#It would be INCREIDBLY weird

[feathers-silly-rambles]

Edit: So Idk if it's just me but tumblr ate the quality on this so uh- Click it to read it better Ig? My hand writing sucks tho so it might be impossible to read either way.

This happens often. They get along even though one of them is essentially playing telephone through Alastor. Poor boi.

Apparently 'friend' makes this person feel bad. Huh.

DO NOT TAG AS SHIP!

[wulfums]

🎵💢🎠 for scudworth and/or mr b!

🎵 List three songs that remind you of your selfship.

Well, obviously the two wedding songs (Close To You by The Carpenters and Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra :) ) but for a third song...hmmm...i mean it might just be because im trollbrained rn but. Better Place !! i think it can really describe how they feel abt each other.

💢 What’s an unpopular opinion you have regarding your F/O?

scuds: i like the him. also i simply think he would be bad at cuddling </3 also he smells kinda bad. but thats ok.

mr b: most interesting character in All of clone high

🎠 What’s your favorite thing about your F/O’s personality?

scuds: i love that hes funny and confident and Weird As Shit. i also love that he is increidbly smart with science stuff but w anything else he is impulsive and bad at it. also i relate to and like his neurodivergence :)

mr b: i like how despite everything he's been through he continued to let himself trust others and care and help even if he doesnt get anything in return. he is just a very very loving man and i and scuds are lucky to be with him <:)

[the-east-art]

Warrior Cats poorly explained for @not-ajedi

Except it’s only Power of Three and the arcs after it, and I haven’t read Warrior cats in a decade, and I get mos of my info from half-hearted looks at the wiki and primarily through Warrior Cats animated music videos on youtube (if you wanna me to make a rec list of these i totally will, there are some increidble video out there)

Power of Three

This arc focuses on the three children of Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw. Their three kits are supposed to ‘hold the fate of the stars in their paws’ and are the prophesied three. Lionheart, a big himbo boy who briefly has an angst arc where Hawkfrost and Tigerstar visit his dreams to try and make him evil but he’s too pure hearted for that, and his special ability is that he can fight real good and not get hurt. Jayfeather, a grumpy blind boy who ends up becoming a medicine cat, he has the ability to like appear in peoples dreams and also he’s the first cat to grow a garden and I love him. Hollyleaf uh… really believes in the code? Her thing is she kind of really wants to help people but she never seems to quite find the right place where she can fit in.

There are two big plot twists in this series. The first one is the fact that Hollyleaf isn’t actually one of the prophesied three, which causes a rift between her and her brothers. The second one happens in the famous fire scene - during a fire the Three get cornered by Ashfur, Squirrelflights ex boyfriend who is angsty about not being chosen by her and threatens to kill her kids. She in turn reveals that the Three aren’t her kids - they’re actually Leafpools kids that she became pregnant with during the brief time she tried to run away with Crowfeather (who is stinky but i still love. Like if they had just made some better decisions with his character…) So clearly if they aren’t blood they can’t actually be family right? The kids take this hard. Hollyleaf kills Ashfur for revenge, and Leafpool hides the evidence of this. She later announces their true lineage to all the clans at a gathering and then runs away to the tunnels that run under the clans, which cave in around her as her brothers watch.

I don’t actually remember what the main antagonist of this arc was? I think it was Sol, a cat who hates the clans for some reason or other. He probably manipulated Shadowclan into being bad guys again and attacking Thunderclan or something again but I really can’t remember. I do recall it has to do with an eclipse maybe?

Bonus stuff: Jayfeather ends up going into the past at some point and gets a girlfriend but then has to return to the present and it was the most heart wrenching thing fifth grade me ever read. Crowfeather has a dipshit son named Breezepelt who tries to kill a pregnant woman so that’s cool. Graystripe finally returns and is reunited with Firestar who can still identify his smell after all this time and I’d check out the book just to read that part. Cinderpelt is reincarnated as Cinderheart but they kinda do it weird solike Cinderpelt and heart are still two separate people rather than having them be the same??? It’s weird and a disappointment.

(if you want I can point you in the direction of my au of this arc where the three siblings are are each given to one of the other clans to try and prevent their true lineage a secret and would make the story more balanced between the clans)

Omen of the Stars

In addition to Lionblaze and Jayfeather, this book features their younger cousins who start out, as is tradition, as just like kits at the beginning. Dovewing is the actual third cat with the superpower that she can hear really far away, even clear to the other side of the lake and even beyond. Her sister Ivypool feels left out, as she can see her sister getting special treatment. Hawkfrost notices this and prey on it, visiting in her dreams to give her special one on one training, giving her the attention she doesn’t get irl. Eventually the training gets more and more brutal and the place gets scarier and scarier and he officially recruits her to the Dark forest (like hell for cats, where all the evil cats of yore hang out.) The dark forest cats are planning a coup to take over the territories (to what end I have no clue, but I don’t think they know either) Eventually the Three and Ivypool team up together as it becomes clear that the dark forest is an issue. While the Three work to help ready the clans for the coup, Ivypool is a double agent to keep them updated on the going ons in the dark forest. She has to do a ton of things to prove her loyalty including killing a character irl and then killing their spirit.

The Dark ghosts rise up and the starclan cats come down and there like a biblical battle basically where clans all join together and they fight alongside the spirits of their ancestors to fight off the darkness. The Three kind of use their powers to help this out but not as much as you think they would? Their powers kinda end up seeming really random lol. Anyway its kind of a greatest hits part where you see some of your faves and stuff. Oh Hollyleaf was alive the whole time, hanging out in the tunnels with her ghost boyfriend the whole time and comes up like just in time to help with this. Ivypool fights her abuser Hawkfrost, but Hollyleaf come in and saves her and deals the final blow but dies in the process.

Naturally Firestar kills Tigerstar once again, but immediately afterwards like lightning strikes a tree and it falls on his and kills and since its his last life he’s dead for realsies, but since the starclan ghosts are still around you get to see his ghost and he gets to give like a word of goodbye before leaving. Oh, Jayfeather also gets to see his girlfriend during this which is cool.

Also the three lose their powers after this so rip.

Vision of Shadows

(we;re officially in books I haven’t read) follows Squirrelflights son Alderheart (medicine cat) and two mysterious kits he and a shadowclan cat (named Needletail) find and decide to like split between them and each take one to their own clan. Twigbranch (thunderclan) and Violetshine (shadowclan). The kits turn out to be from Skyclan - the fifth clan that was featured in a novella and like never mentioned again lol. Their home was ruined and they came to rejoin the clans and so like there’s tension in whether or not room should be made for them.

The second and bigger conflict I believe is the upending of Shadowclan into like a new evil clan led by a mysteriously strong, charismatic and evil cat named Darktail. Darktail hates the clans 0 I’m pretty sure he’s the illegitimate son of Onestar who ditched his mom and she died and he’s out for revenge now? Except he chose to infiltrate the territory farthest from Onestar. He kinda worms his way in and takes control over from the current leader who if you remember Tawnypelt - Brambleclaws sister - is her mate. Her and her entire family get cast out except for her daughter Sleekwhisker who betrays them. My understanding is that Sleekwhisker is pretty unhinged and like devoted to darktail in a kinda harleyquinn and joker way. As the situation deteriorates Needletail, who initially really bought into the whole thing, realizes she has to get Violetshine out of there - I think they actually intend to kill Violetshine so she goes along with it and then attacks them at the last second to Violetshine can run away and ends up dying, but Violetshine makes it away safely.

I have no idea how this plotline ends but I’m sure the clans unite and take darktail out and Windclan and Riverclan barely end up mattering even though I love them. There’s a cat named Tree who can see ghosts but I have no idea why that’s relevant. Sandstorm dies in the first book I’m pretty sure. Man some of these cats are getting old - the craziest thing is the fact that there are cats that aren’t leaders who actually lived in the old territory. How are they still hanging in there?

The Broken Code

Leafpool my girl dies between books.

Oh so since Omen of the Stars Dovewing has been having a love affair with a Shadowclan cat named Tigerheart which I’ve never really cared about but it is now actually relevant. I believe she tries to run away with him and then eventually returns to Shadowclan with him and they have kids together. Also Ivypool gets herself a malewife named Fernsong and also has kits and her mate moves into the nursery with her to take care of the kits which is cool.

The main characters of this arc are Rootspring (son of one of those protags of the last arc I think but i don’t remember who, but he can see ghosts so his dad is Tree), Bristlefrost (Ivypools daughter) and Shadowsight (dovewings medicine cat son). During this arc Bramblestar gets possessed by Ashfur (that’s right he’s back bitch) but it takes a while for people to figure this out. Starclan is unreachable for some reason, and Shadowsight can hear a voice he thinks is starclan but is actually Ashfur manipulating him. In the entire ordeal Thunderclan goes through a series of temporary leaders and like kinda gets divided into people who are following Bramblestar (aka Ashfur) and people who aren’t. Ashfur has been ruling with an iron fist and obsessed with the code to unnecessarily punish other cats. Rootspring seeing ghosts helps him to find Bramblestars ghost and figure out what’s going on.

Paralleling her mothers role two arcs ago, Bristlefrost is a double agent under the imposters reign, taking the role of his deputy at one point. Sometime they find a group of just female cats who can see ghost and who Rootspring is related to but I don’t know much about them. Eventually they get Bramblestar back in his body I think? Ashfur kills a bunch of cats including Willowshine who matters because she was a Riverclan medicine cat who I loved. They end up having to fight him in the Dark Forest, which he has taken over, and somehow he has the ability to control the ghosts of other cats so even kis murder victims are forced to fight for him???? Bristlefrost kills him and forces him to sink into some kind of black lake, destroying his spirit forever, as well as her own spirit in the process and tbh killing one of the POV characters sounds like one of the gutsiest things they have ever done.

In general Warrior Cat books are always just… almost good. I hate to be that person but the first series is probably the best and most eloquent story. And that’s the painful part, is a lot of the story elements and concepts have really interesting world building or ideas that could be built upon to create really cool stories, but they never seem to quite achieve their potential. I suspect it has to do with the collaborative nature of the stories, the fact that they’re written by like five people or whatever. You can also see the trend from fiction to fantasy, playing more and more into the magical concepts of the universe. This isn’t good or bad, but it does definitely give the story a very different feel from the first arc or two.

[thehonorablejudgestarsky]

It’s cool how my law school didn’t give a shit about non-BigLaw students during school and now that they have to report employment stats they’re suddenly pretending to be super helpful/won’t leave me tf alone

[ziracona]

Can we get more detail about the Christmas party at the end of ILM, since tis the season? Any info about future Christmases?

Sure! What would you like to know? Just skimming through the time, I know I have mentioned some of these before, but:

Anna arrived and tackled Michael /through/ a wall because she thought he was hurting her son. This is how they met. Wildly, they vibed well after.

Anna recognized Philip immediately and was all “:DDD!!!!” And he was all “ (’•n•`;)” and got hug jumped with no gd clue why or that he knew her. Anna was ecstatic to see him again. Philip, after hearing how she met him, regained a few orphaned memories of the event lile he did being captured in the lab, and while not anything like a full recolection, was very happy to get a little back.

They put on Dirty Dancing the second to last day of the trip, and it was amazing. Made some super basic quick sets out of stuff in the house, and did costumes, and it was goofy but amazing and they worked hard and it’s a treasured memory for everyone. (Also it was a ton of intensive training. Joey was excited he made it into group dance cutoff and was super happy. Also the ‘rents and various family greatly enjoyed. It was recorded from multiple angles, too, and Jane edited a cut with various imput (mostly from Ace and Meg), and they all have dvd copies. It’s a fun goofy holiday rewatch now.

Massive dinner. With like, a wildly varied buffet with a ton of different cultural backgrounds. Everything was amazing but Adam did a hot pot that went empty almost immediately and then was requested every year after and he doesn’t talk about it but it made him really happy because he worked hard learning to do that in prep and even Min and Jane who have the most refined pallets liked it a bunch. Incredible mess from making desserts and decorating them. Jeff is baked goods king.

Stuff was easier with Legion, but still kind of awkward. It was okay though, and sometimes really good, and it was sucessful enough to be an important and valuable memory to the lot of them.

Philip’s family had a bunch of fun and got to meet everyone else for the first time (had met quite a few before but it was the first time with everyone). Isa absolutely roasted his brother and Philip died but he’s okay now. Sometimes siblings just be like that and what can you do. Mostly, he was just incredibly thrilled to see them and have good stories to tell and to have enough money himself to help the people he loves financially and buy nice gifts a little too. Philip made a bunch of his gifts by hand because he is very good at sewing, and his gifts are always increidbly popular.

Most of the gang in attendance played live mafia in the Indiana House and it was the wildest fucking thing it went way too hard people were losing it like they were in a world championship or shooting an impromptu horror film. They all had a ball and almost everyone was like “Yo lets do it again 👀.” (When I say they went hard I mean one time Jake was a killer, from upstairs saw Kate making a run for the safe room on the ground floor, and he fucking jumped off the second story onto her to get her and could easily have injured either of them but I mean it’s Jake and Kate so they were fine but like. It was that level of unhinged almost from the start. Ace had a terrifying like Wicked Witch of the West classic scream laugh he did both as killer and when found to startle the killer and it was both horrifying and incredibly effective. Meg saw him do that to Tapp once and she laughed so hard she cried bc of his reaction).

Big old OG campfire style blankets and pillows on the floor slumber party Christmas Eve. :’-] The OG crew always kind of misses the community vibe they so crucially depended on, and they feel really safe and happy when they get to relive it. They need it sometimes.

Uhhhh as far as future Christmases go, most of the time they meet in the Indiana house for tradition, but sometimes they gravitate around to other places. They got a nice heavy snow a few years in and the young adults made huge snow forts and tried to kill each other in snow battle, and Joey prooved to be an especiallly acomplished snow engineer.

It’s always a big occassion, as are any holidays or events the fam can possibly claim as an excuse to meet up. A lot of them start to develop little traditions, like Meg, Jake, Nea, and Fenf putting up lights on the roof and trees in the most wildly reckless ways possible just climbing on shit chucking lights. The old feral friends crew needed to live their best lives, so they sure do.

The animals get more used to each other the longer the meetups happen. Alex and Michael Cat have a wild almost rivalry friendship going. Also, Alex likes to give Jake gifts and often steals them from other people. Sometimes it’ll be super weird stuff nobody has any idea where it comes from, like one time she gave him a knife (like a little snapped pocket knife blade) and Jake almost lost his shit when his crow came swooping at him cawing excitedly and wielding a blade directly at his arm 🔪. Michael Cat is obsessed with Claudette because she saved him once and always does like an excited announcement myrrp when he sees her and scampers over and just climbs up whatever she is wearing and latches to her top and purrs like the world’s best living brooch for a minute or two. She is used to it now and it makes her very happy.

Overall, they’re just very happy. Sometimes stuff messes up, or people can’t be there, but usually, Christmas is one of several times everybody like including extended fam gets to see everybody else, and so it’s a big favorite time of year. It’s home. :’-) 💙🎄

[popculturebuffet]

Mission Hill Review: Plan 9 From Mission Hill or I Married a Gay Man From Outer Space!

Commission for @weirdkev27​. Hallowen Havoc marches on! For my first commission ever, I take a look at the cult classic mission hill’s final produced episode and one of it’s most loved. Kevin’s visit to an x rated movie pays off less with boobs and more with a friendship with his elderly gay neighbor and film buff wally and a new appreciation for cinema, only for this new friendship to nearly end over Kevin’s good natured attempt to spotlight Wally’s only film, the man from pluto. Gay spaceman, a touching gay love story, and a surprisingly likeable guy with a neckbeard insue. Spoilers and full recap FROM PLUTO, under the cut. 

Well this was a nice suprise. After the utterly draining process of my review of “Let’s Get Dangerous”, it was a nice suprise to find out one of my handful of fans had tried to comission me a while back and I hadn’t realized it, and I was happy to oblige him. I was even happier when I found out what his commission was: Plan 9 From Mission HIll, an episode i’d planned to cover for pride but got squeezed out due to how little i’d planned the month out in advance, a lesson I still REALLY need to learn. Regardless not only was it a nice, funny, and heartwarming ep to cover after the sheer amount of analysis and recapping the last one took, I realized it ended up fitting the spooky season, as there’s just as much fun to be had in truly fantastic horror movies like “Nightmare on Elm Street”, “Get Out”, “Child’s Play”, “Tales from the Hood” and “The Thing” as there is from so bad it’s great horror films like “House (The Japanese one), C.H.U.D. II: Bud The Chud, Terror Toons and House Shark. Seriously watch House Shark i’ts hilarious. Hell I fully plan on watching the Gary Busey film Hider in the House tomorrow. I mean it’s a film about hollywood’s favorite nutball  living in the walls and attic of someone’s house. What’s not to love? Maybe it might be entirely boring but that’s the risk you sometimes take to find so bad it’s gold filmaking. Plus cheeestastic films like these are the reason we have the classsic and incomprable mystery science theater 3000 and it’s succesor rifftrax. So while I need to watch more of them, I have a spot in my likely overtaxed heart for this kind of film, and as a result this episode resonated with me on rewatch in a way it didn’t the first time around, even if it was still my faviorite. 

Backing up a bit as usual I like to give my history with a show first time covering it: Mission HIll was one of a handful of shows picked up by Adult Swim in it’s early days. Since most of Adult Swim’s early originals were 11 minutes at a time when this was still a new and radical thing they were doing having 11 minute shows that weren’t sold as half hour pairs of 11 minute episodes, they likely needed more shows to fill up the air and clevelry simply bought the rights to several shows that had only had one season, along with Family Guy and Futurama which as history would bear out both made the shows into huge names in the animation industry but brought both back.. though in Family Guy’s case sometimes dead is better. Point is, several shows got a second life thanks to Cartoon Network if sadly not more seasons, with the sole exception of the utter classic Home Movies which I really need to talk about at some point, and thus are really more associated with Adult Swim than their original networks. Hell before doing this review I genuinely didn’t know what Mission HIll’s original networks. But now you know the framework this show came out in what IS Mission Hill anyway? 

MIssion Hill was a cartoon from the wonderful brains of Bill Oakely and Josh Weinstein, no relation to the MST3K one who due to this confusion now goes by J. Elvis Weinstein instead, who showran the simpsons and did some great episodes, my faviorte of there’s being $pringfield, aka the casino one. 

The show was about Andy, a 24 year old slacker whose happily lazing about after college in his loft with his friends Jim, a stoic but friendly stoner played by Brian Posehn, and Posey, a sensitive hippie. However when he goes to pickup his childhood dog he ends up with an unexpected roomate: His nerdy, sheltered and neurotic brother Kevin, who has a love of sci fi, a type a personality and a habit of going bling blong to focus when studying or just whenever. He’s also voiced by future robin and future psychopath claming to be robin Scott Mellinville. Also in the building are Carlos and Natalie, an unemployed artist and college professor and their baby Nameless.  I forgot they existed.  And of course saving the best for last we have the brother’s neighbors, and a very early gay couple for animated television Wally and Gus, played by the legendary Tom Kenny and Nick Jameson who hasn’t done much of note but does a great job anyway. Wally is a fastudious, Gus is angry and very brooklyn, but the two genuinely love each other, makeout frequently, with their first showing off the two as a gay couple, and are an adorable but very beliviable couple. It’s part of WHY I wanted to spotlight them. The late 90′s/early 2000′s, the show originally aired in 99 and into 2000 and aired on adult swim in the early 2000 for the curious, were not a great time to be gay in animation with most gay characters used as punchlines and hardly any queer stories. Not only that but just a year earlier will and grace had to have one overly camp chracter and one “regular” gay character in order to get made. Granted that show has it’s issues but still, the point stands having a gay couple that plays fairly realistically, is shown to both be sexually active and love each other and who’ve been together for decades was a hell of a step for a medium where Family Guy around the same time had a joke with the punchline “Whoa transvestite back off!” Granted Family Guy would do far worse to both the gay and trans communities, but we’ll get to that someday. Or sooner if you commission me, but I swear if you do I will pull a gary busey on your house. Point is not only is it INCREIDBLY forward for it’s time but it holds up even now. There’s a reason the creators are working on a spinoff/revivial focused on the two and a reason these two tend to be one of the most talked about elements of the show. That and frankly their hilarious having realistic banter.. and also having one episode where Gus has a knife in his head for a whole episode. It helps that this episode, their spotlight one and the last one produced, is also one fo the series best. So with all that build up let’s take a look shall we? 

We open with Kevin passing a theater showing x rated movies and are shown, over a bunch of times of him passing it him condeming it publicly but his tone clearly telegraphing the classic battle between a teenage boy and his dick. Dick wins and Kevin heads inside and gives us... this. 

.... If you will excuse me, please enjoy the musical stylings of the late great Zorak while I go shower the “EeEEEEEEUUUUGGggggggHHHhhuuuuuuggghhhhhhhhewwwwuuuuugggghhhhggooooodddddddwwwyyyyyy” off me. 

God rest his soul. Okay i’m good now. Thankfully this isn’t an episode about Kevin getting addicted to x-rated theater, and they already did an episode about him masturbating. No really it actually had a good message as Kevin was so embarassed about the incident, he nearly let two other guys, granted not remotley good people who were stealing from there anyway, take the fall. Andy even ends up giving a great speech coming to his defense

“People, you mock this boy, but it's your fault he's here today. Your hypocrisy has made this boy a prisoner, terrified of his own sexuality. So much so that he'd rather send two relatively-innocent men to prison than admit he looks at pornography! He thinks his natural urges are filthy and perverted, and why? Because of your conspiracy of silence! Nobody dares admit the truth - that you're all just like him!”

IT’s a damn good moment and a good message. That sadly is still relevant as America still views sex as worse than violence for some weird reason. At least he has the internet now. Anywho when Kevin goes to see what’s up he runs into Wally who explains the confusion: He’s just showing old “X-Rated films”. Now some of you are probably wondering “Wait non-porn films used to use that?” Or “Wait what’s an x-rating?” Well while I knew some films did used to do that I was honestly curious myself as to why it was retired and why porn films got to use it and took a quick hop to google to find out reading both the wikipedia article for the rating and this vulture article on the subject to get a slightly deeper look at it. 

It’s actually quite intresting as I genuinelly also didn’t know when the MPAA ratings started for films: When the rating’s board started in 1968 there were four raitings: G, GP (Later flipped to PG), R and X. X was the modern equivlent of today’s R really, and films like Last Tango in Paris, Midnight Cowboy and a Clockwork Orange, with Orange even having a poster up at the cinema in this episode and Midnight Cowboy being part of the plot very soon. We’ll get to that in the moment. Point is it allowed filmakers to push the envelope break barriers all that good stuff and makes me curious about those very films, which is a good thing as i’ll admit to not being exactly a film buff.  But as Kevin’s confusion here shows, eventually the porn industry took a hold of it, using the X as a way to get sex movies into regular cinemas and have an air of legitimacy, hence why Debbie Does Dallas was a mainstream hit.. and yes that’s an actual film that I only know about thanks to I Love the 70′s. If your wondering why the MPAA just couldn’t you know, tell them to know or why they didn’t take over other ratings it turns out for some weird reason why the G and R ratings were owned by them, and later PG , they forgot to trademark X and by the time they even thought of it it was too late. Hence terms like XXX rated and what not or the ungodly stupid XXX porn parodies. Just.. just give them actual names and slap “A porn parody” ont he end if you want to avoid a lawsuit.  Naturally the film industry struck back and X soon went from a way to have daring, interesting films.. to basically a threat by the MPAA that your film wouldn’t be carried by any major distributors if it had one, with Dawn of the Dead having to just go unrated just to get distributed. The 80′s brought the killing stroke: With the rise of big theater chains, mall theaters with restrictions I wasn’t aware of, and big home video outlets like blockbuster that didn’t carry porn, the x rating was well and truly dead and the MPAA lukewarmly added NC-17 which serves the same bullshit purpose as theaters still refuse to carry them and the MPAA still uses it for essenitally the same reason. Nothing changed! If your wondering why people sometimes have problems with the MPAA, yeah there’s your answer, as they could’ve campaigned harder for NC-17 but clearly enjoyed having a raiting to hold over films heads. 

So yeah if you don’t know, know you know bud, let’s move on. So yeah Wally explains the confusion and decides to educate Kevin on film by showing him Midnight Cowboy, with John Voight “Before his head looked like a radish” and Dustin Hoffman. Also Andy brings up Sphere.. a film I also know nothing about. Hang on... checking Letterboxd and okay. It’s a Dustin Hoffman starring Sci-Fi film about a research team investigating a mysterious sphere at the bottom of the sea. Huh.. I prefer Cube myself but to each his own.  But once Kevin clams up he really enjoys it. Will grant the episode lays it on a tad thick, with Kevin comparing the film to , of all things, Armageddon. I mean I get MIcheal Bay is a good metric for crowd pleasing schlock but still, even nerds have standards. My standards aren’t very high at times mind as I still want to watch this sometime today. 

But I still think even awkward teens have better standards. Then again one of my faviorite films at the time was Saving Silverman which while I can’t hate it due to nostalgia , having watched it from 5th grade well into my teens, I can see was not very good. Though it did have R. Lee Ermy being both really funny and turning out to be gay so that was awesome. 

And he does make a good point that heroes like Ratzzo Rizzo don’t go well on Taco Bell cups.. though it also feels weird to me in 2020 where while not big sellers films with deep stories and unlikeable heroes are some of the biggest on tv and one of them was one of the greatest animated series of the last decade, so things must’ve been pretty damn bleak in 1999. The two also run into Gus who wants dinner and a fight ensues between the couple about the fact Gus owns a restraunt, could just bring his lunch etc. It’s hilarious and as I said I like how they feel like a couple you’d meet in real life. Sadly I don’t have an elderly gay couple in my neighborhood but here’s hoping. Or maybe i’ll be the neighborhoods wally when I grow up who knows. Also Tom Kenny’s delivery is great. 

Kevin later relays his fun day to his loftmates, with Andy expressing genuine suprise at Wally’s job and love of art house cinema, as none of them knew what he actually did. Andy’s genuinely shocked and mildly appalled they’ve lived near Wally for so long but having no idea what he does.. but really I had a sweet old lady, Delores who lived next to me for almost my entire life before she moved to be closer to her family, visited her house frequently pet her cats, went to her house after school at one point.. and I cannot tell you what he did, so it’s incredibly relatable. However in a scene that’s both hilarious but also really, really sweet, the three relate that they do know him well and due to being neighbors after all and know Gus and Wally’s morning routine: They wake up at 8, Wally brews the Coffee, Gus reads him the funnies, then they shower together while singing college fight songs, and then, with Jim saying this part so picture it in Brian Posehn’s voice please you won’t regret it, argue or have gay sex and then it’s off to work. It’s really sweet, both in showing off their well worn dynamic with each other, and the fact that the loftmates really DO know these two even if they dont’ know everything and they are close in their own way. Kevin can only give out a “Hm” in response... which is probably the closest he can get to saying touche without breaking into nerdy giggles. 

Cue the good times montage as Wally introduces Kevin to Ingmar Bergman, who I have heard of even if i’ve never seen any of them, and some director I never heard of who made old timey comedies apparently. IT’s a really nice sequence. Kevin also shows 2001: A Space Oddesy to his friends, who are bored to tears by it while Kevin’s enraptured. Which I would say was another heavy-handed swipe at late 90′s cinema but being a teen myself who had mostly watched things like Star Wars, I did not gel with 2001 and need to rematch it at some point, so I totally relate to his friends utter boredom and confusion with it given it’s rep. It’s a visually stunning film. I will however stand by not liking Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as that film TRIES to be 2001 but is instead just really, REALLY boring. 

But naturally things can be entirely good natured bonding between an elderly gay man and , as Wally puts it in the best line of the episode “The son god never wanted me to have”, as Kevin notices a film coming up that Wally apparently made, and looks to star gus. Wally panics and shoos his young protégé away... which yeah he could’ve just you know told him he doesn’t like the film or anything else and prevented this episode but then we wouldn’t of seen the gay equilvent of plan 9 from outer space so fair enough. 

At the Gus’ Diner, the loftmates and their neighbors I mentioned earlier look over the poster, and we find out from Gus that that is him, and he starred in a movie.. and naturally Wally explained never showing it to his husband in the simplest way possible: By claming a shark ate it. You know while I watched the show I didn’t quite get it when I was younger and it’s probably why it took me decades to revisit it.. but I wish I had sooner this show is REALLY damn funny and i’m really looking forward to that spinoff with Wally and Gus. 

Wally continues to dodge Kevin, so Kevin, trying to find info about the film and it being lost, goes to the video store.. back when those existed. Something I have to give the show is honestly the use of vhs, visits to video stores, and the movies Kevin mentions are the only things that really date this film. While swapping another Dustin Hoffman film in proved impossible, it is plausible Kevin would see it streaming somewhere. and it’s easy enough to swap Armageddon for Rise of Skywalker given that film’s just as good.. Last Jedi was excellent though. Point is this story REALLY holds up, which is the sign of a good story: where even if some elements are stamped to the time, the story itself could easily be told again with few changes. It’s also why i’m not AGAINST Reboots, as my coverage of ducktales makes obvious: As long as stories can still be told or you can retell a story in a unique and intresting way, it’s fine to reuse something. I do think hollywood overdoes it, but I’ve never thought there was genuine harm in it or reviving old franchises. It’s all in how you do it.  But yeah while the local video store dosen’t help at all, Andy happens to know just the man for the job, though Jim and Posey nope out of going with them. Also something to note is the series animation: It’s animated like an old 30′s cartoon or a comic strip, modernized a bit in color and realisim, but still having comic strip stuff like shaking head lines, heat lines coming off coffee that sort of thing.  I really love it. 

Anyways the brothers head off to a funky out of the way video store, I wish there were more hole in the wall used media stores where I lived. We mostly have chains like Vintage Stock and Half-Priced Books, though I genuinely love both of those stores and VIntage Stock is the modern equilvent of places like blockbuster honestly. Anyway after Beardo confuses Kevin for an Employee kevin asks him about the man from pluto which Beardo reveals he knows about but is very rare and has few prints. I like Beardo.. he’s a neckbeard who seems more liable to complain abotu some reboot on the fact their rebooting it again rather than “gasp” women are involved. I prefer my neckbeards just a tad pretentious rather than you know, sexist, homophobic, deranged assholes with nothing better to do. I mean i’m still living at home and didn’t get out much before the pandemic either but you dont’ see me bitching every time a franchise gets a female lead. 

Anyway, Kevin is inspired by that and with help from everyone gets the word out about the film. As you’d expect though this can’t end well, as Wally tries avoiding the premire entirely (And we get a great bit where Jim happens to see him trying to flee down the fire escape and Wally’s expression is priceless) 

Huh.. I bet that’s what Rob Reiner when North had it’s premire. As you can probably guess the showing dosen’t go well: The film itself is a hilarious combination of the day the earth stood still (the general plot as we’ll find out more in a second) and Plan 9 From Outer Space (A cheestatic no budget film with a hulking man brute who can’t act as the lead), and in catching the feel of a b-movie it’s utterly perfectly done. This film would go perfect on MST3K and the audience’s howls of laughter agrees with me. 

Wally however is utterly humiliated and doesn’t want to speak to Kevin which.. yeah is about the only issue I have with an otherwise marvelous episode. While I get Wally’s humiliation was Kevin’s fault.. Kevin GENUINELY meant well. While Kevin is book smart at his core he’s a dumb kid who didn’t know any better and didn’t realize Wally hated his film and it’s Wally’s own damn fault for not telling him.  Sure Kevin should’ve picked up the hint, but given the kid is oblivious and didn’t even know what an x raiting is it’s clear he’s not the sharpest crayon in the box when it comes to life experince. Wally had every opportunity to just explain his story but didn’t. And I put most of the blame on Wally when he’s you know, the adult. He’s a 60 or so year old man. He should know better. But it really doesn’t take away from the episode entirely.  But the loftmates clearly love the film and are quoting bits from it, with jim having a fishbowl on his head, when they run into Wally, though Wally is fine with them admitting it’s crap and he knows it is. We then get what REALLY makes the episode and really makes me primed for a spinoff: Wally and Gus’ backstory, which also makes it obvious the crew was probably going to use the two more had the series got another season. 

Anyways it was the 50′s, Archie Andrews was an average teen and not shredded both in muscle and by a bear that one time, Fonzie was out and about and eyying, and Wally was a first unit director given a shot as the studio asked him for a script having utter faith in him. HIs script was a day the earth stood still esque parable on the Cold War.. until he met Gus who, naturally for Gus, was outrunning a ton of police having stumbled on set and likely defeated them all bare handed because Gus is as incredible as the hulk and likely also comes back through a glowing green door when he dies.  So Wally made the tragic mistake of mixing his love life with his career, and lost both Kurt Douglas, who he bumped down from lead for Gus, and Charleton Hesston who just walked off and they got a dinkier stage and worse actors as a result. The resulting film ended Wally’s career but he was able to sell the rights to cinemas to make enough for them to start over in mission hill and buy the diner.. and at least they had each other. It’s a really great story that explains why it upsets Wally so much: This was his baby and while he dosen’t even for one second regret meeting gus or the life they’ve had, he regrets that his one film was a total trainwreck and goes off to the theater to mope as he plays his film for laughing crowds, as it was naturally held over. I mean when you get the next plan 9 from outer space, this was a bit before the room mind you, you hold onto that shit. 

Kevin, who heard the whole thing, goes to mope by watching what is likely a MIcheal Bay film, who was a target even then folks. Oh you poor poor fools you knew not how much worse it could get... i.e. robot testicles. Just.. robot testicles. And their MAKING A DELUXE MOVIE DEVISTATOR. Why. Just.. why who wanted this after that scene. He’s sworn off good movies as he feels he no longer deserves them. Andy however bluntly tells him to cut the pity party, while he’s moping his friend really needs him and when you love somebody, you put your pants on for them. When you love somebody you see it to the end, when you love somebody the conclusions forgone when you love somebody you put your big boy pants right onnnnn! ... I’ll put the song at the end. Point is Kevin goes to help his friend, and as Wally is moping in the projection booth and wonders what he was thinking Kevin tells him the obvious truth: He was thinking of how far he’d go.  “You taught me the best films are personal stories.. and this film is your valentine to Gus” While Wally starts to break a little, he does point out it doesn’t make it good.. but Kevin rightly counters that he’s not so sure of it. Wally sees the audience enjoying the film and goes down, with all of them carrying red light bulbs like the one gus has to show when he’s mad in the film. And Wally finally realizes waht I got to in the beginning: It doesn’t matter if a film’s good or bad, what matters is someone enjoys it. A film can be utterly terrible, and still be good. It can be a mess and still have merit. And Wally finally realizes it doesn’t matter if it’s the film he wanted, it’s the film he made for his future husband, it’s a film that brings laughter and sticks in people’s heads and really  brings them a godo time. It’s a film worth remembering and Wally finally accepts that and his film as his own.  Later that night Kevin and Wally exit the theater, with Wally no longer mad at him and the two still friends or as Wally puts it in the second best line of the episode “As close as an elderly gay man and a straight boy can be” Awwww. The two depart and we get a touching final scene as Wally comes home and finds a bottle of wine and a note from gus saying he has a suprise for him> Turns out Gus put on his old space helmet.. but fell asleep in it. So we get a really nice tender moment as Gus takes the  helmet off, smooches his husband on his bald head and smiles brightly as the episode ends.

Final Thoughts on The Man From Pluto or I Married a Gay Man From Outer Space: Before you ask each episode had two titles for funzies, the first one to get past the censors and the second for fun and likely what they would’ve gone with if they could. As for this episode.. it’s spectacular. It holds up well even 20 years later, it’s touching, sweet and really damn funny and makes me want to rewatch the show as a whole again. I highly recommend seeking it out and hope mission hill is eventually made officially available somewhere. Till then you can find the whole series including this episode on YouTube and despite being the last one you could easily watch this one first if you want and it’s a decent enough intro to the show as a whole. I highly recommend it, an utter pleasure to watch.  If you liked this review, you can comission your own by PMing me on this very blog, just mention you want to do a comission and we can talk it out. As this review proves, it dosen’t have to be a show i’ve done before or even one that’s remotely recent. Hell i’d gladly do Fonz and The Happy Days gang, the animated happy days spinoff that’s like dr. who but with the Fonz. Yes really. Whatever you want i’ll do it as long as it’s not porn for just 5 bucks an episode and 10 for a movie. YOu can also join my patreon, and for 2 dollars a month get acess to my discord (that i’ll start once I get patreons) and once I get enough patreons exclusive polls or 10 bucks for all of that and a review of your choice each month. You can find said patreon right here. And even 1 buck a month would be apricated if you can spare it and if not simply reblog this and share it around.  You can also follow this blog for weekly ducktales, loud house and amphibia coverage as they come out.  I’d also personally thank WeirdKev27 for both being a long time fan of this blog and for the comission. 

Until we meet again say safe, wear a mask, check your atttic for Gary Busey and happy Halloween! Play us out Mr Heere!

[andhereisthetea]

A Personal Opinion: labeling Entrapta

I am very conflicted and also quite annoyed by the way fans have mentioned in the past and present Entrapta is asexual just for the fact she doesn't show sexual attraction nor desire like normal people do, nor she is sexualized nor romantic or even touchy with anyone around her.

I am often very tired by the labels people usually likes to give to characters that doesn't exhibit the normalized behaviours we see in society.

The fact is that, for me, describing Entrapta as asexual is increidble simplistic and overlooks most of her complexity as a character. And also shows how most people thinks that a 'sexual behaviour' is sexualy connect with everyone in their surrounded, so people who doesn't experience or doesn't want to experience such things are just labeled as asexual, which is unhealthy and incredible ignorant about sexual physiology and psychology itself.

Surprisedly was not the same thing with her autism, I am more accepting of this fact because I have studied it and is actually well portrayed.

I have never been diagnosed though, but don't like people, I have to admit, most of the time they don't understand what I talk about and what subject I want to debate, they see me as this weird or even too damn monotonous-talking person who doesn't seen to think normaly, who doesn't see to express herself normally, and they don't seen to know what to do with me around. I have never had a sexual partner, nor I've had interest in having one, UNTIL I started to connect with people in University and realized that I was in fact not asexual but my attraction is related to my connection with people.

Most of the time I feel people are too simplistic to understand what I feel or what I say, the same way Entrapta got bored by Catra when she asked for a more simple explanation of her scientific methods. Knowledge and hobbies I like to talk about goes from medicine to computer sciences and astrophysics, and also medieval history, I am a bachelor in ancient history and currenting studying anthropology/archaeology and computer programming by hobby because I enjoy it. I am not someone who is easy to be loved, nor I am someone who wants to have contact with people that I don't feel connection with.

The way she goes BALLISTIC when she talks about First One's tech is the same way I felt so much emotions over the possibilities of having my first Rapsberry Pi as a birthday gift, something I could even use to create robotic in the future. I know how it feels, to look at something so intrincate and precious and so damn complex and feeling is worth more time in the world than having people around you who will never understand.

The way she behaves around people makes me feel incredible related. For me showing desire or attraction or even romantical desire to people I barely meet is absurd. And to show or dress myself in a hypersexualized way or just show skin seen wrong and not my personality at all. And having a big genius or being intelligent over the average doesn't mean you are asexual, it means everyhing gets more complicated with how you relate and feel things around you, and most people like to label you with concept, right? It makes me fucking cry every time, most people likes to label others, like me, with a simplistic category that doesn't seen to describe the whole spectrum of things I feel about the world, just because they like to categorize humans that doesn't experience things like normal people do, right? And I have spent so much time feeling I was broken, that I couldn't feel anything at all, that my friends abandoned me. But then I got to the point in at 18 years old when I realized I was not broken, I feel things differently, I could feel desire, and I could feel sexual attraction, but not with the people I am usually surrounded by. I had to break my confort zone to feel it, because the group around me weren't the people I was destined to connect with.

And that is EXACTLY what Entrapta experienced with Hordak, quite literally when she ended up in the Fright Zone.

Some people I've meet thinks that behaviours and clothes, fucking clothes, are what defines sexuality. I like masculine clothes and I don't like feminine behaviour but I am not lesbian, and also I don't go in life touching or invading people's spaces, or trying to flirt with others because is just a waste of time, and still some people thinks that being asexual is exactly those things, or having a complete lack of sexual or romantic desires, or is equal to be celibe and frigid, when media and society usually push for women to be sexual and explicitly romantic, pretty, feminine and emotional or touchy (gross if you ask me).

Also the complete misunderstanding than the only kind of sexual connection one can have is related to body attraction and tactile stimulation is frustrating the shit out of me. I have experienced attraction and desire over a guy talking about philosophy, and not by a dude who goes to the gym who I find just blatantly brute.

Entrapta didn't need to convince me, she became my favorite person from the beginning, her passions, her emotions, her nonstop lust for tech, her obvious desire to stay with Hordak, her entusiastic nature, all of that is so damn complex and comes with layers and layers of years of building up her complex personality in loneliness. She finally CONNECTED with someone and now she is incredible passionated about that.

The brain and its capabilities for me are sexualy attractive, the way someone can behave around, like Hordak does and how he uses complex words, commanding people, is both stoic and passionate, and has more knowledge over the universe, technology and multidimensional space IS sexualy attractive, that is the reason I stand by the fact that Entrapta is not asexual, but her sexual desires are related to other things rather than the simplistic desire of superficial attractiveness that comes with impulsivity and lack of common sense I see in most people my age.

I had no desire to experience my own sexuality with someone because I just didn't care, and I am too beyond my 20s to even label what I feel, that is just limitating myself.

And Entrapta is such an amazing and wholesome creature, she is a genius between the whole crew, she is passionate and fierce, calling or labeling her whatever thing is to limitate her or reduce her to a word that doesn't seen to grasp her whole complexity as an individual.

I am closer to her age and I know it it feels when you just gave up friendship. When you spend your teenager years not connecting (nor romantic or sexualy) to anyone around thinking is because you are not destined to that, and then suddenly something happens in your system when you meet the right person, and you realizes is not that you were asexual, is that the way I experience sexuality is different and more complex, it needs X and before people just gave me Y, and that is not asexuality, is an spectrum of sexuality which is different from people to people, because not everyone will experience things the same, and categorizing a whole spectrum of people in only one concept to try and explain how those people feel and why is just ridiculous.

For me Entrapta is someone who would enjoy her sexuality and intimacy in private, who uses the clothes she uses not for her sexuality but because she is like that, who desires to have a personal space, and wouldn't share it with whatever people she meets, and who can value things like scientific knowledge the same way she values friendship and ultimately love.

Labeling her with whatever concept or category is just limiting her to a word, she is beyond that, I do not believe that a single post, nor a single planet, could contain the complexity that I have seen in her.

[genderfluid-existence]

Gender isn't really a feeling, but you sure can feel it

I have a weird theory. This is going to take some background but bare with me. Basically, I don't think a feeling of gender is really enough to go off of to determine what gender you are, but I think it is posisble to feel like a man or woman. A lot of binary folks don't often report feeling like a man or woman (more commonly just reporting that they feel like themselves), but maybe that's because they don't have a different feeling to compare it to like genderfluid and bigender folks do.

It's hard to know if gender is something you can feel because it's increidbly subjective, and can only be known by the reports of the individual. But here's why I think it is possible to feel gender (other than, of course, the fact that my subjective experience seems to indeed include feelings of gender).

I have synesthesia (Google it if you don't know about it. TL;DR: one sense gets triggered by another sense, like seeing color when hearing music). One of my types of synesthesia is that I have ordinal linguistic personification (letters and numbers having personalities) that's limited to gender. So for example: 9 is female, 5 is male, 4 is female, h is male, q is female, etc. (If all of this sounds completely left-field as a concept, you're on a blog of a genderfluid person. We deal with uncommon subjective experiences here. I don't know what to tell you lol).

If synesthesia mixes up senses, and gender is something you can have synesthesia with, then it must be some form of sense. Thus you can feel male or female.

And it makes sense because senses can be very difficult to describe objectively. For example, describe the color orange as a sense without using points of reference. What can you say? It's really hard to actually describe color. And gender seems to be the same way. I can't explain what orange is but this peach is clearly orange. And my feeling is clearly female.

Now I want to clarify that this is my own speculation and I am no where near a psychologist or specialist who would actually be able to verify this, however this makes sense to me. It makes sense that the brain would create a shorthand sense of who is male and who is female, since it probabaly makes it easier to scope out potential mates if you're someone only into one gender.

Alright, that's my funky theory, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[crazyintheeast]

Look I really need people to understand that humor is not harmless. Humor when not used correctly helps to make bigots feel safer and more secure in their views. Here are two examples which I have personally experienced.

I was on this youth project abroad. We were many people meeting for the first time but during the week we got to know each other and became friendly. One of the members was a gay man(well into his 40′s but apparently there wasn’t anyone more age appropriate in his organization). Everybody was friendly to him and accepted him. This made him relax and start telling some inappropriate jokes about women which I guess he thought was ok since apparently in his mind gays were allowed to be sexist to women. People were uncomfortable but laughed politely because they didn’t want to make it awkward. Then one night while we were hanging at a beach cafe, yes you heard that right a beach cafe in the middle of the summer he saw a slightly larger middle aged woman(who was actually younger then him)wearing a revealing bikini. He immediately starting going into this increidbly sexist rant about how disgusting it is that old fat women dress like whores. Why? Because he thought it was ok. Because hey people laughed at his jokes once so they would be on board right?

A second example was in this discord group I was in about Pokemon Go., Whenever someone got a really good Pokemon everybody would yell” gayyyy” like Chang. Nobody really meant it maliciously or anything and while not ok it still became a thing for many people in the group. Then one day when while we raiding  we were comparing pokemons.and  we noticed how weird is is that one of the guys ( one of the more quieter members of the group you know the nerd sterotype. Quiet,introverted, barely speks, looks like a complete nerd )hadn’t evolved his Gardevoir even though  he had a perfect one to evolve . So we ask him why and he said without a hint of irony. This is a boy Pokemon. if I evolve him he would look like a girl and I can’t have any f*** on my team. I bet you anything that this nerd would have never said something like this if he didn’t thing that the group would welcome his homophobia due to their type of humor

So I am not telling you to axe your humor completely but be careful with it. Think about the consequences of your words and patterns

[valxdiictiion-a-blog]

ennuinoir replied to your post: ennuinoir replied to your post: ...

LMAOO SO EXTRA THATS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE! class 0 like >:( bc wow they just made fun of our crimson capes… LMAO other hunters tryna be nice to them bc they’re just kids and class 0 like side eyeing them like wat… are they doin? AND UR RIGHT SO SOCIALLY AWKWARD they must make some of the more nicer hunters so uncomfortable like why do these kids fight so well… b/ no one can deny their skills so they can’t be kicked out or anythingOOOH 0 IN KINGSGLAIVE WOULD BE SO

COOL!! (can imagine glaives like why can that weird card guy teleport too???)

class0 the extra class,,,,not only cuz they were Added basically but also cuz they ARE extra....increidble

KBADKAD WHAT IF IT WAS ARECIA WHO MADE THEM. HOW DARE THESE PPL TALK BADLY ABOUT SOMETHING MOTHER MADE/BOUGHT US !!!!!! also me crying i rly want them to be nice to them cuz i knOW EIght at least have rly little trust in adults/higherups lmAO.....build their trust slowly but surely...

HONESTLY THE GLAIVES ARE SO COOL I LOVE THEIR JACK E TS and !! JUST ‘why is cards appearing in front of him when he does that how does even CONTROL those cards wtf’ assuming hes warpstriking or something,,,BUT. NO. ACE IS teleporting. talented boi.

[harryfeatgaga]

I think I would choose anne or jeff because (sadly) we got a taste of what annes photos are like and you know jeff being his best friend has a bunch of unflattering photos of harry and videos of him being weird-🦜

YESSS ALSO ANOTHER THOUGHT MITCHS PHONE I MEAN HE GAVE US THAT INCREIDBLE DANCING VIDEO GODDDD

[popculturebuffet]

Amphibia Reviews: The Shut-In

More Halloween Havoc, whoop woop! The Plantars return just in time for Halloween! It’s Shut-In in Wartwood, their version of halloween, but less of a focus on getting candy and more on getting suplies to protect yourselve and barricade yourself in so the moon dosen’t turn you into a monster. I remain not suprised. To pass the time our heroes tell some true spooky stories and Polly tries to find one they weren’t around for.  Phone-Mo: Anne and humanized versions of Polly, Maddie, and Toady watch a cursed video and soon disappear by one. Nothing ominous about that! Dead End: A young Hop Pop serves as Chauffer for a mysterious man played by george takei and death seems to follow them at every stop. Oh myyyyyyyy.  Skin Deep: Sprig and Ivy go to fetch a lost ball and end up running into the skin stealing seamstress. Arson naturally insues..  It’s Terror Time again, with full recap and spoilers, under the cut. 

Whelp, no dancing around it this airing order is weird. And look airing shit in a weird way has been disney’s past time since the 90′s, Darkwing Duck’s airing order is a waking nightmare, and this very show had all of season 1 air within the span of a month and a week in order to get it on disney plus by launch, star vs had it’s last season burned off in three months, and Ducktales pre-covid flip flopped from airing week to week to just one for some reason and then no others for months. Consitency is not their strong suit is what i’m saying and it’s not new.  And yes I get these holiday special episodes are mecurial: their built specifically to slot in wherever without really upsetting continuity: The Casagrandes recently aired their first season 2 episode before even finishing season 1, so this isn’t just a disney thing, while speaking of disney things ducktales had it’s first proper halloweeen episode air the week before a spring break set episode, with a christmas episode set to air next month. What i’m saying is I get these things sometimes don’t air in production order, but it’s less excuable on Disney’s part here when it’d take airing exactly one episode for this not to be a tad jarring. Not enough that it spoils the episode nor does the episode effect the ongoing story or continuity in any way, so it’s not TERRIBLE but it smacks of lazy incompetence on Disney’s part and I wish they’d do better already. 

Okay that rant out of the way we can dive right in! It’s the annual Shut-In in Wartwood! Basically their verison of halloween but instead of a fun spooky holiday, it’s the annual tradition of getting various things from the neighbors to help stay indoors during the blue moon, which in wartwood turns whoever views into a monster. Because of course their halloween is a fight for suvival. Also theirs pumpkins everywhere with their versions of jack o lanterns being fear gourds which.. okay. Point is instead of candy the kids trick or treating has turned up rusty nails, a hatchet, a first aid kit and anne, winning the night, a flamethrower! On one hand it’s neat these exist in wartwood via fire breathing slugs. On the other I do worry about Anne accidently burning everyone and everything down so please take that from her. 

The Plantars then lock themselves in. To stave off bordeom, Shut-In tradition is to go around the fire and tell each other creepy true stories that happened to them. Polly tries going first but just has the Inn story from last season which they were all there for.. thought hat dosen’t make complete sense as they werent’ awake for all of it and shoudl’ve just let her tell her side of things. But eh it sets up polly’s plot so fair enough. Luckily anne has one. So we get our first tale of terror Terror Tales of the Park/Treehouse of Horror III Styles...

Phone-Mo 

Anne’s story is very clearly made up, though no one really calls her on it and it DOES add elemnts from the domino II story from last season so fair enough.  Rather than use her real friends, which is fair enough since she just sadly had to say goodbye to Marcy and probably isn’t handeling the guilt well and Sasha you know.. tried to stab her a few months back then tried sacrifcing herself for Anne’s own well being. Point is thnking about them is a loaaded issue right now so instead she dreams up human versions of Sprig, Polly, with a bucket on her foot for a shot which is a nice visual gag, as is how we meet them, along with Maddie and for some weird reason Toady. I mean I do get Ivy is in our third story, so fair enough, but they could’ve used.. anyone else. Wally would’ve made more sense honestly and he’s also an adult but he’s also you know Anne’s friend and not some town asshole she vaugley knows. It’s just weird. That said I do love the human designs for everyone and they clearly put a lot of work in knowing the fans would like them, with little touches like Polly having pink hair, sprig having his normal haircut he does under the hat but not covered up and toady’s phone having a little keychain of his amphibia version. Also while they all have diffrent names including Anne I won’t be using them on the grounds that I don’t wanna. 

Anne and the plantars are watching a funny internet video when Toady and Maddie offer to show them one that’s apparently cursed and makes whoever watched it disappear. Sprig talks Anne out of it and keeps her from watching anyway but Polly’s naturally all in. ON the way to class, once sprig is gone, anne ends up watching it and liking it anyway because she has no self control and freely admits it.  Naturally given this is a halloween episode, the others start disapearing, with Maddie coming to anne with support after Toady vanishes which again is just.. weird. It’s just weird to hear anyone car about wether toady lives or dies. It keeps throwing me off. Anne reasssures her but sure enough the second anne’s gone Maddie’s phone eats her alive. Still nice to see her again. Regular Maddie should get a hoodie. Also anne apparently eats the corners of her sandwitch so she dosen’t have to share. Clever girl.  Back at home where Anne continues to mock whoever it is told her she can’t write stories as she makes a gila monster and a flamingo make out, where are they I must hurt them, when Sprig calls panicked that polly is missing and admits i’ts a good thing they ddin’t watch the video.. yeah about that. Sprig is of course freaked, and soon the video pops on anne’s phone and soon the weird cat thing inside comes to life and then turns deadly.. also it turns out it eats the host then forces them to be int he background of the video, which was hinted at earlier with one guy having been in there for 35 years.. despite having a smartphone. Well this is anne’s story I don’t think she knows those didn’t exist once. 

Luckily Anne figures out how to beat it.. in the most hilarious way possible. by disliking it, since liking and commeting linked it to her, she weakens it before finishing it with a rude comment. It’s.. i’ts purespun comedy gold. This frees everyone else and they leave along with sprig.. but eggs are left behind. Dun dun dun.  Final Thoughts on Phone Mo:

First off .. I have no idea what FOMO means so the title left me as lost at first at the plantars... oh okay it’s fear of missing out.. should’ve remebered that from brooklyn nine nine and amy’s legendadrily bad case of it. Aw well a decent story, if the weakest of the three. It does have an incredibly funny conclusion, neat human designs, and an intresting setting given while school stories are common, usually we don’t get that here so it’s a nice break from the norm. But compared to the genuinely chilling with a funny and odd climax next two, it’s just okay. Not bad, but not quite as good.  Back in the present, Polly once again tries this time with children of the spore, once again being shot down though that being said hop pop’s line of “I was responsible for that one” was given a great delvery by charlie addler. Also Anne missed Wally’s birthday and he’s sad. oh Wally. Though i’m sure she’ll make it up to him.. at least he’s back home. So anyways speaking of HOp Pop, it’s his turn for a story...

Dead End:  And it’s a story from Hop Pop’s Youth! Given we’ve never SEEN hop pop beyond his present day and only heard the ocasional scrap, it’s REALLY nice to hear. It dosen’t tell us a ton more granted, but we at least see what he looked like, get to hear charlie adler use a slightly less aged voice for him and get to see him with a luxrious golden mane of johnny bravo hair, which is as hilaroius and glorious as it sounds. 

Back in those days Hop Pop was a coachman. He still had the farm, but given how tight things are now it’s not a stretch to assume he could always use some extra coppers to keep his family we never get to know about besides the grandkids fed. He also prides himself on honest work, not taking payment till the rides finished and the customer is satisfied which is INCREIDBLY risky, but I do kinda get it both for Hopidah’s sense of honor and because it seems clear he mostly does it in town by the fact all his stops this ep are within wartwood or close enough, so clearly it’s mostly people he knows personally.  This time though the rider is the well dressed, crimson red Mr. Littlepot, played by George Takei. Best known for Star Trek, being out and proud and since coming out after years and years in the closet, using his celebrity to help promote gay rights and other good stuff. He’s also known for saying ohhhh myyy and this clip from futurama. 

I got a lot of respect for the guy, He was even in archie comics once after Kevin Keller was introduced. So it’s nice to see him doing some voice work and he kills it here.. pun intended but more on that in a sec. Littlepot has some simple rule: keep driving no matter what hapepned where he was.. and given both places he ends up have someone dying, once by a horrifying looking snake, it’s clear somethings up. IT also nicely builds the tension as hop pop tries to steady himself, but is clearly cracking as he realizes his client might be murdering people he knows.. and he could be next. As Hopidiah KNOWS each person Littlepot visits and it nicely ratches up the tension. But turns out he’s not a killer.. he’s simplyd eath himself come to collect those already about to die. 

It’s a nice twist: The genuine trappings of the guy make you think h’es some form of the devil, the crimson skin, yellow eyes and cultured demanor.. it’s only as he goes you start to realize what the man actually is and even then he easily could still be frog satan. But no he’s just the frog reaper and defends himself to Hop Pop when confronted: He’s just doing his job, just like Hopidiah, getting people where they need to be. Unforutnately for Hop Pop his final stop is the farm.. though thankfully for him he hasnt come for Hopidiah.. just his hair. Yeah it’s a nice comedic twist on an otherwise chiling and well done story that what the devil came to take is his hair.. which he starts wearing hilariously. So Hop Pop lives but sobs, and Anne points out it was pretty fucked up. 

Final Thoughts for Dead End:  Not much to say. This one was dripping with atmosphere, Takei was utterly awesome and need to do more voice work, and the comedic ending twist was really damn funny. Top notch. 

Polly tries again, gets shut down again and is now really understandably frustrated at not having a story. Naturally given the other plantars have gone though, Sprig does. And he dosen’t have at itle at first until one cuts him off ....

Skin Deep:

Ivy’s Back! 

Yeah I was genuinely worried the return ep would break up either her and sprig or hop pop and silvia.. and while the second one remains a horrifying sword of damocles over my head, Sprig and Ivy are fine and Ivy gets a nice spotlight episode here. It was a pleasant surprise to get some fresh info since i’tll be months till we find out anything else.  So the young couple are playing bugball down at the old courts, when a couple of guys they were up to no good, started making trouble in the neghborhood. Sprig got in one little fight and Hop Pop got scared he said “your moving with your auntie and uncle to bell air”. He begged and pleaded day after day but Hop Pop packed his suit case and sent him on his way. He gave him a kiss and then he gave him a ticket Sprig put his walkman on and thought he might as well kick it. First class yo this ain’t bad, drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass. Is this what the people of bel air live like, yo, this might be alirght!   He whistled for a cab and when it came near the liscene plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror, if anything he could say that this cab was rare but he thought man forget it yo holmes to bell air. He pulled up to the cab about 7 or 8 and yelled to the cabbie yo holmes smell ya later. He looked at his kingdom and he was finally there to sit on his throne as the fresh prince of bell air. 

So then Will walked into the mansion and wait.. wrong show.. so the young couple are playing bugball when they loose their ball, and it goes off into the creepy part of the woods. Ivy also looses her hat and is self concious about her hair. Looks fine to sprig but she’d rather not. Aww she’s insecure. But the two head off with Sprig getting more and more nervous, as Ivy details a legend about the area of the seamstress, a mysterious recluse who steals your skin! Naturally Sprig is nettled while Ivy says it’s fine and does what anyone would do upon finding out the ball went into a creepy abandoned shack in a world where it’s clear murderers are pretty common: kick down the door! It’s the perfect crime. 

Naturally Sprig gets more unernved, finding a set of needles and thread, which gets a great gag as Ivy points out that’s nto that uncommon.. but the giant pile of skin they find sure is!

Oh.. it gets worse me. Sprig finds the ball. and the Seamstress who has a horrifying patchwork of skins on her and wants to add theirs.. the kids are naturally spooked and prepare to flee but she wants their skin and grabs ivy! Thankfully she breaks free and Sprig busts some off.. OH GOD.. and it turns out she’s a glass frog! .. turns out theres a kind of frog that has translucent skin.

But yeah obvoiusly the show takes it a step further, and her skin is entirely see through. Poor girl. Ivy sympathizes shows off her hair.. then puts her hat over the Seamstress’ eyes and tells sprig now, and sprig starts a fire, and the two start to escape when he grabs Ivy’s leg!

Thankfully Ivy breaks free and the two leave her to die. Sprig compliments ivy’s hair, ivy gets him a smooch it’s all adorable and they defintely murdered someone who defintely murdered a lot of people. Horay!

Naturally the rest of the family is freaked out by this with Anne wanting to know if ivy being bitten means sh’es infected and Hop Pop wanting to know if one of her skins was his friend fred he hasn’t seen in a while. Sprig then spooks them by having ivy show up, complete with a burlap frog skin.. maybe. She could’ve been lying. We dunno. Ivy heads home to risk her life for a good gag, depsite the fact her boyfriend’s house is right there and her mom and grandmom clearly had to sign off on this shenanigan given the night. But this life risking prank naturally risks some life as Polly has ran off to look at the moon to get her own story. The rest of hte family runs after her only tfind it did.. ntohing. She’s apparently fine just fine and they assure her the fear they felt thinking she might become some kind of monster was scarier than any story and the rest of them head home with polly following.. after transofrming. Turns out the moon DOES make you into monsters but she’s fine with it. She’s got her legs now! Everyone screams understandably, Anne finally realizes this isn’t quite a holiday the end. 

Final Thoughts on Skin Game and the special as a whole: Easily my faviorite, partly for shipping reasons as I do like Ivy and Sprig together, and partly because it really let Ivy have a roll OTHER than sprig’s love intrest. Sure she still smooched his cheek and their clearly still together, but she got to be proactive, badass and hilariously impulsive and trollish. It was a nice change of pace and the story itslef was the best of the bunch to me becuase of that, though Dead End was really close.  Overall this was a nice treat, a good anthology with lots of fright and humor and a nice wraparound story arc with polly, as well as some nice call backs to previous episodes. An utterly excellent halloween special i’ll probably be revisiting every year and another slam dunk from disney this year. The airing snaufu really dosen’t hurt it any and in the future this one will likely be after Return to Wartwood on D+ anyway so no harm done. Great all around. If you liked this review follow me for more amphibia whenever it comes back, ducktales reviews every monday, and loud house reviews every saturday or sunday depending. And until next time stay safe, stay spooky and happy halloween!

[popculturebuffet]

Star Vs the Forces of Evil Reviews: The Blood Moon Ball (1-15)

Welcome back.. though to most of you probably just joining me, welcome. I’ve been on a sorta hiatus from revewiing due to a combination of procrastination, depression, and being really busy. But I finally decided it was time to put boots to the ground and get back to doing what I love: Going on way too long about children’s television.  As such, with She Ra taking a bow a few weeks back and nailing it I got to thinking about another show that just so happened to end the year before: Star Vs the Forces of Evil. Part of it was very simple: She ra ended on a trriumphant note, making a well set up romance that had been it’s backbone canon, having a wonderful final battle, tons of payoff and a throughly happy ending that satisfied all involved and got tons of well earned coverage for having a deep, meaningful relationship between two lesbians finally coming together being the thing that saves the universe. It was freaking great.  Meanwhile a year prior Star Vs, after having been treated like toilet dinner by disney for no good reason by having it’s final season shoved out over a few sundays after a yearlong hiatus.. ended not with a bang, but with a wah wah trumpet. The series ending was unsatisfying, left more questions than answers, had the title character loose all likeablity and was in general miserable. I hadn’t been this pissed off at a finale since How I Met Your Mother and hadn’t seen a romance botched this badly in animation since “Merry Christmas Mordecai”. It was BADDDDD.  However it did make me want to go back to the series; To revisit the good, the bad and the just plain weird to remember what made me love the series, what made me want to throw my tv into a river before reminding myself “No dude, shit’s expensive. “, and what COULD have been, what SHOULD have been and what WASN’T. So i’ll be reviewing assorted episodes.. and the best place to start for me was with the introduction of one of the series best characters, as well as at the same time the start of a ship that was a good idea at first but would slowly take the series down with it as it started to fall apart. This is Blood Moon Ball. There will be blood, and a dead horse, after the cut. 

Before we get into the episode, one of the series most notable and honestly a damn good one, for those 2 of you not familiar with the series a quick refresher: Star VS is the story of Star Butterfly, a rebelious 14 year old princess from the Kingdom of Mewni. Mewni is your standard medievil fantasy kingdom.. but you know with wifi because they have magic compacts that work as phones and large sale acess to the multiverse. Their also ruled over by a long sucession of queens with great and terrible magic power, which is channeld through an increidbly powerful wand that’s passed down from generation to generation.  On her 14th birthday Star gets her turn with the wand.. and not long after sets everything on fire. Not wanting the kingdom to get blown up while Star figures out thing, her parents send her to Earth, and after bribing the school principal into enroling her, that’s not a joke on my part but an actual joke from the pilot, Star soon becomes an exchange student, boarding with the Diazes and soon becoming best friends with their teenage son Marco, a saftey obessed, shy talented martial artist. The two are frequently forced to beat up the hordes of Ludo, a spoiled monster king who wants the wand for himself. Things would get way darker... like in literally two seconds as the revelation star’s people stole mewni from the monsters and Star’s hatred being revealed to be partly racisim instead of standard hero and villian stuff. But that’s for future reviews. Today we have demons, internet commentors and ship tease to get to. So with the basic premise set up let’s finally get on with it.  We open on the arrival of my boy and yours, hopefully, Tom Lucitor. Tom is the prince of the underworld, basically exactly what it sounds like: fire, brimstone, demons spooky scary skeltons sending shivers up your spine. He’s also Star’s ex boyfriend. How they broke up is.. never really explained. While more details about their relationship, includign the fact Tom bought Star her iconic Devil Horn headband on their frist date, were revealed in the tie-in spellbook, and reveals that star’s arson that got her sent to mewni happened right after her and tom broke up, but never explains WHY.  My guess is since the series clearly frames the breakup as Tom’s fault in this episode and on his anger, they probably didn’t want a scene of him screaming his head off at star, either to keep him sympathetic or , more likely, because a scene of a teenage girl watching her boyfriend having a rage fueld breakdown that leads to htem breaking up would be MASSIVELY uncomfortable to watch and unlike some uncomfortable to watch scenes, wouldn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already. So unlike some later things they never pulled the trigger on this one at least makes sense.  Anywho, Tom arrives, parking in the handicap spot (a nice little gag as Star’s crush at the time Oskar points it out, while the dead skeletal horse pulling tom’s carriage turns around to look at him), and all the girls stop and stare.. including Janna, who would probably regret this moment once she realize tom was a bad boy because he’s socially awkard and has anger issues. Basically he’s Kylo Ren but his redemption dosen’t come straight out of JJ Abrhams ass.  Tom arrives at Star’s classroom, removes his shade and damn if he dosen’t have game.. but naturally showing up unnannaounced to her school (Not that TOm probably gets what school is as Mewni dosen’t have those, but still), basically assuming she’ll go out with him, after they had a messy breakup it dosen’t go well and we get a great cut of Star shoving tom back into his carriage.. we also get the best joke of the episode.  Star: So take your invitation and your fire and your dead horse and go.  Dead Horse: wait.. i’m dead? Sad but hilarious. Anyways it’s quickly conved to viewers like us that Tom has anger problems, but he insists to star he’s doing better: he has an anger managment counsler he takes with him places, Brian, voiced by the wonderful and weirdly in Disney’s pocket these days Stephen Root, and a bunny he pets. Before star can pet said bunny Marco , KARATE CHOPS TOM’S HAND OFF.. I just.. until this review I hadn’t sat back to consider just how freakishly strong that boy is , that he can just accidently chop off a hand. I mean tom may have weak joints or something but even after taking far worse blows later on his hands just.. don’t come off. Tom flies itnto a rage and it becomes clear that yeah, whatever happened, it was tom’s fault, and given the kind of rage she flies into, you can see why i’d assume the writers really didn’t want the audience to see him at his worst. I certainly don’t.  Star both worried and clearly having seen this sort of thing go bad before urges Marco to run but tom quickly recovers, both reuniting with his hand and having calmed down, and he and Marco are formally introduced, with star explaning the invite. We also get a great line with marco encouraging her “Star never go with a preadator to a second location”. This show was damn good at getting shit past the radar and i’m here for it. Anyways, Star isn’t quite sold despite tom clearly TRYING to get better, and Tom , in a really nice  move, gives her a bell and tiny hammer to summon his carriage with if she decides to go but leaves it up to her, not pressuring her or anything. For how selfish tom is initially.. this is a spark that shows h’es not a TERRIBLE person, just one who has some growing up to do. Marco however is not convinced and wants to go with, with Star teling him no because A) he wasn’t invited and it’d be rude to ask and B), she appricates the concerns but she can handle this, and implicily, despite her reckless nature knows this is a risk but knows if the night turns she can handle Tom, and that maybe he’s changed. Marco insists Tom can’t change.. which I find hilarious given his massive character arc to the point I had as eires ofessays planned, and one don about his growth before deciding to change formats to doing each ep of his journey instead every so often, to the point where two years on in the series timeline.. we’ve gone from Marco thinking Tom is a predator to...

But star decides to go and .. it’s clear from the subtext that while part of it is clear concern for star, Marco’s line about “it being fun here all the time” may mean that while he DOES have the best intentions.. part of him is jealousssssss. More on that in a bit.  For now we go to the underworld with the second best gag of the episode as Tom is toning down the spookiness to please star, and one of the guys in the picture at the top insults him... and when tom asks which one he says me. We sadly don’t get an answer but it’s small gags like this that made me want to do this episode by episode. Star arrives.. and things quickly go south. Tom tries giving her a corsage that’s a live spider and she rejects it. This admitely looks bad on both as Tom , living in you know, a hell dimenson probably sees it as a sweet gesture, and Star is refusing it.. but star does so POLITELY, and for understandable reasons, and Tom is still clearly pissed about it. Not long after, they line up for what’s essentially a prom photo.. and to get Carried by a bucket of unicorn blood, another nice little gag. Star refuses since well her best friend is a unicorn, one of them anyway, or at least it’s head.. and yes one of the species in this series multiverse is a bunch of headless unicorns. IT’s wonderful. And star also notices tom needs his anger managment bunny and is clearly pissed about it when, having dated her for several months, clearly should’ve KNOWN this might bother her.  That’s really tom’s problem here: He wants everything his way on his terms and only compromises if he thinks it’ll get star to do things with him. He’s made the PRETENSE of changing.. but he really dosen’t WANT to yet. He just wants her back and wants to change just enough to get her back so he can stop trying again. He also may , due to the underworld being diffrent and a place where being covered in a bucket of blood is a time honored tradition instead of the thing that turns a young mutant into a mass murderer, and yes I think a carrie x-men crossover would be the shit. He probably dosen’t GET that star wouldn’t like a spider corasge or bathing in her best friends blood.. but the problem isn’t that. that’s culture shock, that can be bridged with some talk.. the problem is tom dosen’t want to talk, he just wants her to do what he wants and things to be all cool and to get his way. Being a prince with two loving parents, we’ll meet them soon enough just not this episode, and tons of servants, I get the impressionf rom this and other episodes tom simply isn’t USED to not getting what he wants.He’s not USED to being told “No”, and thus has no way to deal with it healthily and isntead lashes out like an angry toddler. It dosen’t make his actions RIGHT but it does make them more understandable and makes it so Tom’s later growth FEELS natural depsite some of his sketchier actions beforehand. 

Back at Marco’s house, Marco is depressed eating nachos in a sumbrero.. which if I had corn chips, cheese and a sombrero would probably be my daily life right about now. It’s then we get a WEIRD dropped bit, as Marco hears a weird piratey voice telling him the blood moon is the moon for lovers and stuff. This is IMPLIED to be his monster arm, from an earlier episode.. but it’s.. never explained. Whatever it was going to be was dropped. Which would be fine if the blood moon itself and the end of this episode didn’t get a full explination in season 4 with the writers clearly going back to it to resolve the dangling thread.. but still not explaning the spooky voice. I mean what was it? Marco’s pirate ancestor? the sea captain from the simpsons? the monster arm? terry that bastard? Burt Macklin FBI? Old Man Withers the guy who runs the amusment park? Dirk Dastardely? A sentient payphone? The alps? Tell us damn you! Okay that tangent aside Marco decides to party crash at the advice of the ominous voice.. seriously is it Flintheart Glomgold? Nevermind. Back at the ball star is bonding with a small skeletal fish int he magma punch whent his random asshole comes up and whines for a good minute,if hilariously so, about the ball being changed.

He’s feels, looks and acts like the combination of those morons who were mad adora wasn’t “as hot” in the she ra reboot and was aged down to a teenager and the threw it on the ground guy.  After that interlude, tom shoos away a guy asking star to dance and the guy makes vauge comments about tom wanting his and star’s souls to be link while making kissy nosies. Before Tom can explain what he means by that, or at least lie about what he means by that, the blood moon is about the drop, the lights turn red and tom walks off because he wants the music to be perfect. And then Marco arrives in his really damn cool calevara outfit. Which fair play, I can see why, besides ship reasons, it gets a lot of art: it looks really damn neat.  Speaking of shipping.. it’s time. Star, not realizing it’s marco, dances with him.. quite romantically in fact. It’s here that the show conciously starts Shipping star and marco together. Starco is born, and the scnee is really good: romantic, well animated, jsut great all around. While the ship would .. end up done rather poorly and lead to some really terrible stuff at the time.. it wasn’t abd and already shipping them I loved this and even now, even knowing what woudl come later... it’s not a bad sequence. The only bad thing is what would come later, but I can’t fault the writers of THIS EP for what they would do in a LATER ONE. That’s just not fair. The ship wasn’t bad to start and the later arc springing from it in season 2 would be good.. it just quickly went in bad directions as the series went on , then disappeared, then how it finallyc ame about was just awful. But as much as I want to.. I can’t blame the sequence on this. It didn’t create rabid shippers or poor writing, it was just good and deserves to be praised as such.  Naturally tom takes this about as well as me when I found out HBO max wouldn’t be on roku at launch and prepares to murder Marco.. and promptly gets frozen by star who decides to wisely get out of there. It’s a ncie moment.. and  reminder that Star is crazy powerful, as is the wand itself, because as we’ll see later, tom is no slouch himself in the power department, but even if her attack was from behind, she still stopped him in one move.  So Star takes marco home and dresses him down for sneaking in, understandbly so: while it was an iffy situation, Star knew who she was dealing with and as shown at the end, was strong enough that tom was no threat to her, and given what we learn later, Tom’s parents would likely never let her come to real harm. For all her reckless decision making, Star thought this one out and Marco shoudl’ve repsectied that and didn’t for his own reasons. To his credit though he apologizes, Star admits to liking the dance, then the two speak in unison a few times, and we wont’ get followup on that till the last season! Roll credits. I don’t have the credits for this episode so enjoy this instead:

Final Thoughts: Blood Moon Ball is a spectacular ep. A good plot, a great introduction for tom, and great animation and humor really make the episode pop and it’s nice to get our first look at the underworld and tom himself. Tom would be back, and i’ll be back to tom eventually, but on it’s own the episode is really good and it’s standout sequence still holds up even as starco ended up in the sewer quality wise. All in all a great ep and a great starting point if you haven’t watched the show yet.  Coming Soon: A return to Star in the near future probably since Tom is great and his second ep deserves love too, as do several other star eps, as well as a look at the saluna episodes of the loud house because i’m in a gay mood for obvious reasons, and a loud house mood for less obvious reasons. Until then, feel free to hit me up with asks with suggestions or commisosns for future reviews, and until next time, later days. 

[genderfluid-existence]

Coming out as genderfluid is terrifying

Am I the only person that practices coming out speeches in their head, even if they aren't planning to come out any time soon? I've been doing that recently. It isn't so much scary to imagine as it is agrivating.

If I were to come out to my mom, I anticipate her reaction would be to worry about everything that I've been wrestling with for my entire adolescence. Asking questions like "What if it's a phase?", "Why?", "This is too weird and rare, how can you be that?", "What if it's because the idea has been pushed on you?", etc. And it's increidbly frustrating to imagine, because I would have to rip at all of those old wounds. Re-explain all of the reassurances I've given myself. And maybe the things that make sense to me won't even be enough for her. How much of my guts do I have to spill? If I'm being realistic, I genuinely cannot imagine her ever accepting genderfluidity as real in the way that I have. She will probabaly never see me how I see myself. Which is so frustrating. What's the point of even coming out to her then? Well, I'm somewhat obligated to because, strangely enough, I've already come out to her.

Two years ago I came out as a binary trans guy. She did her best with that one. But it wasn't actually as hard as it could have been because about 2 years before that I had come out as genderfluid. Yeah, I've already come out as genderfluid. I didn't explain it very well, and I know she had no way to grasp the concept, so she just fell through the whole idea and ignored it.

And then there's my dad. I don't like my dad much. I don't want or expect his understanding, acceptance, or respect. But I'd have to tell him nonetheless. It'll be incredibly awkward and I expect him to dismiss it, but hey, at least I'll have tried.

Then there's friends. Thank God I've already come out to the few friends I have. They're all queer so couldn't be more accepting. But when I roll up at college to make new friends I'll have to come out at some point. I'm gonna revisit how to handle this later.

And Oh Sweet Jesus coming out to extended family who I see yearly at the reunion. I wouldn't have to tell them unless I was planning on going on T, which I am. What a terrifying concept. To tell a large group of conservative folks you're genderfluid. I expect more dismissal.

*sigh* It's depressing to not be able to expect acceptance from...basically anyone in your life. Could be worse though.