed on: we all wanted to be Bart Simpson. This kid was the ultimate rebel—edgy, cool, and completely fearless. I mean, he got a tattoo at the mall and dropped the iconic line, "I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?" It was like watching the '90s version of Dennis the Menace, only way more badass. And, mind you, the '90s were still a few weeks away. Bart was already ahead of the curve, showing us how to stick it to the man before we even knew who "the man" was.

The plot centered on the holiday struggles of the Simpson family—middle class, just like most of us. They relied on the classic financial strategy of saving up cash in a giant glass pickle jar to fuel the annual ritual of worshiping at the altar of commercialism on Jesus' birthday. You know, like any sensible family. But, in a twist that only Bart could pull off, he decided to get a tattoo. And, of course, Marge, the level-headed matriarch, had to drain the entire jar to get it laser removed.

Luckily for Marge, Homer still had his Christmas bonus to save the day—except, plot twist, he didn’t. Turns out, Mr. Burns decided to cancel that festive perk, leaving Homer scrambling to save their so-called "Best Christmas Ever." His solution? A part-time gig as a mall Santa, because nothing oozes "holiday spirit" like an underpaid dad in a rented beard. But after taxes, union dues, and whatever mysterious fees they slap on fake Santas, Homer walks away with a grand total of about thirteen bucks and some change. Naturally, the next logical step is to head straight to the dog track, hoping to turn that into a holiday jackpot. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t. Instead of cash, the family ends up with a scrappy, loveable greyhound named Santa’s Little Helper.

The structure is simple and linear, setting the tone for future episodes. Homer is portrayed as well-meaning but deeply flawed, overwhelmed by the weight of being the family’s breadwinner; but he hasn’t yet fully devolved into the bumbling fool we’d later know him as. Marge is competent and loving, the glue holding the family together. Lisa is already wise beyond her years, but still very much a kid. And Maggie? Well, she's just doing baby things, like sucking on her pacifier and occasionally making you wonder if she knows more than she lets on.

Ned Flanders makes his first appearance too, though he’s a much milder version of the religious zealot he’ll evolve into. Only one of his kids shows up—Rod or Todd, who knows? But Ned’s just the annoyingly perfect neighbor Homer struggles to keep up with, not yet the hyper-holy thorn in his side. And it works. Patty and Selma are also here in all their cynical glory, questioning, as they always will, why Marge chose Homer over literally any other man on the planet. 

The humor in this episode is gentler than what The Simpsons would later become known for, leaning on situational comedy to tell the story. The satire is toned down, but it does manage to poke fun at the rampant commercialism of Christmas. It’s simple yet elegant, reminding us that Christmas isn’t really about maxing out your credit cards—it’s about family and togetherness. And it manages to deliver that message without drowning in the sugary sentimentality that is seen on most holiday specials.

Homer’s journey from despair to redemption works because it’s relatable. There’s no magical windfall, no unexpected Christmas miracle. Instead, Homer just ends up with a dog no one wanted, and somehow, that brings the family joy. It’s the perfect mix of grounded realism and heartwarming charm. While it may not be the flashiest or most sophisticated episode in Simpsons history, it’s undeniably crucial in shaping the show’s identity and securing its place among holiday TV classics.

Four out of five squeaky porkchop dog toys

[90s-2000s-barbie]

Hello, Megan! How are you doing? I was wondering if you have any tips for someone wanting to start a 90s/2000s collection like yours.

Where do you shop? How long did it take to accumulate your collection?

Last question might be weird but do you sleep in the room in the photos? The reason I ask is because I want to make my room look like that but I'm a little worried about what people will think...

Hi! This is a great questions and literally anyone can do it and affordable! So I’ve been collecting my whole life but I started going super into it in 2009. Not only do I collect nostalgia, I collect about anything I would see and like, antiques, records vintage clothes, toys, ex. What started my interest is I just saw something a couple antiques i wanted at goodwill and passed it up and I would never live it down. I will forever remember is and kick myself in the ass for it. I said that’s it, I’m not regretting leaving something so cool behind in fear of being judged.

Even though I started in 2009, I will admit, no one has to break bank to start collecting. The best place to start is goodwill, local thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales. I don’t pay much for anything I own in my collection. One time I thrifted an entire huge box full of vintage McDonald’s toys for $2! It’s very simple to do. Some garage sales, people were so tired of selling, they would tell me to have things for free! Like I’m doing them a favor getting rid of the items. lol u really don’t need to spend much.

I started collecting by going to my local goodwill every week and I’d find a cart FULL of 90’s -2000’s finds and I’d spend like max, $50 for my entire cart and I’d find the coolest stuff, toys, clothes, books, ex.

I leave no stones unturned. Some people hid things at goodwill and wait for the color tag to go on sale so look everywhere! I would go by myself and look for a few hours and pick out everything old, and decide at the end what I LOVE and put back things that I just don’t. I’d find cool 2000’s clothes hidden in the kids clothes! I found a vintage adult sized Powerpuff girls sweater in the kids! People hide stuff everywhere and workers also put things in wrong spots just cause it’s got cartoons on them. lol

So the photos of my room is right before I moved into my own house but YES. I slept in that room for years and everyone that walked in thought it was cool! Now I have childhood friends sending me photos of it and asking why my room is all over the internet! lol 😂 I had 2 beds so I could have my best friends over and have cool sleep overs, all my friends, guys and girls loved it and even my boyfriend loved it when we first started dating. My mom loved it cause it reminded her of when me and my sister were kids. She would come up and hang out with me and we would watch Britney and Backstreet Boys videos. I say, do things FOR YOU. If people aren’t supportive, then that’s there problem. As long as ur responsible and not harming anyone or anything, then there is nothing wrong with u doing what makes u happy! ❤️ If u have anything ur really into, the fashion or toys, ask any questions u want, fill free to ask. Something I always do with everything, is pick something up, look for a year. Sometimes older stuff didn’t always have a year on it. Now they always have years.

Also I don’t make YouTube videos anymore but I do have one thrift haul on my YouTube channel Nostalgic Studioz. Can kinda see what I found going to one goodwill! One store is all it takes. lol

Thanks so much for the ask! I love talking about my hobbies and I hope this helps u too! ❤️❤️

Here is one flea market haul and there is that box I spent 2 dollars on to the right. lol I bought all of this in one place, one day at the local flea market. Ohio’s biggest flea market is like 30 mins away and it’s my FAVORITE place in the world. It’s opened all year around and it’s like a giant garage sale.

[themichigami]

Annoying Spoilers from people and thoughts on Gambit (aka Chanbit)

I've waited long enough, so here we go. Sooo, one of my friends calls me their resident hillbilly translator, any time someone has an american accent usually southern they can't figure out they send me a link and ask me to translate. TWO DAYS before the new deadpool movie is out in theaters here, they message me with a link to a thing all desperately "Miche, Miche, what is he saying?!?" and stupidly i clicked it not knowing... and THIS WAS HOW I FOUND OUT ABOUT GAMBIT BEFORE I WENT TO SEE THE MOVIE!

Let me tell you, i have never been more in a state between utter rage and screeching glee and yet both at the same time in my life. The things they heard from me about it before being put on the "we're not speaking til i'm less mad at you" list have not left a miche's mouth in a long time. And yes, i could translate for em, but did i? no.

Did i secretly rewatch that clip to death til it got removed from twitter before going to the movie myself? mayyyyybe.

First off, I do not find Channing Tatum attractive, he looks like my dad, no really. If you find him attractive, good for you, you probably have the same taste in guys as my mom, which is awesome for you but not my thing. That said, i giggled like an idiot with a giant grin every time even in the theater because he actually managed to finally live his dream and get in the costume after a couple decades of trying, and do a decent job of it onscreen.

Also, yes, I'm annoyed about the eyes. Everything else, good, the eyes, minus fifty points, maybe more. Didn't even need full sclerals just some red lenses, full scleral contacts i'd forgive em not using because I've known enough cosplayers who have trouble with em after long hours, just... they used the Diable Blanc nickname but didn't give him his eyes which was the reason he had the nickname. adding the teeny tiny glow to em using the powers, okay you tried but no star sticker.

The accent, having known a couple people from down that way over the years, yeah not bad that's a damn hard accent to do and it varies all over the place so no one accent covers, could be worse. People are so used to the cartoon version's deliberately fake so that it's easier to understand accent that any attempt at the real thing which is hard as hell to understand already to other people sounds weird, and they were playing it up to be worse for the joke in the movie.

Also, for those who don't know the ancient lore, at one point during the original 90's cartoon casting, they GOT someone with an actual Cajun accent to read for Gambit in the beginning, then decided kids and casual viewers wouldn't be able to understand it so they had another actor IMITATE a watered-down easier-to-understand version of his accent for a test, and decided to go with that idea instead when they cast the final actor.

Buuut, long post is long, so I'll sum up by saying, he may not be the best but he did decent, and i'm slowly no longer ignoring the friend who was a dumbass and spoiled it for me. Also, no, I am not from the south, but get used as the weird accent translator because i am originally from so far deep in the mountains of Appalachia that i had to have several years of speech classes to get rid of the worst of the hillbilly noises i myself made. I still slip once in a while when tired or distracted, but the "city voice" has been in place for around 25/30 years now. One of my first college roommates actually called me Gambit because of it for a few months before i managed to get them to realize I considered it really rude since i was actively trying to hide my own accent at the time. (might also partially have been the fondness for wearing a brown trench coat and bike gloves for most of the late 90's at fault there too)

[felixcloud6288]

Fullmetal Alchemist Chapter 10

This chapter gives me the same vibes as the episode "Joker's Favor" from the 90s Batman cartoon.

2nd Lieutenant Maria Ross and Sergeant Danny Brosh are the real stars of this chapter. They are two very ordinary military officers with no connections to Alchemy, the Elrics, or anything for that matter. And we get to see how freaking weird these boys are through their reactions to everything going on.

Yes, it is weird that a guy walks around in a full suit of armor. It is quite wild to meet someone who can copy thousands of pages from memory. I'd be just as freaked out if a kid casually handed me a check for a life-changing amount of money. I'd be shocked if they had a casual conversation with someone I'd never dare speak to unless spoken to.

Over in the B plot, We learn Roy is not on the best terms with Major General Hakuro with the implications Hakuro thinks Mustang is out to take his position, which is true. Back in chapter 4, Roy casually said Hakuro should just die in the train hijacking. And we learn Roy wants to take over the entire military. The panel where he says this paints him in a more sinister light. His eyes are a different color.

Oh look! A map of East City. ...It's worthless. There aren't any discernible markers and we never go back to East City anyway.

Lust mentions not needing to tail Ed now that he's in Central most likely meaning someone else in her organization will take over from there. I wonder who this new tracker could be that Lust would withdraW RATHer than continue her assignment.

Scar gets into a fight with Gluttony and still has a small wound from when Hawkeye shot at him.

Back in the A plot, we learn State Alchemists hide their research notes in code. Ed's looks like a travel log and Roy's looks like a dating calendar. I have to wonder what part of Marcoh's recipe book corresponds to a human soul. I'm going to assume either love or cinnamon sugar.

As a side note, this chapter takes place over 15 days. It took Sheska 5 days to write down all of Marcoh's notes and another 10 days for Ed and Al to decode it. The scene with Scar happens before any of that in the chapter and we can assume it happened before that chronologically from some extra context clues.

We can assume the trip from Central to East City takes less than a day because Hughes and Armstrong managed to do that back in chapter 6. Meanwhile Pinako said she'd get Ed's arm made in 3 days and no one said she didn't pull that off.

Assuming the trip to East City and Resembool takes a day, even with the detour to meet Marcoh, here's a rough timeline of events since chapter 8 as far as I can tell:

Chapter 8: Ed, Al, and Armstrong head to Resembool. Along the way they meet Marcoh and get the location of his research. Lust later forces Marcoh to give her the same info.

1 day after chapter 8: Ed and company arrive in Resembool. Pinako and Winry begin working on making new automail for Ed.

4 days after chapter 8: Ed gets his new arm and leg.

5 days after chapter 8: Ed and company leave Resembool for Central City, likely with a layover in East City. Lust destroys the 1st Branch Library.

6 days after chapter 8: Ed arrives in Central City and meets Sheska. Sheska starts transcribing Marcoh's notes. Lust returns to East City. Gluttony attacks Scar.

11 days after chapter 8: Sheska finishes her work. Ed and Al begin decoding it.

21 days after chapter 8: Ed and Al finish decoding. End of chapter 10.

Anyway, I'll explain why I got so hung up on this next chapter cause it's more relevant there and this has gotten long enough already.

Hughes brought up Tucker.

Nina Trauma Count: 3

back

[knickynoo]

Back to the Future: The Animated Series, s02ep05 “Verne's New Friend” Review and Commentary

Previous episodes linked here.

In this episode: the obligatory kids' show "girls and boys can be friends" plotline.

We're back in Real Doc's lab for the opening segment, a rarity this season! Doc's got a lot of mysterious, bubbling liquids around him, and he takes a drink from a beaker, informing us it's water. However, he then picks up another one, which contains H2SO4 (sulfuric acid).

Remember when I covered the first season and kept making note of Doc's seemingly deteriorating mental state? The guy was a whole other level of unhinged in these opening segments. Zany, off the rails, and just plain WEIRD (said with the utmost affection). This live-action scene is no different, and it's not something that can really be captured properly in text. I feel I must include an actual clip to give you a taste of what Animated Series Real Doc is like.

What is. wrong with him.

The thing that really gets me (aside from the way he says, "Poisooooonnn...") is the way he smiles after.

If I didn't know and love Doc Brown, I would be terrified of this man. This could be in a horror movie. The last thing you see before the mad scientist takes you down.

Ultimately, the point of Doc's odd little display is to convey to us that things are not always what they seem. As many of our lead-ins into the cartoon part of the show, this one begins with Verne.

He and a bunch of buddies are gathered at a local baseball field and are ready to start up their game. It's guys only, though, and when two girls express their desire to play, Verne tells them, "Get lost. Girls can't play ball!" He and some of the other boys then start making jokes about how the girls should go fix their hair or do their nails instead. Oh, Verne...

I feel like this is a VERY common thing in 90s shows. The whole "boy discovers girls can play sports/be tough/enjoy the same things he does" was done over and over in TV.

During the game, the ball gets hit out of the field and is caught by a kid sitting on the sidewalk. The kid returns the ball with an amazing pitch, and Verne is instantly impressed. He asks the kid to be on his team, and they immediately form a quick friendship.

And with the whole "Verne doesn't want to play with girls" plotline having been immediately established in the first 20 seconds of this episode, let's really consider for a moment where they might be going here, shall we? Verne's just met a kid who plays baseball better than he does and who loves comic books as well. This kid is always wearing a hat. I'm thinkin' Vernie is in for a surprise when he gets to know his new friend better.

While at the comic store, the kids come across a poster for The Bob Brothers All-Star International Circus, and they want to go. The worker at the store informs them that it's an old poster, and the circus happened in 1933 and is now out of business. (Nice reference to "The Bobs" here!)

When Verne's friend (who we don't have a name for yet) expresses disappointment at not being able to see the show, Verne says maybe they can go to the circus. "Can you keep a secret?" he asks. Verne is about to spill the secret of time travel to a kid he's known all of two hours.

He and his friend sneak into the garage and hop into the DeLorean, programming it to the date of the circus and taking off on their little trip. Btw, Doc had been working on the car in that same moment. Doc is UNDER THE CAR when it's driven out of the garage.

As they drive along the street, a hand reaches from somewhere behind Verne and he panics, thinking it's Doc. (He hadn't seen him under the car) It's Marty, though! He'd been searching around in the car for something Doc needed in his repairs and has now been taken along for the ride against his will. He also shows absolutely zero concern at seeing Verne's friend sitting in the passenger seat. No "Who is this?" or "Verne, you told someone about time travel?!". Nothing.

The three of them arrive in 1933 and go straight to the circus. They're the only members in the audience.

They soon discover why the circus went out of business. It's awful. The band plays terrible music, the acts are boring (the "ferocious" lion is asleep during his performance), the tightrope walker is only two feet off the ground and terrified, and the Bob brothers running the show are a couple of clumsy goofballs. Verne, Marty, and Verne's friend are bored to tears.

When it comes time to see the human cannonball, one of the Bobs announces that the act has to be canceled due to a "slight occupational hazard." This is the human cannonball.

The only way the act can go on is if someone from the audience volunteers to do it themself. Sounds very legal!!!

Marty accidentally volunteers himself to be the cannonball because he picks that exact moment to wave his hands in an attempt to signal the guy selling peanuts. Good going, Marty. He's promptly launched into the air, out of the tent, and crash lands on the DeLorean, sending pieces of it flying.

(If you look closely at the sign in the background, it says "Tannen Farm")

After taking a look at the car later on, Marty informs his little buddies of some bad news: the carburetor is cracked. He says he might be able to fix it with a paperclip, though. Verne's friend, who we learn a moment later is called "Chris," is able to help out by offering a bobby pin. Verne is baffled. Why would a boy be carrying around a bobby pin??

As Marty works on the car, Verne and Chris sneak back into the circus, where they overhear a Tannen telling the Bobs that they'll have to pay him double from now on in order to keep using his land. The kids climb a nearby ladder up to a platform so they can get a better vantage point, and a series of wacky events follow. Verne and Chris fall from the platform but grab onto a unicycle and end up riding it across a tightrope, then they fling themselves into a clown car, a runaway tire crashes into a group of acrobats, and so on. Pure chaos.

Once everything is settled, Mac Tannen comes running over to one of his pigs, scooping it up and cuddling it and doing all sorts of baby talk to it.

"Cleopatra! Poor little baby-wabey. Did the baddy-waddy wittle boys frighten Daddy's itty-bitty piggy-wiggy?"

And you know what? It's kind of endearing seeing a Tannen acting all affectionate and loving toward something. Look at how happy that pig is. She has a bow in her hair!

As a result of all the shenanigans, he ends up telling the Bobs that he now wants triple the rent money, plus extra for damages. If he doesn't get it by the next night, he's going to take over running the circus. Verne and Chris are forced to stay and help out around the place in order to pay back the money for all the stuff they broke. Verne comes up with a plan to get the money rolling in quickly, and he and Chris ride an elephant into town to advertise and give away free tickets. That night, the stadium is completely packed, and Verne tells the Bobs that they'll make a ton of money selling food and souvenirs.

Unfortunately, the sisters who do the trapeze act have just quit, and it's their biggest act of the night. Verne says it's no sweat; he and Chris will do the act because "We can do anything any old girls can do."

Wearing some of Doc's "booster belts", Verne and Chris prepare for their trapeze act debut.

Marty says they look silly, especially wearing hats, and Verne takes his off. Chris refuses to do the same. Hmmm....

Also, I need to drop another screenshot of Mac with his pig as they sit in the audience.

The show begins with Chris and Verne, who fly around the air with ease due to their booster belts. The audience goes wild.

(this has nothing to do with the plot, but I want to draw attention to a scene where Mac's skin tone flashes back and forth noticeably)

I'm truly fascinated by the amount of mistakes and wonky animation in this series. People's eyes and skin change color out of nowhere and the character designs vary episode to episode. There's no consistency at all.

Returning back to the episode, the pair is in the middle of their most daring stunt when Chris's hat flies off and reveals....she's a GIRL! Who could have seen this coming?

Verne is so shocked that he falls from his own trapeze and begins plummeting to the ground. Chris swoops in and saves him just in time. Once they land and a crowd of people gathers in awe, Verne stalks off angrily.

Outside, the Bobs pay Mac Tannen all the money they owe him, followed by another very obvious mistake. Mac calls to his pig, who appears a moment later carrying an armful of food and souvenirs. A second later all that stuff is gone, and it's just the pig walking away. Holding nothing.

What was going on in the studio that animated this show??

Over at the DeLorean, Verne is ranting to Marty about how upset he is that Chris was a girl this whole time. How could he have shared so many things he loved with A GIRL?? Marty doesn't get what the big deal is. He says that some of his best friends are girls. "She's still the same person you liked before," he goes on to tell Verne, to which Verne continues complaining. Marty tells him he better knock it off or his friendship with Chris (whose name is really Christine) is going to be over.

With the car fixed, they all pile into the car, where Verne continues to give Chris the cold shoulder for betraying him or something. Idk. Verne is convinced girls have cooties. But the whole reason that Chris hid the fact she's a girl is specifically because it was the only way she could be included in those "boy activities." Verne never would have asked her to play baseball or read comics with him if he'd known from the start.

Once back home, Verne joins his buddies for a game of baseball. As he chases after the ball, he runs into Chris. She hands him the ball, and Verne awkwardly asks her if she wants to play with them. And that's where the cartoon portion ends.

All is well. Verne has come to his senses and realized that it's okay to have friends who are girls. We don't get to see any scenes of how Verne comes to change his mind, though. It just happens. He's angry at her one moment, then asks her to play 20 seconds later in the next scene. I get that there's very limited time to tell a story in a kids' cartoon, but it would've been nice to see Verne having that moment of, "Hey, maybe I was wrong."

We go back to Doc's lab, where he reiterates the lesson that appearances can be deceiving. For example, his elaborate setup of tubes and colorful liquids is actually an invention that creates the perfect water balloon. You see, he's preparing for his and Verne's semi-annual water fight, and he's discovered an exact formula that helps the balloons fly further and have the biggest burst ratio.

I love Doc being a dad. Establishing regular water balloon fights with his son and using the power of science to beat him is something he absolutely would do.

And that about does it for this episode! It was okay. Verne was annoying in it, but I liked Chris (I was very much considered a "tomboy" as a kid), and Marty actually came through with some common sense and good advice. Like I said, I feel like I've seen this same kind of storyline a hundred times from various shows and movies. It was a popular one in the 80s through the early 2000s, it seems.

Join me next time as I go into the episode without any prior knowledge, because it's called "Bravelord and the Demon Monstrux" which intrigues me so much that I don't even want to read the episode summary.

[natsumebookss]

State of the Nebula

I'll get the good news out of the way first--I'm remastering and finalizing Espoir and Bijou's designs and commissioning a new piece featuring my magical girl duo! It'll be '90s style manga art, so I'm super excited!

But you know what I'm not super excited about? Writing the damn thing. I've been in a creative rut since finishing Imperfect Storm, and I've mostly been writing little scenes from future books instead of prioritizing a Book 2. For awhile, I didn't know why or where to go from here, but now I do. And the reason is that...I've been hiding some stuff about Premiere Nebula from everyone.

(Discussion/critique of what I'm gonna call "Tumblr magical girl culture" will be down below. Just being a magical girl fan on Tumblr doesn't mean you're one of the people I'm talking about. It's like the difference between an "adult who likes Disney movies" and a "Disney adult.")

So I don't think we talk enough about self-censorship in the writing community. Sure, we talk about things like how actual book blurbs are starting to contain words like "unalive" now, but we don't talk about the more insidious and pervasive version that comes from censoring out dark topics altogether. The utter fear that, if I write this thing or this subplot, the people I want to market this to will hate me for it. And because I want to please the people I want to market this to, I don't write it, even if it fits perfectly into the plot.

This is the hell Premiere Nebula has been in for years. Yes, it's a story that's essentially about kidnapping and the various mental health effects it has on its victims, but it can't be too fucked-up because it's also a magical girl story. Plotlines like the Manufacturer liking the dark spirit he's created from day one, even though she's resided in Valka's body since she was a minor, were scrapped and left only to implication until these plotlines came to the attention of my pre-readers. In complete opposition to what I thought they would say, they said things like "this adds a lot to the story" and "it's almost creepier if a mass child kidnapper didn't have some weird obsession with kids in that way." They loved the criminal psychology behind it, something I've had a morbid fascination with since I was a kid.

But even then, I couldn't write it.

This is where I might offend some people and get some anon hate, but I'll say it anyway: magical girl fans on Tumblr can be just as toxic as those sorts of cartoon fans. (Again, talking about the Disney adults of magical girl stuff, which likely doesn't include any of my followers on this blog.) Ever since Madoka Magica came out, there's been this boiling hatred of darker magical girl concepts that has never fully gone away and an assumption that all dark MG series are inherently exploitative. There's also a silent pressure to make your stories more in the Precure or Sailor Moon style (or at least, what's perceived as "Sailor Moon style;" there's a discussion to be had of how the manga is pretty damn dark and the people who call Sailor Moon "light" may not be fully familiar with the original source material, but that's magical girl mansplaining for another day). Anyway, for awhile, that's what I thought I wanted PN to be--a story about both a rebel group and a group of friends who had funny moments and fought enemies that were, in hindsight, watered down versions of what I wanted them to be.

The ideal Premiere Nebula that I want to write is probably somewhere in between Madoka and Utena. A lot of the elements I've toned down so far are the Utena-like ones that deal with child exploitation and how manipulative adults like Akio take advantage of minor's naive perceptions of the world. People joke about Utena as "the magical girl series with trigger tags," but when I rewatched it, it made me realize that my original concept of PN had been like that, too. Just off the top of my head, I can think of "ideal PN" as having the following TWs:

kidnapping

frank discussions of mental health

suicide (no explicit depictions, mostly talking about how the rebel leader Valka is immensely suicidal and how her friends have had to talk her down many times)

physical and verbal abuse (mostly from Omega's ex, who she leaves in Book 1)

child abuse

non-consensual magical acts (brainwashing, as well as Stelle being forced to exchange magic with Alarice akin to a forced fusion in Steven Universe)

addiction

grooming (mostly looked at through a non-sexual lens with a ton of vampire/thrall imagery, long story short I've been listening to that one Olivia Rodrigo song a lot)

the aforementioned pedophilic implications of falling in love with a spirit in a child's body, like if Victor Frankenstein was even more fucked-up

Many of these have been self-censored to varying degrees in the finished Nebula product, with the last one being practically non-existent. But here's the thing: I'm not sure I want it to stay this way. I want PN to be a magical girl series that's "for adults" in more than just a superficial sense--I want to discuss things in it that happen to teenage girls and adult women in ways that children's media can't.

I have no problem with people who love traditional magical girl stories and children's entertainment. I'm one of them! But sometimes, I feel like the vocal minority stifles my creativity and, since most of the magical girl people I've met have been on here, makes me scared that there's no place for a story like mine as I want to write it. Sometimes, I wonder if that's been my real biggest fear after all.

I don't know how to end this, really. I may delete it down the road if I feel like I've vented too much here. But I want Premiere Nebula to stay a concept that shows my love of both dark and light media, something I jokingly call "pastel goth." I feel like anything less would just, well, not be Premiere Nebula anymore. I don't want to keep pretending it's something it's not anymore, even if it loses me potential readers. I want to get back to the way I was before, where I'd just write a scene without wondering how the fandom at large would see it.

Most of all, it'd be a disservice to the people who've read and followed my Premiere Nebula content until now to not receive a finished product written how the writer fully intended it. You all have been thoroughly amazing to me and gotten me through more hard times than you'll ever know. If Premiere Nebula--Alexandria's Version (as much as Taylor Swift annoys me, this is the best metaphor I have for this situation) isn't your cup of tea, I completely understand and wish you the best. But if you're the type of person who some darker social commentary with your magical girl stories, I hope I can do the concept justice for you.

Either way, I hope I was able to give you a fun experience with what little I have now, and I hope to keep doing so with a renewed inspiration.

[corgibardballads]

More of a feeling than a spoiler but I'm also not sure if feelings count as spoilers...

Clive frustrated me as a protagonist. The first two hours he's incredible and emotional and my tits were blown clean off. I thought he would be my top fav FF protag. But then the whole rest of the game he puts on his edgelord shoes and just never impresses me again until maybe the last 5 minutes. His VO did great I wish they would have let him be more expressive. I'm gonna grab a protag from a non-FF game but Cal Kestis very recently proved for a second time we can handle emotionally deep lead males that don't require people to say "YoU jUsT dOnT uNdErStAnD tHe NuAnCe" to pretend they're deep.

Outside of Tidus and Vaan, Square tends to overuse Cloud's archtype and I mean I get why. People tend to forget that when FF7 came out, Cloud's popularity exploded because his personality was so unique. It was the 90s we mostly had silent/no dialogue protags or weird little mascots with quirky cartoon personalities. A character with depth and feelings was a first for a shit ton of people, especially millenial kids who probably were just getting into gaming. But that personality type isn't unique anymore and I'm fully ready for the rise of emotionally expressive men. Just wish Clive had more of it. I still like him and I'm not blind to those small moments where his mask drops a second, I just expected more from him after the demo.