#TURN HIM INTO THE MONSTER HE WAS DESIGNED TO BE— /j

[trippygalaxy]

That fierce deity doodle.......

Making me thirsty and sweating the same time....

Why is he damn hot?!?!?!!?

-🍑

IAHSJSHSJF

well first, it’s because doodle drew him 😌 doodle is very VERY good at making our boys (lu related or not) very thirstable <3

SECOND HES SUCH SO MMMMMMMM IN THAT OUTFIT?

HOPE YOU HAVE A WATERBOTTLE WHILE OUT IN THE GERUDO DESERT CAUSE THE HEAT ISNT THE ONLY THINF MAKING YA THIRST <333

Im staring oh so respectfully ehhehe

[midnightquips]

Dangerously Close

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Bucky & Y/N are undeniably attracted to each other. Seemingly the only way these two are getting together is with some extreme meddling.

Themes: mutual pining, teasing teammates, possessive Bucky, Thunderbolts chaos, friends-to-lovers-but-stupid about it, pining (a lot)

🔴 MINORS DNI 🔴 Warnings: 18+ content, PURE SMUT, dirty talk, praise kink, jealousy, soft aftercare, pwp, piv sex, unprotected sex, breeding kink

Author's Note: Guys. This is it. And I'm giving you ALL 3 parts. Because honestly, I just can't do it to y'all. I can't keep the smut cut like that. I'm not a monster. So ENJOY!!!!

💫 Dangerously Close Masterlist 📌 Sign Up for TAGLIST

Chapter 3: Only His

Part III

You’re still trembling in his lap, lips parted & heartbeat a mess, when Bucky shifts beneath you.

His hands grip your waist again, but this time it’s with a new kind of intention.

“Get on your knees for me,” he murmurs, voice rough.

Your stomach flips at the command. You crawl forward, face warm, thighs shaky, but your body already craving what you know is coming.

He watches you settle in. Your back arched and hands gripping the sheets. You ass up and pussy glistening from just coming a few minutes ago.

“Fuck,” he growls behind you. “This view should be illegal.”

You feel the mattress dip as he moves behind you, large hands running down your back, cupping your ass, spreading you slightly.

His cock presses against your entrance, thick and hot and impossibly eager. Then he leans forward, chest against your back, lips brushing your ear.

“Ready to take me again, baby?”

You nod, voice shaky. “Yes.”

“I’m gonna fuck you now,” he whispers. “You’re mine. You understand me?”

“Yours,” you breathe.

He groans while thrusting in with one hard stroke.

You cry out, head dropping to the sheets, body clenching around him again.

“Goddamn,” he grits, pulling back and slamming in again. “This pussy’s so fucking good. Tight and dripping just for me.”

He sets a rhythm, deep, unrelenting, designed to wreck you.

You’re gasping and moaning. You meet his thrusts, needing him like he needs you. 

He pulls you up by the neck, presses you back against his chest. His other hand holds you by the waist.

“Want you to come for me again,” he pants. “Wanna feel this pretty pussy clamp down while I’m inside you.”

You whimper at his words. “Bucky! Fuck.”

“Gonna fill you up,” he growls against your throat. “You want that?”

You nod helplessly. “Yes. God, yes.”

“Gonna come inside this perfect pussy. Making you mine.”

You shudder, head tipping back against his shoulder.

You feel his metal hand sliding down to your pussy. He rubs tight circles on your clit, and your body seizes again. Your third orgasm crashing over you like a storm.

You don’t even recognize the sound you make, but Bucky loses it.

He turns you, lays you on your back, and drives into you one last time. His body braced over yours once again, his jaw clenched, muscles flexing.

“Jesus fuck, that’s so hot. Can’t get enough of you.”

“Fuck, baby, I’m gonna come. Gonna fill you up so good. Gonna make sure no one else ever fucking touches you again.”

You pull him down, lips brushing his. “Do it. Claim me.”

He slams into you once, twice. Then he roars as he comes, hips jerking, cock throbbing deep inside you.

He presses his forehead to yours, panting, still rocking his hips gently as he spills everything into you.

You hold him there for a long moment. A moment in which neither of you speaks.

Bucky breaks the silence.

“You’re mine,” he says softly. “You hear me, Y/N? No one else gets you.”

You smile. “I’ve always been yours.”

He groans again, kissing you slowly.

This time, there’s no rush. It’s just you and him.

And the promise that this is only the beginning.

Taglist: @killerwendigo @mrsnikolestan @starstruck-cowgirl @staley83 @wickedfun9 @sebastianstan0813 @yellowjm @geekandproud @Knowledgeableknitter @yvespecially @geek-and-proud @lex-is-up-all-night-to-get-bucky @Biaswreckedbybuckybarnes @jakesimper @danimuhle @marvelloonie @probablybucky @cozyjess @lana525 @watashiwababy @emilyswortwellen @maribirdsteele @amf71010 @sweettae02 @blackrigel @3sriracha @angelbabyange @stevetonycupcakes @buckyslefttooth @user6170171 @jasontoddswhitestreak @ifuckwithyouanyday @ficmeiguess @daydreamgoddess14 @schlattslonghairytoes @cheshiredobby @welcometomymadteaparty @twilyshy @marvel-addict23 @awkward-queer-kid @Sebastians-love @bbarnesbck @battymarie

[maythearo]

" Welcome back to Night Raven College's 'Ghostly Gossip'! The school's unofficial main online source for the latest news, articles and trending topics circulating around campus! "

" Your eyes don't deceive you. He really is real. And an actual monster too, not just a 'weird looking dog', as those funny human legends say... "

Navigation:

R. Rosehearts - T. Clover - C. Diamond - A. Trappola - D. Spade - L. Kingscholar - R. Bucchi - J. Howl - A. Ashengrotto - J. Leech - F. Leech - K. Al Asim - J. Viper - V. Schoenheit - R. Hunt - E. Felmier - I. Shroud - O. Shroud - M. Draconia - L. Vanrouge - S. Zigvolt - Silver

Messy design notes:

I have mixed feelings over his design. On one hand, the outfit itself looks cool... and on the other hand it turned out to be nothing like what I had envisioned in the beggining 😭 I wanted to stick with muted colors, in the vibes of that pic next to howleen's I guess, but it's like Ruggie's design had a mind of its own, and would always lean to more punk-looking no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, which don't get me wrong- punk style does fit him well, the problem is that I had it reserved for another character already, and I wanted to repeat themes as little as possible between entries of this project.. that just may be my perfectionist side speaking though, and there is no reason why I shouldn't post this version here for the time being! If I don't get tired of working on this series by the time I finish all the main cast's designs, then I suppose I could try to make an alternative version of Ruggie with a slightly different theme! I'd do the same with Jamil's entry since he is yet another character I have mixed feelings about the design lol

Aaaanyway, the mood for chupacabra Ruggie is grunge/thrifted fashion with diy details he would add to make his looks feel unique to him I think? The spikes on his skin, although he can partially control (?) them, still get stuck on cloth every now and then. Nearly all items of his closet are a bit torn from it, but he doesn't mind all that much. I got no particular designs for the pins and badges he wears, maybe except for the brazilian flag and the trans pin which I rlly wanted to include somewhere on his clothes whsdbdshewbdi

The chupacabra's appearance vary from place to place, but for this, I based his looks on how I personally grew up hearing and imagining this creature to be like! Baisically a fucked up looking dog, sometimes with spikes and scales on its body? Yeah 👍

And he remains the same personality-wise in the AU, pretty much! At the moment I can't think of many fun facts or character quirks for him, aside from how impossible it is to take a selfie with him, much to Cater's dismay. He swears he doesn't do it on purpose! The moment the camera clicks his body moves on its own to be out of frame. Ruggie's entire instagram (or whatever the monster high equivalent of that may be) account are either pictures of a moving blur or a vaguely distinguishable sillouette of him, taken from far away and zoomed in 10x

I think that's all I remembered to say? Here's a Ruggie core meme I found on reels as extra content lol

[the-cat-ara]

What would happen if clover got turn into a monster?

How would Ceroba starlos martlet dalv and the feisty five react to it ?

Like say of clover was a dog like a border collie or a fox monster like Ceroba.

Or idk a birdd monster like Martlet or star monster like starlos.

Congratulations, your human has evolved into a monster!!

I feel like it would be a surprise to the Feistyj Four (the "J" is silent), but it wouldn't change much, instead, Starlo would be somewhat confused. This would be something he didn't see in his human movies and magazines. He would probably be glued to Clover asking him if there are more things about humans that he didn't know. On the other hand, Ceroba would be somewhat disturbed by how strange it would be for the little guy to just change to being a monster out of nowhere. Perhaps she would even come to question the same thing Starlo did.

On Martlet's part, I don't think she'd catch on that quickly because of how distracted she can be at times. Although she would be confused, she no longer knows whether or not Clover was a monster from the beginning XD

Dalv doesn't seem to care much, he seems to simply accept that it's a human thing that he wouldn't understand. Still, he's glad to have Clover as a friend.

As a bonus, there are these two doodles.

As such, I haven't really thought through a fact as to why the little guy would turn into a monster. I got to thinking that maybe it's from eating non-human food, but that wouldn't make sense…. I think¿¿ XD

To conclude, I took inspiration from a horned lizard to create Clover's monster form. I also took Starlo as a base. I wanted the boy to have certain resemblances to his father, but not be of the same species, so I simply made him a lizard who, when using his power of justice, can glow slightly. Oh, and this is what his soul would look like.

I hope the design is to your liking. I also apologize for taking so long, drawing this took me longer than I expected.

[where-fading-princesses-live]

Monsters, Inc./ Monsters University Analysis- Pt. 3

(WARNING: LONG POST)

-> Part 3/ ?

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

!!THE VILLAINS (CONT’D)

Alright, so we left off with Randall trying to lynch Sulley using his body as a noose….

And speaking of nooses…..

HENRY J. WATERNOOSE

....our twist/ surprise villain is Henry J. Waternoose, CEO of the corporation, The Man Behind the Curtain pulling all the strings, and his design is pretty BOSS. Like you go BOSS MAN. This crab… spider…. Monster thing…I mean, it's the stuff of nightmares. Randall scared me as a kid, oh sure…… but you know who scared me even more? That’s right. THIS GUY. This guy used to scare the living crap outta me as a kid… I MEAN just look at him! NOPE. That’s not creepy at all. All them eyeballs… and those claws… like coffee and nightmares had a baby…….. a spider baby…….. like what in the brother of Christ is that thing???? But yeah, no, his design totally EATS. No, his design doesn’t just eat. He CHEWS TF DOWN. Thanks, I hate it.

That’s God’s handiwork right there. A spider molting, shedding the old and revealing something new vivid, alive, transformed. Nature preaching the gospel better than most pulpits. Don’t tell me design like that came from chaos.

God be like: ‘’I’m gonna create the most creepiest, crawliest, fear inducing, horrible critter just to scare the pants off those annoying humans that I also apparently created.'’

I can only imagine his backstory before he became CEO… yes, the company was in his family for three generations, so he was most likely born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the Old Money generation, NOT a New Money Self-Made Billionaire…. And most likely inherited the company from his father, who, in turn, must’ve inherited the company from his grandfather (all named Henry Waternoose)…….. but like, just pretend for one moment nepotism was not a factor here.

WHAT IF a young Henry Waternoose started at the factory as a mere foreman? Hear me out. His father was general superintendent or something; his grandfather was CEO and a major shareholder of said company. What if little spider baby Henry had to work his way up the ladder? Daddy Long Legs offered his bright, only son a position at the factory, but he had to work for it! His grandfather was fresh off the boat and started from the bottom, so his hard work ethic carries itself down the line. Henry follows in his father’s footsteps… just graduated college…. 24-years-old, studied business administration and mechanical engineering and earned his Bachelor’s……. Daddy Long Legs invites him down to the factory…. A *new* factory they’re building to generate screams in a way the other companies are *not* doing (trying to rival Fear Co. and quash them)……. Henry tours the factory floors; he likes what he sees; he goes away to study the scream industry abroad in another country, maybe his grandfather’s motherland……… he comes back and starts work as a foreman on one of the floors, across the hall from his daddy’s office…….. in five years or less, he works his way to the top, taking over the position of general superintendent from his daddy when Daddy retires……… Granddaddy is away on foreign business because he owns factories all over the monster country……..Granddaddy semi-retires and leaves little Henry in charge of operations………. It’s 1970-something, and he’s CEO of the entire organization. Blim blam.

So, now comes the Question of the Century….. who was the REAL villain of Monsters, Inc.? Waternoose or Randall????

These are the questions that keep me up at night, no joke.

As a kid, I always thought it was Waternoose. I thought for sure Randall was the Fall Guy for BOSS MAN, that he simply recruited Randall to be his mad scientist henchman. That the Scream Extractor was partly Waternoose’s idea, but he needed an insane mechanic to design the thing, and build the thing, using recycled parts of the door station…….. and so recruited Randall and eventually his assistant Fungus who was maybe a little better at the mechanical parts of it…… not that Randall was held at gunpoint to do this project, but that Waternoose was the mastermind behind it. How he recruited Randall, I don’t rightly know…….. how long they’ve been plotting this thing, I don’t know. (Roz mentions two years of undercover work but they could’ve been plotting this thing longer than that.)

But now I’m hearing theories that it was really Randall as the mastermind…… and Waternoose was just riding his coattails….

And now I’m thinking that makes more sense.

……………that Randall had this deal, see….. Jerry Lundergard style ‘’It’s MY deal!’’ And he asked for $750,000 to fund this Renewable Energy research project and Waternoose be like, ‘’I’m not a bank, Mr. Boggs.’’

RANDALL: ‘’Yeah, no, but it’s *my* deal, see?’’

(Fargo, anyone?)

So, Randall, according to fan theories, came to Waternoose with this proposal on how to revolutionize the Scaring Industry in the midst of an Energy Crisis because he has a secret talent as a brainiac engineer who specializes in designing, developing, and testing mechanical engines and devices (despite that, he still needs help to build the thing… like, he’s better at drawing up the blue prints, but his assistant, Jeff Fungus, is more skilled at the actual assembling of the machine by putting it together from pre-existing parts), so he enlists the help of Jeff to work on the mechanical part of it. Randall’s been developing this plan for many, many years, maybe since college, who knows?……Randall asked Waternoose to fund this top-secret project……..Waternoose was like, ‘’I can’t give you the money because I’m not a bank……’’

So, here’s how the scene plays out.

Randall drags Fungus with him to go up to Daddy Warbucks’ office with their little proposal. Randall takes all the credit of course for the idea and the design plans but he needs Fungus as his cheerleader.

RANDALL: ‘’You’d better tell him what a great idea it is, Fungus, or so help me God, I’ll fucking cut off all your eight little fucking fingers and mail ’em to your fucking sister.’’

JEFF FUNGUS: ……….. ‘’I don’t  have a sister.’’ 🙄

So, Fungus reluctantly tags along.

Randall tries to bargain with Waternoose, who keeps saying he needs a ‘’finder’s fee’’.

RANDALL: ‘’Yeah, no, but see I was brining you this deal for you to loan me the money to put in. It’s my deal, see?’’

WATERNOOSE: ‘’Mr. Boggs, I thought you were bringing me an investment.’’

RANDALL: ‘’Yeah, right.’’

WATERNOOSE: ‘’But you’re saying….. what are you saying?’’

JEFF FUNGUS: ‘’He’s saying you put in all the money, and he collects when it pays off.’’

RANDALL: ‘’No, no, no, I’d pay you back the principal, and interest…. Hell, I’d go one over prime-‘’

WATERNOOSE: ‘’I’m not a bank, Mr. Boggs. Heck, if I wanted a bank interest on seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I’d go to Federal.’’

RANDALL: ‘’No, see, I don’t need a finder’s fee, I need……. Well, finder’s fee’s what? Ten percent? Hell, that’s not gonna do it for me. I need the principal.’’

WATERNOOSE: ‘’Mr. Boggs, I’m not just going to give you $750,000!’’

So, Randall leaves the office in despair and has a little hissy fit in the parking lot outside. But then maybe Waternoose slept on it for a couple days before he finally decided to look at his proposal. Maybe was interested after all. Maybe *wasn’t* such a bad idea. But Randall needs the cash to close the deal.

Waternoose calls him back in the office for another meeting.

WATERNOOSE: ‘’Okay, well, look, here, Randall. This here’s  a good deal and we’ve got the resources to make it happen. I don’t want to cut you out of the loop, but I assume if you’re not interested in this deal, you won’t mind if I move in on it independently.’’

So, Waternoose isn’t going to give him the money or full control of the project like Randall wanted, in fact, Mr. Waternoose is going to take over…. Which totally bums him out.

Okay, Waternoose doesn’t like Randall but he likes his ideas, and decides to invest, he will do *anything* to save his company….so Waternoose embezzles funds from the company to fund this top-secret Nazi project……but Randall and Fungus have to build this child torture device on their own time, preferably outside of regularly scheduled work hours. And they’re not getting a raise to do it. Or a promotion. And Randall’s pretty pissed about that.

Which creates a lot of the dramatic tension between them that we saw in the movie.

But Randall’s probably secretly plotting to betray Waternoose anyway and get rid of him so that he can take over the company full time without Boss Man breathing down his neck.

And……………

Mr. Money Bags is losing his fortune faster than anyone in history… they need a new scheme to try and change the way they run the power plant before he files for bankruptcy and loses the company altogether…. Which may put thousands of people out of work... during an Energy Crisis and a looming economic depression on top of that…. So the stakes are high. But this is what they chose to do to try and make that happen. They're both playing everyone and each other. Absolutely!

Waternoose saw his company tanking and feuding with Randall is the best idea ever to save his company (but Randall is secretly plotting to betray Waternoose and put him out to pasture and take over the company…….. Waternoose is probably secretly plotting to get rid of Randall once he has no more use for him, steal his design plans and banish him the same way he did to Mike & Sulley). Waternoose realizes Randall used him for his platform and influence when everyone else knew the entire time….. This literally just reflects on Waternoose because he knowingly supported, endorsed and helped recruit someone he knew is a psychopath. All of a sudden he’s not ok with it now. I think it shows how controlling Randall is and what a spoiled brat he is when he doesn't get his way.

They are both narcissists. The fact they lasted as long as they did is insane Lmao I told y'all two narcissist wouldn't last.

Watch Waternoose drop him like a hot potato.

Wait, isn’t this his man?

Welp.

They’ve reached the marital issues phase.

And well………………………. Idk………………………………………..

99% of the Monstropolis creatures didn’t get this memo.

Damn. Monsters, Incorporated is about to see what a nasty gay break up looks like……

During Pride Month too, you poor motherfuckers.

If you think any of these unethical power/ wealth dynamics last long and have happy endings, ohohohhoh…. Anyone with a rational mind knew these two narcissists would implode sooner or later. Even if Mike & Sulley didn’t stop their plans, they would have surely destroyed each other in a Mexican standoff.

We all know how this ends. Getting back together after all this publicity stunt shit. Boring, next!

Sure, when Randall returns in Monsters at Work, he goes to work for the rival company, Fear Co., headed by his old frat buddy Johnny….

A new ship has hit the raft towers!

This looks like a gay ass honeymoon tell me I’m wrong. Are they MARRIED now??? Look at those red velvet chairs, like that’s *not* romantic at all…. Nope! Definitely *not* gay….. THEY’RE DRINKING champagne, too??? In a kid’s show??? Um, are you sure this is for kids??? Jesus Christ….. as if Randall wasn’t queer coded enough in the first movie and even in MU—he was such a twink stereotype—now they’re making NO effort to hide it….. on the last day of Pride Month??? Homophobic cowards…CRYING AND SCREAMING AND THROWING UP AND ROLLING ON THE FLOOR

Bitch don’t kill me before I’ve seen the TV Show wtf

Oh no and now I’ve posted it :(

My hand slipped,,, I swear!

Ougggggh this is so bad but sooo good 😭 😭 😭Randall may be evil but his face card never declines……. The scar just makes him hotter… Man wtf? He has no right to be that hot! I would commit WAR CRIMES to look like that…. How can I get even ¼ of Randall’s BOSS SWAG??? So, who do I have to sell my soul to so I could see this beautiful sight more than once in my lifetime… 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏

I AM NOT SURVIVING this TV Show someone’s gonna have to call an ambulance, send my hospital bill to whoever’s responsible for this diabolical mess….

It's not happening fam…..

I think that’s enough internet for today.

… I’m going to go lie down in some MOVING traffic…..

But Randall and Waternoose apparently end up in jail together at the end of Season 2, albeit briefly. Randall apparently escapes prison……..if they think Waternoose or his ‘’administration’’ told Randall anything that doesn’t need to be in public light, then Monstropolis is full of sheep.

DAILY REMINDER THAT THIS MOVIE IS NOT A DOCUMENTARY

Because when do unethical mass kidnapping/ murdering CEO’s *ever* face consequences for their actions? In what world??? Because Waternoose was the animated version of Brian Thompson, representing a prominent Company Giant in a vampiric industrial malpractice that literally intended to harvest children for their screams—by force and physical torture—just to provide power to their city…. Like this movie is 10000000x more relevant now than it was 23 years ago.

(And then the best thing happened since peanut butter……………….. Luigi Mangione.)

And did Waternoose regret buying Randall’s deal, because he had to sacrifice his Rockstar of the Scare Floor? Hell yeah. Buyer’s remorse because he invested in the biggest con man this side of Monstropolis. You know it’s not just politics, it’s betrayal.

Feels like the plot twist no one asked for…….

But that just goes to show what an insanely good movie this is.

(RIP James Coburn, Hollywood Legend who gave us Waternoose’s gravelly grandfather voice… made us almost like him until we realized he’s a literal NAZI who wants to exterminate these human children for ‘’the good of his company’’ and corporate greed amirite… but more on that later……..

I want to talk so much about Randall and Waternoose and their Nazi politics and the Corporate Malfeasance Scandal that they caused, but let’s put that aside for another post, shall we?)

Yup. ‘’There’s nothing more toxic or deadly’’ than….. CEOs. Specifically Spider CEOs. ‘’A single touch could kill you!’’ Because they literally got us trapped like flies in a web.

From the smallest insect to the largest predator, every creature plays a vital role in the intricate web of life.

……………………………But this ain’t it.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. When first we practice to deceive.

Yeah, um……. Get down there with them spiders, I guess?

AND SMASH IT WITH A HAMMER

Moving on.

!!MONSTERS UNIVERSITY

Now for Monsters University……the Grandaddy of all prequels.

Monsters University is the ultimate college movie, change my mind.

Like, I admit. When this movie first came out, when I was 16…. I wasn’t terribly interested in it. Even though Monsters, Inc. is my favorite Pixar movie, this was kind of the prequel no one asked for. Like, the Disney/ Pixar fandom wanted a direct sequel—we wanted to see the return of Boo, the return of Randall, etc. Sure, we had the Laugh Factory comics, a four-issue miniseries published by Boom!Studios which may or may not be canon…. But if Pixar *had* to make another MI movie, we wanted to see how Mike & Sulley’s story continued after the events of the first movie.

Welp, Pixar took a risk with this one…… which is kind of what their studio does best. They wanted to continue the franchise beyond the comics, obviously…. But instead of a sequel…. They decided on a prequel, that would precede the years of MI. The characters would be a decade younger, and it would create more interesting situations, seeing the characters at a different stage in their lives, before they came to work at the power plant. Well, most fans were less than thrilled…. Even though seeing how Mike & Sulley met and became friends would be interesting… it had less possibilities for fans.

We wouldn’t be seeing Boo or the factory……….. and Boo is the reason the first movie was so good in the first place…. It was not just the dynamic between Mike & Sulley, but the strong parental, almost unlikely bond they developed with this three-year-old human child. That’s where most of the comedy came in, and the wholesomeness. Mike & Sulley already have a strong bond before they meet Boo, but with them both taking care of Boo and sharing the responsibility, and falling in love with this little girl, it not only tests their friendship, but it also strengthens their union. They became an unconventional family. Without her, fans were worried that the story would not be as meaningful or powerful.

It's like if they did a prequel to Toy Story…………… without Buzz Lightyear, you know? Or a prequel to Lilo and Stitch……….. without Stitch. You’re missing a key element.

But in a way, a prequel was probably the best choice. The first movie ended on such a perfect note, that Pixar was almost afraid of ruining the perfection of the moment…. NOT seeing Boo return is actually a smarter move on their part, because even though fans can suppose that Sulley maintains this relationship off-camera… sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. Not everything needs to be overexplained.

(This was the issue most people had with Toy Story 4 explaining why Bo Beep was absent from the second movie onwards… most fans weren’t too fond of her backstory; I personally liked it, but I can understand why some didn’t; it completely changed her whole character role, personality, and her previous relationship to Woody).

So, explaining what happened to Boo after the first movie might end up not being such a good thing after all. Especially if the movie has such a perfect ending…. Don’t mess with perfection. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Another reason most people weren’t excited for Monsters University is that Disney/ Pixar has a horrible reputation of milking their established franchises and running them into the ground, like they did with Toy Story… to a point where each unnecessary sequel gets progressively worse than the last…. And it almost negatively impacts its reputation. Like, Toy Story should have ended after the third movie, imo…. But they got greedy and decided to drag it out and make more money…. The series has lost the heart and soul that made it good in the first place. We *really* do NOT need another Toy Story…. But Toy Story 5 is being made right now as we speak, so here we are. I’m afraid Toy Story will suffer the same fate as SpongeBob at this point….

Then there’s this, which might explain the studio’s decline:

PIXAR is in a slump, and they’re retreating back to old properties in hopes of reviving their studio from the string of financial flops (ELIO has been their worst box office poison in Pixar history). But an endless cycle of sequels is not the answer. Even die-hard PIXAR fans are tired of the sequels.

Sometimes….. the House of Mouse, which owns Pixar…. they just need to let things die…. End it while it’s still good. All great things must come to an end.

So, that being said….. I absolutely am not complaining about any new stories about Mike & Sulley. I love these characters so much, that I would gobble up anything Pixar puts out about them (even though Monsters at Work is not necessarily a Pixar property, as its outsourced by another animation company with outsourced artists, it’s still based on characters created by Pixar, and it’s still streaming on Disney+, so its part of the MI legacy and it is 100% canon even if Pixar writers were not directly involved with it… they still gave the blessing). MAW, of course, is the sequel everybody’s wanted for years. It continues Mike & Sulley’s adventures even if they’re not the central characters…. It may not be *exactly* what fans were asking for, but we’re still seeing more of the world-building that was established from MI and MU, and we’re seeing the return of familiar and beloved characters like Randall Boggs (woooooooo we’re being fed!!!!!! Finally some fucking fooooooood).

It’s been confirmed Boo will NOT make an appearance in the series despite popular demand from fans, but like I said….. it’s probably for the best. Boo was such a perfect character in the first movie…… if she returned, they’d have to age her up, and it might do more harm than good…. Depending on the reception from audiences. Everyone’s going to have their own preconceived notions about a slightly older Boo, even if she’s only 4 or 5 or 6, like a preschooler or kindergarten age…. And she won’t be partially non-verbal if she’s older, so that’s another risk involved…. And it kind of changes her whole character. If she’s kindergarten age, and talking, it changes the whole dynamic between she and Sulley. It poses a risk not only slightly redesigning her but possibly re-casting her.

This works with Andy in Toy Story; Andy matures of course, but MI is a different premise… Boo and Sulley have a direct relationship with one another, like a father-daughter relationship. It’s not a toy who can’t reveal to his owner that he’s sentient. It’s not that Andy doesn’t have a bond with Woody, but it’s more indirect. Andy provides motivation for Woody and gives him a purpose to exist, but he's not a main character interacting directly with his toys in the way that Boo interacts with Mike & Sulley. So, I’d rather just subconsciously think of the relationship she continues to maintain with Mike & Sulley throughout her childhood without actually having to see it onscreen. Less is more.

It’s also a good thing they decided to make MAW a TV show and not a movie even if the animation isn’t as up to par as it would be if it was a theatrically released film…. This allows them to have more run-time to tell the story they want to tell, instead of cramming it all in a one-hour-30-minute movie. They can have so much more character development. More adventures. More world-building. And Monsters, Inc. is probably the best Pixar movie FOR  a TV series spinoff, because where the other Pixar movies have mostly self-contained settings within the Rules of Their Universe, the world of the MI franchise has the most creative possibilities, being an alternate reality. There’s SO much they can do with this world because there’s no real-world limitations. Even if the monster world mirrors ours, they have their own laws, their own government, and their own organizations in which they exercise. And because they’re monsters, the character designs can get incredibly FUNKY.

ANYWAY, I remember the less than enthusiastic buzz from the Disney/ Pixar fandom for Monsters University when they showed a sneak peek feature at the D23 con…….

I was still using deviantART back then, and the Monsters, Inc. fandom was BOOMING then, it was kind of a big topic in the community. We all liked Mike and Sulley’s teenage redesigns… they were CUTE ASF, but we were concerned about the story. A college movie sounded incredibly……………. Boring.

And another main thing that came up at the con from the audience Q & A was……..

…………. ‘’IS RANDALL BOGGS GONNA BE IN IT??? HE’D BETTER BE OR I’M EATING MY HAT!!!!!!!..... I MEAN…. IF I *HAD* A HAT…. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.’’

And Pixar be like:

No, in all seriousness, they just said: ‘’Hell yeah.’’

So, Randall fans could rejoice. OF COURSE, Pixar had to cater to its fanbase……… half the audience wouldn’t watch the movie if they left out their most iconic villain. Randall is just as popular if not MORE popular than Mike & Sulley. (And Pixar, you know…. You don’t want to anger the Randall Cult unless you want a mob of people storming the studio gates and setting it on fire and watching it burn. DO NOT underestimate the Randall fangirls, they are FERAL. THISSSSJGKFKKGKG… God bless the condom Randall’s parents never wore…. Unless he hatched from an egg like a gator, which is probably more likely…. Him and like 35 other little swamp monsters that look just like him…. Does that mean Randall has 35 clones of himself? Just running wild out there? Causing chaos and destruction throughout Monstropolis like their own organized crime family?)

They had not yet revealed the designs for the other characters, so they kept that under wraps for a long, long time………… we didn’t even know who else was gonna be in it (like we wanted Celia………… but she sadly got axed…. At least she has a bigger part in MAW, like YASSS BITCH I need my MILF DEMON with her lethal medusa hair and her diabolical face card).

ANYWAY, I was not yet in college, obviously…. But it almost felt like Pixar was making this movie for a different type of audience…….. seeing as it was coming out, like…. About 11 years after the first movie. I was 4 when the first movie came out….. most kids who grew up with the first movie were between my age and kids in kindergarten, first and second grade, maybe even third grade and fourth-fifth grade. So, like…………………………….

……….All the 2000s kids who were elementary school age who grew up with the first movie were now in high school (if born in 1996 like me) OR even getting ready to graduate high school and begin college (if born in 1994 or 1995 even). Kids born in 1993 were probably already in college if they started after high school graduation. So, like, Monsters University, was not made for the new generation of kids. It was made for the kids who grew up with the nostalgia of the first movie, who were old enough to remember seeing it in theaters when it was first released on November 2, 2001. Because MOST OF Pixar’s target audience from the first movie were now young teens between the ages of 15 and 17, and young adults between the ages of 18-20. High school and college age.

This was who the movie was made for.

This movie was obviously made for a more mature audience than the first one. Like for older kids. We were now all the same age as Mike & Sulley or *almost* the same age as them….. and so…….. Mike & Sulley were young adults (Mike 17 ½ at the beginning of the movie and Sulley 18), insecure young adults going out in the world, trying to find themselves, trying to find their identities, trying to go from boys-to-men, and trying to be independent without their parents guiding them and holding their hands, trying to make independent decisions, and manage their own life, trying to navigate the big, grown-up world in an institution like a major Ivy League college campus that’s preparing them for the real world. It was their first step from teen hood to adulthood.

The kids who grew up with the first movie were able to relate better to Mike & Sulley when this movie first came out on June 21, 2013……….. like, little kids probably *still* watched this movie……….. like kids as young as me when the first movie came out……… but they probably didn’t relate to it as much as the teens and young adults…. Starting high school or starting college. Because we were going through all the teen angst and young adult drama that Mike & Sulley were going through…. Thinking about college, thinking about our futures…. Learning how to drive….. having no fucking clue what we’re doing…….learning how to be….. (gasp!)

GROWN-UPS.

That weird in-between, you know…. Because we’re no longer kids…. But we’re not really adults…. We can’t even legally drink until 21, and if we’re under 18, we can’t vote for crying out loud. And yet, because of societal expectations, the world expects us to be…….. as mature as our parents…….. we’re expected to act like adults, despite not having all the privileges of adults (like drinking or voting in some places, most of us don’t even own houses this young, most of us still live with our parents, or we rent a small two-bedroom apartment and live with ten roommates just to make ends meet, most of us work two part-time jobs through school, some of us are too broke to afford cars and have to rely on the city bus for transportation to jobs or school, some of us have to eat ramen noodles every day especially if we live in the dorms)… but no, we have to be adults or else. STJSGKZKHXKG…..lol….. meanwhile Mike still sleeps with a teddy bear btw.... and he has baby boi bedspread, and he wears a retainer, but sure, he’s 17 going on 18 and he’s expected to be…. What?…….. mature or something? What even???? 😂

IMGNKSHSIAHAWOUSOWJSKW WHTSJRHCKRJFJIFJCKFJVOCICPC KO PDYCOCHCKJFKCJFJFBCKJFCIRUFID

(The fact that Randy doesn’t even say anything when Mike brings out his teddy bear…. Like Randy is too good for this world. ❤️If it was Johnny, he’d make fun of Mike, ‘’Like why you have a teddy bear, dude??? That’s lame-O.’’ As if it actually affects him personally, cuz it doesn’t…. like, men like Johnny are so fragile in their own masculinity, that they’d feel the need to scrutinize someone else’s just to feel better about themselves. No, Randy doesn’t say anything. He’s twice the man Johnny will ever be. I bet his Momma told him, ‘’If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’’ But I don’t think Randy would judge him either way. He’d probably just take one look at it, and be like, ‘’Okay, I guess that’s going there. Cool beans.’’ I mean, he has his cupcakes, so let Mike have his teddy bear. Completely normal hobbies, btw. Let’s normalize this, shall we?)

Reliving our childhood? Wth, sure. De-stress? Absolutely. I still had my Beanie Baby collection and my Barbie Dolls and my Pokémon cards when I was Mike’s age…. Some college-aged young adults still buy and collect toys…. Hell, even adults my age do that! Adults in their 20s and 30s. *I still* do that! It’s the Kidult Trend you guys. Cry harder.

And there’s social stigma even now against young adult college kids like Mike who ‘’infantilize’’ himself…. Like whatever. 🙄 Mike isn’t necessarily ‘’denying’’ his immaturity. Even as a grown-ass man in the first movie, he’s established to be a Man Child (he will NEVER give up Little Mikey NEVER….. he would rather gauge his own eye out with a spoon than give up Little Mikey!!! You’d have to pry that bear away from his cold, dead hands before he’d let ANYBODY have it…. Do you see how possessive he was when Boo just grabbed it without permission? The little OCD in him was gonna have a major meltdown)….. Does him holding onto his little stuffie make him any less independent? NO! Mike is young at heart and there’s literally nothing wrong with that. He’s happy and content, and that’s more than most miserable adults can say for themselves. Mike probably holds onto Little Mikey as a security blanket… especially when he’s far from home, living in a college dorm with a complete stranger, he may be homesick…… and Little Mikey brings him comfort from home…. He may also be scared of growing up…. And he’s holding onto his last piece of childhood.

Being an adult doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and enjoy the things from your childhood that bring you comfort….. are adults just supposed to sit around and drink and talk about taxes and be UGLY BORING people??? What about Disney adults at Disneyland? Are we gonna police the people that choose to get married at the Magic Kingdom…. The Happiest Place on Earth????? And who do you think makes Disney movies?????? A bunch of tiny Oompa Loompas?

No, dawgs. ADULTS make Disney movies. And adult animators are basically just big kids…. You HAVE to be young at heart in order to tap into the mind of a child and be able to tell a story from a perspective that they can see themselves represented in. So, why shouldn’t a grown-ass Pixar animator have a Mickey Mouse stuffie at his workstation? If it helps him get through the day, why not??????

(Not me looking at my Simba & Nala stuffies on my desk right now as I speak 👀)

SO ANYWAY

Societal expectations of adulthood evolve. 

But it was the source for a lot of our crippling fears and anxieties….

It certainly is for Mike, Randy and Sulley……. These kids are a hot mess. Don’t even get me started on Oozma Kappa…. Excluding Don, they are Young!Adult in a nutshell. (And they’re too gay to function, but that’s another story.)

But the reason why most kids my age were NOT thrilled about this movie when it was still in pre-development is because…………..

College movies are *generally* BORING AF.

And Disney is no stranger to paint-by-number college movies.

Even though I grew up watching An Extremely Goofy Movie (2000) and still love it…. It’s still just your basic college movie. Nothing special.

It’s just………… watching people go to school……….. sitting at a desk, taking notes, listening to lectures, writing essays, doing homework, studying for exams, reading textbooks, going to school dances or games or parties or other events, or falling in love and dating someone for the first time, or even trying to get in with the popular crowd…….. it’s……..it’s not really entertaining….. for most people. Esp. for kids….. like kids have to spend half their lives in school….. typically a six-hour day in elementary school, 6-7 hours in junior high, and 6-7 hours in high school………. Five days a fucking week, y’know? And I always loved school, but not every kid does…. And sitting in a classroom is boring and menial in real life, even for kids who generally like school, so why on earth would kids want to watch a Disney movie about their favorite characters doing the one thing *most kids* hate doing???? Kids watch movies for ESCAPISM, not realism.

They’d have to come up with so many funny bizarre scenarios to make a college or school movie even REMOTELY interesting for a kid to sit through for an hour and a half.

(omg, read this test, it’s WILD. The fact that someone at Pixar had to specifically draw up a fake quiz with multiple choice answers THAT ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE within the context of their world……. And they didn’t just make up this test, they filled in answers that a kid might fill out *and* THEY FUCKING GRADED IT, TOO, like a real professor would. That’s insane!!!……… like these aren’t even bullshit questions and answers, these are LEGIT phobias (like Tonitrophobia *is* another name for astraphobia, which is the fear of thunder and lightning!), but it really shows their attention to detail���. Like no one was gonna pause the movie and actually take the time to read this test like I did… cuz I’m a weirdo……. Like Pixar could have easily half-assed this and just put any ol’ random shit on this test since it’s a ‘’blink and you miss it’’ kinda thing…. But no, they actually took the time to fill this out AND make professor marginalia THAT SOUNDS like shit an actual professor would make critical annotations or comments of. It sounds like my old high school English teacher. ‘’Do you even own the book?!’’ 🤣🤣🤣 Did Pixar dig up their old college homework for research purposes or did they break into their own kids’ college dorms in broad daylight, dressed like a villain in a Pink Panther movie, and go through their kids’ backpacks and steal it or what??? This is seriously taking me out….

Whoever was in charge of the props department, I hope you got a raise.

THAT’S DEDICATION.

THAT’S COMMITMENT.

Omg tho I can’t believe Sulley missed the third question tho, like, dude the answer was literally *IN* the question, I’m literally crying…….. 😭 😭 😭 teachers *always* do that thinking they’re being sneaky, but they’re literally testing to see how much you’re paying attention which you *clearly* weren’t, like DUDE!!! Yeah, no teachers don't have it out for you, believe me, they’re trying to HELP you! No, they don’t literally hide answers within the phrasing of test questions, but they do strategically use question design to assess a student's understanding beyond simple recall. IT’S NOT ROCKET SICENCE. If you even had basic reading comprehension, you would have seen that……Your instructor made this so blaringly easy that even a chimp could do it! Especially because this is a basic 101 prerequisite Freshman class, so it’s introductory…. It’s high school senior level, man!!! The Freshman classes are usually the EASIEST, I mean, c’mon now, the classes get more advanced as you go take the other courses in the later years…

Idk how Sulley even got through high school if this is the kind of lazy ass work he’s been turning in. He probably barely passed high school. He was probably on the varsity football team or something but like…….. those GRADES man….. 😭 😭 😭 You’re giving me a heart attack, kid! Yes, it’s generally possible to be on a varsity football team with a C average, but it depends on the specific league or school's requirements…. I think you need at least a 2.0 GPA (minimum) to be eligible for fall sports. It’s not a D or F, sure, but a C- average student still lowers your GPA. While there isn't a single GPA cutoff for Ivy League schools, most successful applicants have a GPA around 4.0 (weighted) or higher…..

Mike DEFINITELY has a 4.0 average…. I would say Sulley’s probably a……. 2.0. Not because he’s a dumb ass, it’s just cuz he doesn’t apply himself. Like a C is not THAT bad, and he doesn’t have to be a straight A student or anything, but a B+ would be better. He’d be a good student if he actually just got off his lazy ass and did the work… I know he’s smarter than this! (Thank God I’m not his mother, I would have taken away his PS5 and grounded his ass for the next ten years. AIN’T NO WAY NO SON OF MINE BRINGING NO C- IN MY HOUSE I don’t care how old you are! Do better, Sulley. Do better.)

But ANYWAY, Sulley obviously didn’t do the assigned reading, or study (the instructor even wonders if Sulley bothered to buy or rent the fucking textbook which he obviously didn’t), and he obviously just skimmed the test and didn’t fully read the answers….. cuz like even if he *didn’t study*, he could have still made an educated guess based on context clues. I didn’t even read the text, either, and it’s obvious that ‘’a. fear of the living dead’’ was the correct answer to Number 3 because the question was asking about fucking ZOMBIES. Sulley, do you know what a zombie even ***is***???????? I’ll give you a hint, bro. It’s NOT a shark. Stop playing ping pong with your homies and go out and watch more movies, dude!! In this case, horror movies would be GREAT study material. Watch Night of the Living Dead (1968) or read the graphic novel series The Walking Dead. You might learn something! He should have passed this quiz with flying colors… Sulley, my man, I love you, dude bro, but c’mon be real.😭 😭 😭)

So, anyway, college movies are usually boring. An Extremely Goofy Movie (2000) is the rare exception to the rule………. It’s a fun movie……… but……… it’s also just basic……….. there’s no deeper themes or commentary. It’s just taking the themes from the first Goofy movie about a father and a son trying to reconnect, but in a different environment. It’s kind of…….. repetitive of the first movie, actually…. And VERY predictable….But I still like it. It’s nostalgic for me. I mean, it was made for younger kids anyway, so how deep can a movie be that’s aimed at ages 6+?

So………..

My question to Pixar at the time was, ‘’You could’ve made ANY other movie about Mike & Sulley…. WHY a fucking COLLEGE MOVIE???? Of all things?????’’ 😭

And like I said before, the genre limits their demographic. Kids as young as 4 or 5 will probably still watch it, BUT they won’t understand it much or relate to it, unless there’s enough bright and pretty colors to distract them from an otherwise young adult-themed story. Kids that young don’t know or care about college. I didn’t… (hence why I liked the first Goofy movie more than the second one…….. college was a foreign concept to me………. too far ahead in the future to be thinking about).

Well………….. I guess I should’ve asked the same question about the first movie…….. though I wasn’t old enough to be thinking about these things……. The first movie is about COMPANY POLITICS and the POWER STRUGGLE IN MAJOR CORPORATIONS. Why on earth would kids be entertained by that????

Well, it was my favorite movie when it first came out simply because I liked Mike & Sulley. They were funny as hell together. They spend the whole movie fighting like a married couple. Randall creeped me the fuck out, but he made the movie good too. And Boo! But there was a LOT of the deeper politics and social commentary of the thing that went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over my head.

Most kids my age liked it because Mike & Sulley were funny…. But it’s really an adult cartoon, imo. Without cursing. (Pixar, you cowards! Let Randall say, ‘’FUCK!’’) There’s LOADS of adult humor that kids will NOT get (that I didn’t get until yeeeeeeeeears later). It’s workplace drama. It’s like The Office for kids. Big kids. I mean, kids don’t go to work, Pixar! They don’t pay bills or file taxes……. They don’t live on their own and pay rent…….. they have NO CLUE about the real economy……Mike & Sulley are middle-aged bachelors…… and there’s an Energy Crisis that’s the main conflict in the movie. Do you think kids understood all this back then?????? I DIDN’T!

😭 😭 😭 😭 😭 😭

(I just liked it because it was funny as fuck when Mike fell feet first into the toilet bowl.)

Despite humorous moments like that……… they really didn’t hold back from how dark af this movie could really be with the deeper themes. (And believe me, I’m going to get to ‘’The Themes later’’…. I’m practically writing a book.)

This is why Monsters, Inc. is the most adult-themed, most mature Pixar movie out there, imho.

Sure, there’s some jokes thrown in there for kids, like the toilet humor…. But most of the movie’s funniest lines, though, were made for adults. My mom was laughing her ass off at some of the adult jokes that I clearly didn’t get…. Like ‘’BRUH why you laughing?’’ 😕 The movie’s ten times funnier to me now than it was back when I was 4.

I don’t know why in the Devil they thought this would be a good kids’ movie, like what were you ON, Pixar????…. It was their third original movie after Toy Story and A Bug’s Life (NOT  counting Toy Story 2)…….. it’s not about talking toys or talking ants…. Y’know, things that are usually staples in kids’ movies. These are monsters living in……… A SOCIETY. With all this corporate bullshit going on.

But you know what???????? IT ACTUALLY IS A GOOD KIDS’ MOVIE. It’s not just a good kids’ movie, it’s a GREAT PIXAR MOVIE. It’s not just a great Pixar movie, it’s ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIES EVER MADE. PERIOD.

I’m probably biased but-

I don’t know why, but their formula worked, somehow. Pixar back then had a unique storytelling perspective. The fact that they trusted their audience enough to make this MATURE movie for kids was sign enough that they knew exactly what they were doing. And they did not underestimate its audience. They know kids are not stupid. Maybe the parents were able to follow the storyline a little better, but the fact that they made this movie for US KIDS means they respected us as kids. They didn’t give us a dumbed down, formulaic kiddie monster movie. If any other studio made this, it would not have been as layered and deep as it was.

That being said, I don’t know why we expected any less from Monsters University.

Maybe it was just the premise that turned a lot of people off to it. But when I first saw it in theatres, I had ZERO expectations going in. The trailers did not wow me one bit…. But I was curious to check it out anyway because I love Mike & Sulley…. I felt like I had to support my boys. 💙 💚

Well.

It literally exceeded my expectations on every level.

Apparently, it exceeded *everyone’s* expectations. It was a surprise hit. Maybe it wasn’t the highest-grossing movie in Pixar history (it’s the ninth highest grossing Pixar movie, so it is in the Top Ten), and surprisingly, it beat out the first movie at the U.S. box office, coming in at #9 with $268,492,764 (the first movie is ranked at #11 with $255,873,250). Not that numbers matter (they really don’t) but…….Like, they knocked it out of the park with this one. It’s not better than the first movie, obviously, but I always have to watch it now if I ever watch MI. They go hand in hand so well, that you simply can’t watch one without the other. I don’t feel that way about any other Pixar sequels…….. if I watch the first original Toy Story, I rarely, if ever watch the sequels. I can take it or leave it. You won’t miss anything if you don’t. But MU………. It feels like it’s required watching if you want a deeper sense of how this world is structured…. If you want a better understanding of how these characters tick…….. esp. Mike.

~MIKE WAZOWSKI: FEED US MORE WE’RE NEVER SATISFIED~

Mike was already ranked as one of Pixar’s best animated characters after the first movie.

Empire Magazine ranked him as #23 in their list of "The 50 Best Animated Movie Characters".

Rolling Stone considers him the 8th best Pixar character, highlighting Billy Crystal's voice acting and how it makes him a "monster of the people."

Screen Rant listed him as the 7th best Pixar character, attributing his appeal to his unique quirks and comical, romantic qualities. 

MU fleshes out his already three-dimensional character as something *nobody* saw coming…. He was very surprising and unexpected in this movie, simply because how different he is. He’s still the Mike Wazowski we know and love BUT…….. he’s much more complex…… he isn’t quite the same person from the first movie………. He has to grow into that familiar character because he’s a teenager………….. he still has traits of the Older Mike but he’s…….. different. In a good way. Not only is he the hero in his own story instead of a mere sidekick, but………… he’s a compound of different elements that we did not see before, especially with how vulnerable he is, how deeply flawed he is, and how competent of a hero he is, even though he’s the underdog. And he’s not your typical conventional leading man. He’s kind of a Don Knotts-Barney Fife type in a way. A very unlikely hero. But he has natural leadership abilities; he takes initiative; we root for him. Mike was ALWAYS a good character, and he was ALWAYS my favorite character and imo the best character from the first movie, simply because he goes through the most changes as a person and learns an important lesson about himself, about his love for Sulley, and eventually Boo (it takes him the longest to warm up to her), and he does come around, but yeah, it’s not that Sulley doesn’t change (he does), but he mostly stays consistent, while Mike actually undergoes the most character development……..BUT……….

Mike simply cemented his legacy as one of the best Pixar protagonists after MU.

Like, they just made an already great character even greater, and it made sense, given his character arc from MI, that he would reverse his role with Sulley and become the film’s central focus. He’s less the comic relief character here even though he’s still funny…. But he straightened out as a character; he’s slightly more serious but he doesn’t lose his charm. He’s more the classic Straight Man here while the other kookie characters bounce off him……. Mike is literally the whole balance in the movie; his character is crucial in that he grounds the story. He is the core, the heart of the story. He was the most likely character from the first movie (besides Randall) who deserved his own movie………..

~DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER: RANDALL IN HIS OWN JAMES BOND FLICK?~

Still waiting on Randall’s own movie, Pixar….. I know it’s not happening in a million years, but we can only hope……..

I’m on my hands and knees praying to the Disney God. Please make it happen. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

(Yeah, *totally* normal behavior Randall… nothing wrong here 🤣)

………but hear me out….. wouldn’t that make a great trilogy???

Like The Godfather Trilogy?

I mean, the first movie focuses on Sulley’s character arc.

The second movie focuses on Mike’s character arc.

Why not a third one that focuses on the third member of the Power Trio? His villain origin story???

Not that I want more Pixar sequels anytime soon (I really DON’T. I wish they’d stop pumping out sequels like a gumball machine and just focus on original projects… even if they all suck ass…. I mean, Turning Red was the last good Pixar movie imo)……. But if they *HAD* to make another installment to the MI franchise………

Randall is a great subject.

It could come between the years of MU and MI…. like what happened to Randall *after* college… we don’t see that story…….. there’s a whole-ass movie that happened off-camera before MI….

While Mike & Sulley were expelled and got their foot in the door in the factory without a degree, working their way from the bottom up in the mail room…. Randall probably stayed in college to finish his studies, but he was no longer part of ROR. How does that affect him, you know? His status? His overall mental health? Does he make more friends, or does he go through the rest of life bitter and alone? And what is the key moment—the inciting incident—that drives him to come up with the idea to build and design the Scream Extractor???

MAW confirms he kept in touch with Johnny for some fucking reason… they don’t really go too deep into how that even happened because honestly it makes no sense…. Why would Johnny help a guy he literally kicked out of his own fraternity for publicly humiliating him in the final round of the Scare Games??? They did not leave each other on good terms…. Johnny practically threw him to the wolves to save face and protect his own reputation. No doubt, Randall would be bitter about that and hold a lifelong grudge….. But suddenly, MAW has Johnny just randomly finding a way to follow Randall into the human world and bring him back from exile, it’s just…. Weeeeeird…. It’s the ONLY thing I don’t like about MAW, it’s like it was just shoed in at the last minute with no real thought put into it… there were SOOO many better ways for them to come up with how Randall returns from exile, and how and why he even goes running back to Johnny in the first place…. They’ll probably show more of that relationship in the third season, but I dunno, maybe not…. Randall escaped prison at the end of the Season 2 finale, leaving Johnny behind to bite the dust, and now he’s a fugitive….. Public Enemy No. 1….. hopefully we’ll see more of him in Season 3………….. they can’t just leave us hanging like that…………

(this obviously isn’t a genuine friendship, but they’re chaotic and I love them)

Idk, there’s a Villain Origin Story in there somewhere because MU does not show how or why Randall stepped to the bad side and went to the Darkside.

We don’t see *anything* in MU that indicates that…… he’s bitter against Sulley, but that’s it. That doesn’t explain how or why he turned down such a dark path and became the supervillain that we saw in the first movie…

They could show more of Johnny, even. Why the fuck not? I’d like to see more of that weird ass toxic relationship……… how did they even get in touch again, and more importantly, WHY???? Unless Randall was planning to work for Johnny all along at Fear Co. after he graduated college and was just a plant in MI to get information about company operations, and steal trade secrets or confidential information to gain a competitive advantage to feed back to Johnny, like Guerilla fucking Warfare, Idk…….. like I’m sensing a SPY or Espionage-James Bond type story here……. like Randall is actually a spy for Johnny’s company to gather information covertly, like industrial espionage. Which would make perfect sense for Randall since he has superpowers and can make himself invisible, like he’d be a PERFECT spy. He’d be able to get into Waternoose’s office and other private areas throughout the factory without authorization, like he can sit in on Waternoose’s private meetings and go through the personnel files and get loads of information to feed back to Johnny…. I know we saw bits of this already in MAW with him sabotaging MI on Johnny’s orders, but I’m talking about the events leading up to the first movie.

It'd be like a sequel to MU but a direct prequel to MI.

DAWGS this would make a great movie, I’m telling you! Randall as a fucking spy for Fear Co. between the years of Monsters University and Monsters, Inc. We’ll see his final years in college leading up to his eventual employment at the company and how he became a spy for Johnny and how he came up with the Scream Extractor. It would have MORE political bullshit that was already touched on in the first two movies. And it can really expand his character. He’d still be BADASS and evil, without the need for a lame redemption arc.

There’s only a minor inconsistency with that idea though. If Randall’s a spy for Johnny the whole time, why not just build the Scream Extractor for Fear Co.? Why go through all the trouble of building it for MI? Even if Randall was plotting to overthrow Waternoose anyway? Unless Johnny was also part of the Scream Extractor project, and that was part of his plan… he wanted Randall to build it for Waternoose, and pretend to be his loyal employee, when in reality, Randall would discard Waternoose eventually and allow Johnny to take over the company. Idk, I have soooooooooo many questions……………. Is there more holes in that theory than Swiss cheese????

Or we can see a glimpse into Randall’s family which we know *nothing* about (apart from his nephew Rex of course). Or give him some other characters to bounce off of besides Mike & Sulley…. (hopefully not a love interest cuz…. I prefer him not being a romantic lead…….. it’s not important to his story)…

But keep his main relationship with Mike & Sulley, because that gives him his entire character motivation for doing the things he does. And Randall’s not nearly as entertaining by himself…. He really needs Mike & Sulley to bounce off of…. He’s more interesting when he’s interacting with them. (He didn’t get a chance yet to interact with Mike & Sulley in MAW, so hopefully that’ll change, Idk what they’re planning to do…)

And obviously he and Mike have a long history…. Like, they’re having a Cold War standoff in the first movie, but it’s such a big leap from how they were in college, because in MU…. Mike and Randy just stop speaking after he joins the RORs, Mike doesn’t even seem bitter and resentful about it, he just moves on from it…….. Randy doesn’t seem to really take anything out on Mike either……they just ignore each other. There’s NO build-up to the rivalry we see in the first movie. They don’t actually hate each other in college. They just go their sperate ways and quit whatever friendship they had cold turkey. Sure, we could argue Randall just hates Mike now because he’s associated with Sulley, who he hates just for causing him to lose the games….

But there’s obviously more to this story than that, especially because Sulley is so neutral towards Randall…. He knows the guy hates his guts, but he respects Randall as a colleague (for whatever fucking reason, but Sulley’s just a Precious Cinnamon Roll™, he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body), and he hopes to kill Randall with kindness… you know, Love Thy Enemy, ‘’pray for those who persecute you’’ and all that mumbo (it doesn’t work obviously). The more kindness Sulley shows to Randall, the more he antagonizes the guy.

Randall may even detest Sulley because he’s Waternoose’s Golden Child and he may be jealous that Waternoose obviously plays favorites here and takes Sulley under his wing even though Randall *should* be his right-hand man, building the Scream Extractor…. Waternoose does not hold Randall in the same high regard as he does Sulley… there’s like a Joseph and His Brothers Bible thing going on here……….. Sulley gets the Technicolor Dream Coat and Randall gets the leftover table scraps. ……like, there is totally a weird fucked-up ‘’Company Family’’ dynamic here, between Mr. Waternoose, Sulley, Randall, and even Mike…. A whole big love-hate square, each guy pitted against the other. Where Sulley, being the Top Scarer, is consistently favored and idealized by Daddy Warbucks, and is often seen as perfect and treated with special attention……. He’s showered with praise, while the other employees might be overlooked or scapegoated, which creates the power struggle. But Randall’s the Second Top Scarer, which is not half bad…. Waternoose doesn’t seem to recognize that *at all*. You know, Sulley’s successes are seen as extensions of Mr. Waternoose’s own ego…. He’s the goose that laid the golden egg. Meanwhile, Randall’s chopped liver.

Talk about toxic work environment.  

….but Sulley tries to build a truce with Randall………..and all the animosity and all the dramatic conflict is brewing between Mike and Randall specifically while Sulley’s the neutral bystander, trying to keep the peace between them. Randall and Mike have a blood feud….. like a Mexican standoff. Something DEFINITELY HAPPENED between them in the years between MU and MI that we don’t see. How did they go from loving each other’s guts to hating each other’s guts SO MUCH, besides Randy betraying Mike when he needed him most, and besides Mike being buddies with Randall’s rival. It could be explored a whole lot more than what they gave us….

Like, is Randall bitter that he gave up Mike for popularity? Is he actually jealous of what Mike & Sulley have? Because if he stayed with Mike, would Mike have become *his* personal trainer and made *him* the Superstar of the Scare Floor? Is he lonely and regretful that he abandoned his first friend for ‘’fame and fortune’’ with the top fraternity that didn’t even last????? Is it like a Phantom of the Opera platonic love triangle kinda thing?

I MEAN SO MUCH FREAKIN’ DRAMA RIGHT??????

And………. Randall has a lot of potential here. He’s a very three-dimensional character…. Nothing about him is Black and White. There’s shades of Grey. He wasn’t *always* bad to the bone. He was a sweet naive kid who got taken advantage of and used and manipulated by a higher power on campus……. BUT he was still old enough to make his own decisions, and know right from wrong, and especially in the first movie, he’s a grown-ass man responsible for his own actions. No one *made* him evil…. That was his own bad choice, and it had dire, life-altering consequences. Randall willingly chose that path. So, Randall should NOT be romanticized by any means…. But he is a tragic figure.

However, I actually don’t want a redemption arc for him, because Villains are more FUN when they’re evil…. I don’t like the Misunderstood Villain Trope (it’s fine if it’s done right, but it’s so overused in Disney movies these days…. I mean, no offense but they totally bastardized Maleficent and Cruella de Vil by trying to ‘’explain’’ their evilness and make the audience feel sorry for them…….. they missed the whole point of their characters, like ‘’See! We’re really good! We’re not bad, we’re just drawn that way!’’ Bitch, no, those revisionist backstories were super lame, ngl…… Disney movies be getting too fucking soft these days…….. what happened to my dark, edgy Disney divas??? MAKE DISNEY GREAT AGAIN YOU MF).

I’m glad they kept Randall BADASS for MAW and didn’t turn him into a big softie out of nowhere……. It’d just ruin his character. Randall’s DOPE AF *because* he’s evil…. I don’t want a Justified Criminal here. Or an Anti-Hero. I don’t mind the Tragic Villain. Randall *is* tragic. Not that he has a deep tragic backstory or anything (he really doesn’t) but his own bad choices make him tragic...

....especially because he used to be such close friends with the Hero………. Like, there’s almost a Galinda/ Elphaba element to Mike & Randall’s backstory holy shit you guys … not just the college roommate thing, but Randall literally being born gifted with superpowers—that he initially perceives as ‘’a joke’’ until Mike gives him the confidence to use it as his special Scaring Technique, like Mike actually helped Randall succeed as a the Second Top Scarer and literally helped create the supervillain he becomes, Mike is literally part of the villain origin story, not unlike Elphaba’s rare innate magical abilities that alienate her and make her into something of a freak of nature but help her become the image of the Wicked Witch of the West. And then of course there’s Randall’s ambitions to change the Scaring Industry but going about it the wrong way, which relates to Elphaba’s later involvement in a resistance movement to overthrow the Wizard’s political regime….. only difference being that Elphaba really *is* good but she’s misinterpreted as ‘’wicked’’ whereas Randall really is… well, wicked…..

But I don’t want Randall Boggs to be Elphaba Thropp. The ‘’Are people born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? I’m misunderstood and my ‘evil’ intentions were really good deeds, I’m not necessarily ‘evil’ or deliberately committing bad deeds, but rather, my good deeds got out of control and the result was bad even if the intentions were good so everybody around me assumes that I am the ‘bad guy’ like bitch I ain’t wicked’’ works for HER character.

But don’t you dare mess with my boy Randall. If I have to suffer through another Disney re-make or re-boot or animated flick with a Misunderstood Villain, I’m gonna choke myself with Randall’s tail. I just prefer when a character is actively and/ or genuinely evil and doesn’t use a ‘’Nice Guy’’ persona as a façade (like Hans in Frozen……… he’s probably the lamest Disney villain in modern Disney history imho…. Maybe after the guy in WISH, whatever the fuck his name was… the guy with the face… I’m not even going to look it up because *that’s* how many fucks I give about that trash movie). Randall ate up Hans so bad LMFAOOO ………any day. And he’d sweep the floor with ANY modern Disney villain. Like NO other Disney or Pixar villain even comes close to Randall. He is untouchable!! The whole game knows. This guy is NEXT LEVEL. He is almost as invincible as the fucking Terminator. Please keep him that way.

Like, his JAM would totally be ‘’Bad Guy’’ by Billie Eilish, tell me I’m wrong. Randall’s got so much BOSS SWAG, I mean, c’mon. The guy walks in a room and everybody looks up, wishing they could be even one-fourth as Kool as him, cuz Randall’s got more BOSS in a single eyelash than anybody has in their entire bodies, like we GOTCHU BROTHA. He got so much aura, bitches literally faint, your fave could never reach that bro.

It was like Pixar animators be like: How much BOSS do you want in Randall Boggs?

Pete Doctor [director]: DUH

BUT

Even Villains can have moments of vulnerability. Randall is probably past the point of no return…. I doubt he’s ever going to go back to Sweet, Kind, Randy, Sweetness & Light, Sadness Contrite…..And he may not be remorseful for his actions…. But……… even just a glimpse into how this character ticks would be………..a very interesting movie to say the least.

Maybe Randy Boggs the Cupcake Monster is still deep, deep inside Randall Boggs the child kidnapper…. Like, way, waaaaaaay deep.

I’m just saying, Pixar! There’s a whole-ass movie right there, just waiting to be made.

I’m literally giving you the keys to the playground….

I AM LITERALLY SAT.

Hell, I’d write it myself, but I don’t work for PIXAR. In times like this I wish I did 😭

Maybe I’ll write a shitty fanfiction, Idk……...

This is how Randalls’ story ends Pixar told me themselves no you’re wrong it’s totally 100% canon……

~BACK TO THE BASICS~

ANYWAY……….

I got so off-topic, wtf was I even talking about??

Oh, right. Mike.

As an extra piece of cool trivia, Mike is one of the only animated characters in film history to get his own hand and footprint ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre (formerly Grauman's Chinese Theatre) in Hollywood. Comedic Legend Billy Crystal had his own ceremony at the theatre, and it included a mock-up of Mike Wazowski's footprint in the cement. This makes the famous TCL Chinese Theatre a place where both Billy Crystal and his animated character are honored. And it’s a rare distinction.

It's funny how……….. of aaaaaaall the iconic movies that Billy has played in his career, people seem to remember him most as Mike Wazowski. Idk it’s funny…. But he embraces it.

The fact that iconic Hollywood Legends and celebrities have been performing the tradition of imprinting their hands and feet into the concrete in front of the theatre since 1927 during the Golden Age of Old Hollywood……… Stars like Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell and Groucho Marx and Andy Griffith and Don Knotts and Jackie Chan, etc. etc. all got their hand prints in a ceremony……… like this is a BIG DEAL…… and to officially induct Mike Wazowski, a fictional character, into the Hall of Fame with the other Hollywood stars, like he’s a modern Mickey Mouse…. It’s just……………………

(Notably, C-3PO and R2-D2, along with Darth Vader, from Star Wars have also been inducted, lol.)

BUT ANYWAY

MU is not your standard college movie, and this was the most surprising thing about it. Yes, it’s still a comedy and it’s Comedy Gold from beginning to end, just like the first movie……… but just like the first movie, it’s a lot more layered and deep than it initially appears on the surface. And there is DRAMA. There is a roller coaster of EMOTION.

I don’t know WHY we expected anything less….. this is a PIXAR MOVIE, after all. Of course, they’re not just going to do your average college flick. They’re going to go outside the box. Push the envelope a little bit.

Since Monsters, Inc. deals with institutional politics in a corporate setting…… Monsters University deals with institutional politics among Greek Letter organizations on Ivy League college campuses, and how power and influence are exercised within the established fraternity/ sorority organizations and systems. It's about how individuals and groups navigate the structures and procedures of the college institution to achieve their goals, which involve competing in the Scare Games, negotiation, and the building of alliances. 

So, both movies are dealing with politics, and power dynamics in these institutions, but in a different setting.

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

!!THE VILLAINS (CONT’D)

So, while we’re still on the topic of VILLAINS, Monsters, Inc., of course, has two main villains that we saw. One was the front man (Randall) and the other a ‘’twist’’ villain (Waternoose).

Monsters University is unique in that is has.... not one, or two, but THREE antagonists for our hero. There’s also a fourth antagonist, a Surprise Villain that most people don’t know about, but it’s internal instead of external.

That's right. The first movie set a pretty high bar but I think MU raises the stakes to impossible heights.

~MORE ON HEROS & VILLAINS= MIKE WAZOWSKI + FOILS~

The movie is basically the plot of Legally Blonde (2001), minus the law school. Mike is literally the male Elle Woods…….

Mike is a boy of optimism, intelligence, and strong will. He's a confident, bubbly, and caring individual who defies expectations and proves that stereotypes don't define a person's potential. Just like Elle, who’s initially perceived as a "blonde bimbo," only to surpass everyone’s expectations by becoming a kick-ass law student, Mike also demonstrates sharp intellect and academic prowess, ultimately succeeding in Monsters University…. When everyone, including his own instructor, has little to no faith in his abilities.

Mike consistently sees the best in people and situations. He approaches challenges with a positive attitude and a belief in in his own abilities, when no one else believes in him. A lesser individual would have given up and gone home to his mom in tears and accepted his failures… and went to go be a cashier at the local Walmart or something….but this is Mike Wazowski we’re talking about. He’s no ordinary kid.

‘’Go home,’’ they said.

‘’You’ll never amount to anything,’’ they said.

‘’You’re not smart enough,’’ they said.

‘’You don’t have what it takes,’’ they said.

‘’You’re not one of us,’’ they said.

‘’You’ll never be a Scarer,’’ they said.

‘’You’re not sCaRy,’’ they said.

And you know what Mike Wazowski said?

‘’Hold my retainer.’’

We saw bits and pieces of just how intelligent and capable Mike can be from the first movie, but here, he’s given more agency to demonstrate his strongest qualities because he’s no longer in Sulley’s shadow. Now, he’s stepped into the spotlight. Despite being underestimated due to his small, non-threatening, non-scary appearance and his less than privileged background, Mike is highly intelligent. He probably graduated at the top of his class in high school; he was probably an A-B honor roll student and took AP and Honors classes to advance his knowledge and allow him to excel in higher education. He’s incredibly determined and resilient. Despite the cast of characters dismissing him as unimportant and trying to undervalue him, Mike is not easily discouraged. He faces setbacks with determination, refusing to let others' opinions or obstacles deter him from his goals. He perseveres and dusts himself off if he falls, and he keeps trying again until he succeeds, which demonstrates his strong will. 

He’s also incredibly loyal and caring. Though Mike begins the story as a loner, he does make friends easily with Randy…. It takes him longer to come around to Oozma Kappa and eventually Sulley, but once he forms his group of friends, he is fiercely loyal to his friends and loved ones. He goes above and beyond to help those around him, and he supports them and trains them to be the best version of themselves that they can be. The Oozma Kappas are a little insecure with themselves and doubtful they can even win the games. It doesn’t help that Mike has no faith in them, especially after the first round, and thinks he can singlehandedly win the games on his own (it becomes quickly apparent that his arrogance is going to be the death of them unless he learns how to work with them like a team, and that’s his major character flaw).

🎵 Why do you assume you're the smartest in the room? Why do you assume you're the smartest in the room? Why do you assume you're the smartest in the room? Soon that attitude may be your doom 🎵

Once he comes off his high horse though and knocks himself down a peg or two and finds the sweet spot in his group of friends, and helps them find their strengths, and molds them together, he literally brings out the best in everyone. It’s like lightning in a bottle. (I’ll have to make a separate post about Oozma Kappa later, there’s so much to say they deserve their own post.)

🎵We are a family Like a giant tree Branching out toward the sky We are a family We're so much more than just you and I We are a family Like a giant tree Growing stronger, growing wiser We are growing free We need you We are a family🎵

Mike is also a bit of a split personality, which makes him hard to pinpoint and figure out. He's bubbly and outgoing on the surface, but deep down, he’s intuitive, insecure, and more introverted than he lets on. His dominant dual personality in the first movie is that he is an extrovert who enjoys social interaction. He seems to thrive in social settings and easily connects with people. He's also not afraid to express himself and his own unique style (such as serenading his girlfriend Celia in the factory lobby).

In this movie, he’s a totally different character. It makes sense he’d be more shy, seeing as he’s a teenager…. Teens sometimes take awhile to grow out of their shells…. And people do change as they get older. We can suppose that Mike’s friendship with Sulley has given him confidence to be more extroverted… because in this movie, Sulley is more the extroverted party animal, where Mike is the shy, sarcastic bookworm. So, either Sulley’s teen personality rubs off on Older Mike, or Mike’s shyness rubs off on Older Sulley, but either way, they’ve completely reversed their roles and switched their personalities in MU. It’s more interesting, because at the end of the movie, we do see tiny glimpses of their older selves coming through… and how they go from these teenagers to the middle-aged men we saw in the first movie. We literally witness their metamorphosis and how they evolve. Like a little tiny butterfly coming out of its cocoon. OUR LITTLE BOYS ARE GROWING UP 🦋

Despite that Mike is reserved and withdrawn at times, he is self-assured and confident. While he experiences moments of self-doubt, he generally possesses a strong sense of self-belief. He trusts his instincts and is not afraid to be himself, even when others disapprove. 

His strongest trait is probably his moral and ethical beliefs. Mike has a strong moral compass, and we see this in one of the last scenes of Act III.

At the end of the movie, Sulley fraudulently rigs the simulation bedroom in the final round of the Scare Games when it comes to Mike’s turn…. He even goes so far as to convince Mike to go last instead of first, like Mike wanted…. Sulley has a doubt gnawing at his insides that Mike will not be able to pull through for the team and beat Johnny Worthington, who he’s going up against. Sulley knows Mike tries his hardest, but the reality is…. He’s just not scary…… Sulley gives Mike a little bit of encouragement…. Who’s, in this moment, starting to doubt himself, too…. Sulley loves Mike and would do anything for him BUT he wants so badly to win the games and get back into the program to restore his own dignity and his own honor to his family name. He doesn’t care anymore about re-joining the RORs or winning Johnny’s favor. He seems pretty happy and content now to be an accepted member of the Oozma Kappas, but…. At the same time, it’s important for OK to win, which was part of the bargain Mike made with Dean Hardscrabble. He wants the whole team to win so they can all get into the program and become Scarers. But Sulley secretly knows Mike is holding them back… by no fault of his own. So, he intentionally breaks the simulation settings so Mike can score enough points and win the last round of the games for them. Which is exactly what happens. And no one’s the wiser.

(ohmygod Pixar FINALLY giving my boy something to smile about! If I had to see *one* more moment of this poor kid on the verge of tears, I was gonna kill somebody)

Unfortunately, Mike’s celebration doesn’t last (it never does in this movie).

While Mike is celebrating his victory under false pretenses… he finds out the hard way that he did not win on his own merit…. That Sulley basically cheated for him. And this is like a sword through his heart…. Mike wants to get ahead in the world on pure work ethic, NOT by cheating his way to the top. Cheating does not deserve praise or reward. That isn’t his nature.

Mike would rather accept the loss at the games than get back into the program knowing he cheated. He’ll never feel like he’s worthy of the honor. If he’s going to triumph, he’s going to do it honestly. If he fails honestly, at least he can say he tried WITHOUT tampering with the results of the outcome.

He refuses to compromise his values, even when it could lead to an illegal victory. In this way, he demonstrates integrity and honesty throughout the film. 

~MIKE AS THE STRAIGHT MAN~

As I mentioned before, Mike is less the comic relief character in MU. He isn’t so much the Class Clown here like he is in the first movie. His main purpose in the first movie was to bring the humor that breaks the story's tension and cheer on the hero (Sulley). But now he’s the Hero, so the others around him actually fill the role of comic relief (such as the Oozma Kappas). Mike is still funny because he’s so sarcastic, with a dry sense of humor and sharp wit, but it’s a different type of comedy. Mike’s sarcasm also does not serve to distract us from the seriousness of his character and the motivations that drive him towards his Wants and Needs.

In MU, he takes on the role of the Straight Man that Sulley had from the first film. Every comedy needs a good straight man to succeed (look no further than Sheriff Andy Taylor in The Andy Griffith Show whom the nutsy Deputy Barney Fife bounced off of, or Dean Martin between Jerry Lewis, where Dean Martin played the smooth straight man to Jerry Lewis's wild comic character). It creates a more interesting dynamic.

The straight man usually acts as a "foil," or a contrasting character, to the more humorous or eccentric characters. This contrast highlights and amplifies the humor of the other character's actions and jokes. Oozma Kappa, for instance, are SO FUNNY mainly because of Mike’s deadpan reactions to their craziness. When he and Sulley first move into the house, they obviously feel a bit out of place and uncomfortable, like they just walked into a Looney Tunes cartoon. If they didn’t react in the way they did, the jokes would not have landed as hard as they did.

The straight man also serves as the audience's point of view, reacting to the absurdities of the world created within the comedy. This helps the audience relate to the situation and experience the humor through a more grounded perspective. Mike anchors the comedy because we’re seeing the story through his EYE, through his POV. He’s our Everyman Archetype that we can relate to.

And like I said before, his overall reactions and demeanor, such as his deadpan delivery, actually adds to the humor. Mike usually remains composed when OK is bouncing off the walls in their usual crazy fashion, and so his self-control makes the OKs antics seem even more ridiculous.

In larger narratives, the straight man also helps anchor the story, creating a clear dynamic and allowing for a balanced flow of conflict and resolution. Mike and Sulley are of course the main comedy team here even though the Oks are the supporting players that drive most of the comedy…. But since the film focuses on the budding relationship between Mike and Sulley…. Their love-hate dynamic creates most of the story’s dramatic conflict and helps motivate the situational comedy. Mike’s strong presence especially helps ensure the humor lands effectively and the story stays engaging. 

~THE HERO AS HIS OWN WORST ENEMY~

And here’s the ‘’Twist Villain’’ I was talking about.

No, it’s not Johnny Worthington, Dean Hardscrabble, Randy Boggs, or even Sulley.

It’s Mike.

Mike is the Twist Villain in this movie. But he’s not antagonizing another character. He’s antagonizing himself.

Mike is presented as something of an id creature or pseudo-intellectual intermittently witty teenager who's a chronic social outcast and has to face so many obstacles in this movie, from a primary, secondary, and tertiary antagonist who constantly stand in the way of him achieving his goals, with both external and internal conflicts. He's also his own worst enemy...

(he’s so incredibly and terribly vulnerable in every scene…… the way the system tries to tear him down and bring him down, but he stands his ground….. the way he wears his heart on his sleeve….. I just love him! ❤️)

Imagine that! Mike, as his own antagonist!

True story though.

A hero can indeed be their own antagonist through internal conflict, flawed choices, or by holding themselves back from their goals. This internal struggle can manifest as self-doubt, obsession, or other psychological barriers that hinder their progress, effectively making them their own opponent. 

Mike deals with so much internal conflict in this movie from crippling bouts of fear, self-doubt, and anxiety. These internal struggles are just as powerful as the external forces that try to discredit him and drag him through the mud, which prevents him from taking necessary actions or making the right decisions. We see this in the third act when Mike loses the games…. He can’t accept that he’s not scary…. He’s unable to face reality and accept defeat, he simply refuses to back down, and he makes a rash and reckless decision to venture into the human world to prove himself…. But he literally risks his own life doing so…. (we’ll talk more about this scene later).

Mike is flawed in that he has an almost obsessive and addictive fixation on his goal, that it almost becomes a destructive habit that leads to self-sabotage and creates conflict within his journey. He cares about NOTHING ELSE except becoming the Top Scarer on campus, and in doing so, he loses sight of himself and what really, truly matters… this is why Randy leaves his ass in the dust…. Because Mike was not always there for Randy…. In trying to achieve his academic pursuits, he forgot that loyalty to friends is also just as important. He almost destroys his friendships just by shutting them out of his world, thinking that any outside distraction will inhibit him.

Mike has incredible work ethic but…. He eats, sleeps, and dreams of Scaring…. And it becomes obsessive and self-destructive behavior. Everyone just sits back and marvels at Mike—no one can keep up with his pace, not even Randy. And Mike is such a workaholic that he has unintentionally steamrolled over Randy and his desires for friendship. I talked about this in Part 2 already, but Randy is visibly insecure, and especially during the moment in the montage where we see Mike and Randy attending a college football game together, Mike has his nose buried in a book instead of living in the moment with Randy… neither of them seem to be enjoying the game. There’s no dialogue in the scene, but Randy’s body language tells a whole story… his little hands are balled up against his chest and he sadly peers at Mike from the corners of his eyes, like he’s non-verbally asking for a fraction of his time, like he’s reduced to asking Mike what he could do as a friend to “be enough.” But Mike isn’t paying any attention to him. He doesn’t even make eye contact with Randy. He briefly glances up at the game, then he just goes back to reading his textbook. They’re sitting together on the bleachers, but they seem distant…. Almost disconnected from one another, and it’s such a contrast from how they are in the beginning of the movie… in the beginning, they were emotionally glued to the hip. Now Mike’s ambitions seem to be driving a wedge between them. Randy stays with him, of course…. Trying to be a supportive friend. Deep down, he might be concerned that this friendship isn’t going to last because it’s not maybe what he truly wanted.

Moreover, Mike’s relentless drive is strong enough that even if Randy could grant him peace of mind, he’s not certain that even *that* would be enough. And this is why Randy chooses the RORs. Apart from wanting to be more popular, he was not satisfied with Mike’s friendship, or lack thereof. Randy’s theme was originally an expression of (platonic) love: he literally tells Mike in the first 5 seconds of meeting him that they’re going to be ‘’best chums’’ and that their friendship is going to rock the world. Mike only needs to stay by his side for him to be satisfied. However, as the semester draws closer to the midterms, he begins to realize that the same is emphatically not true for Mike, as he is never satisfied. Mike’s boundless ambition keeps him moving in ways that seem to take him further away from Randy and from their friendship. Randy never says this in so many words, but his eyes seem to be asking “What would be enough for you to be satisfied?” hoping that Mike will realize that becoming the Top Scarer and graduating with honors at the university is not going to make him truly fulfilled, that nothing will, including himself…. Unless he learns the beauty of humility.

Mike usually does not accept Randy’s invitations to go to parties, either… he’d rather shut himself up in the dorms and study. The only real bonding time that Mike and Randy have is quizzing each other for their upcoming exams. But they literally never seem to spend any real quality time together that *doesn’t* involve Sacring. Seeing Mike ignore his commitments as a friend in favor of his academic ambitions seems to make Randy feel genuinely insecure, and unfortunately, he’s got a right to. This whole montage in the middle of the movie foreshadows the deeper discord that looms on their horizon…. That Randy is eventually going to betray Mike for his own ambitions…. That he will find another group of friends to give him what Mike can’t.

Randy has known since the beginning that Mike has a boundless ambition. He can’t ever be satisfied with what he has. He won’t settle for less. He’s going to be THE BEST or else die trying. Even after surprising his professors and becoming a successful student, Mike is not satisfied. He will keep going, until he achieves the impossible…. and deep down, Randy already probably suspects it’s going to destroy him.

Mike has the opportunity to make history on the campus, so he won’t throw away his shot at doing so. This seems heroic for Mike, yes…… he is braver than any US Marine…. but this is why Mike becomes his own villain in his own story….. because if he doesn’t stop, he *will* destroy himself and he *will* destroy whatever meaningful relationships he has. He will die a symbolic death.

Randy tries to keep up with Mike, like in the scene where Randy is pop quizzing Mike with the flash cards…. He’s deeply impressed by Mike’s knowledge. So is everybody, and even Johnny and Sulley are perhaps envious of Mike’s skills, dedication, and resultant quick ascension as a Scare Student powerhouse. We also see during this montage that while Randy is rushing to keep up, it reinforces how Sulley seems to be the only other guy in the Scare Program to rise to the challenge of beating Mike. Sulley has been slacking off this whole time, but Mike’s quick rise to the top has given him the extra kick in the pants that he needed to go toe-to-toe with Mike and compete against him. Sulley can mentally keep up with Mike’s non-stop pace with ease, while poor Randy is trailing behind with a notable lack of confidence…. And this is only the beginning of the end for the friendship between Mike and Randy…. And the beginning of a new friendship which starts as a rivalry between Mike and Sulley. Meanwhile, Mike just keeps rolling through the punches, barely having time to breathe—man, the man is non-stop!

🎵 Why do you write like you're running out of time? Write day and night like you're running out of time? Every day you fight like you're running out of time Keep on fighting, in the meantime—

Non-stop

How do you write like you're running out of time? Write day and night like you're running out of time? Every day you fight like you're running out of time Like you're running out of time Are you running out of time? How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive? How do you write like you need it to survive? How do you write every second you're alive? Every second you're alive? Every second you're alive? 🎵

And these are some of his fatal flaws. His defining weakness is a source of internal conflict, driving him to act against his better judgment. Not that Mike has a narcissistic personality and violent tendencies that Randall later adopts in the first movie, but his own insecurity and fear of abandonment could have led him to sabotage his relationships and create future problems for himself and his friends…..  His ambition and ego could have ultimately led him down a path of destruction, making him into a villain. But if it wasn’t for Sulley to help pull him back to reality and ground him, he could have easily went down the dark path that Randall took and became the supervillain Randall became…. Luckily for Mike, he had a friend who cared enough about him to support him and direct his priorities on the right path.

So, Mike being his own antagonist just becomes part of his hero's journey. He faces internal demons, and he must overcome personal limitations. His own flaws and weaknesses are something he must conquer. This adds depth and complexity to Mike’s narrative, making him more relatable and the conflict more compelling. It highlights the human struggle with internal conflict and the challenges of self-improvement. 

Mike is internalizing his own low self-esteem and lack of self-worth by wearing the facade of a Super Ego, which becomes his tragic flaw when he's unable to grasp reality (that he's simply not a scary monster), because he's got stars in his eyes. Poor little underdog is at war with himself and seemingly the whole world while he's at it. The World Against Me mentality...

~THE WORLD AGAINST MIKE WAZOWSKI~

Nearly every single day is a fight or an uphill battle for Mike Wazowski in this film, so it seems like the world (or at least the world within the campus life) is against him. It’s like no matter how hard he tries, it feels like nothing is going to change or get better. And because it feels like he is working against the rest of the world, he might as well start beating himself up too.

While it may feel like the odds are stacked against him, and that life can be unfair, at least he knows there are people he can lean on.

🎵 Wazwoski faces an endless uphill climb (Climb, climb, climb) He has something to prove He has nothing to lose (Lose, lose, lose, lose) Wazowski's pace is relentless He wastes no time (Time, time, time) What is it like in his shoes?

Wazowski doesn't hesitate He exhibits no restraint He takes and he takes and he takes And he keeps winning anyway He changes the game He plays and he raises the stakes

And if there's a reason He seems to thrive when so few survive, then Goddamnit I'm willing to wait for it (Wait for it) I'm willing to wait for it 🎵

Everybody in this movie is obsessed with legacy.

Johnny Worthington, of course, is the third in his family to attend Monsters University; he is the heir to a global empire at Fear Co., and he is the leader of the top fraternity, the Roar Omega Roars, with his father’s and grandfather’s legacy to protect (as he bears their namesake, and it was implied that ROR was *their* fraternity in their day as well).

Sulley, of course, is the son of the famous Bill Sullivan, who’s a local celebrity on campus, for being not only the Top Scare Student in his day, but also the Top Scarer at Monsters, Inc. before his retirement.

Mike has no celebrity Scarers in his family. He has no legacy to protect. ‘’Wazowski’’ is a commoner on campus; his name means literally nothing to anyone, so he has to work harder to prove himself without the benefit of nepotism to get his foot through the door.

There’s a power struggle between Johnny, Sulley, and Mike, in that legacy is what pits these three against each other.

And that’s another reason the whole world (or the whole of the university) seems to be against Mike Wazowski.

He has no legacy; but he’s kicking some serious ass on campus. That’s why Mike’s success literally spites the hell out of Johnny and Sulley…. Sulley even says he’s going to wipe the floor with that ‘’know it-all beach ball,’’ like he cannot STAND the fact that Mike is gaining the upper hand here because, not only is he a Little Monster…. Someone who’s not a natural-born Scarer, but he’s not a Sullivan or a Worthington—he’s a fucking nobody. They don’t think he belongs here.

He’s playing their game and he’s rolling the dice and he’s bending all the rules and he’s playing his cards right and he’s fucking winning. Hell, he’s not just *playing* the game; he’s rewriting the game as he goes along. He’s thriving. Unlike Mike, who takes risks and raises the stakes (as in poker), Sulley and Johnny keep their cards close to the vest. They just want to play the power game and win…. Thinking that if they don’t show their cards right away, they’ll be able to sweep in and take advantage of Mike. Eventually.

Maybe if Sulley is brave enough to crack the recipe, and tries to emulate Mike, he might get lucky and achieve the same success.

Unlike Mike, who has nothing to lose, Johnny’s parents have left him a literal fortune (which we see in MAW). We don’t get much information on Sulley’s background, whether he’s wealthy or not, but he DOES have a famous Family Name and so all he can do to keep their memory alive is protect their legacy. That’s why the stakes are so high for Sulley when he gets kicked out of the program…. It will literally bring shame to his family…. And that’s why he’s so desperate to get back in. This burden he’s taken on holds him in check because any action risks jeopardizing it.

Mike has no legacy; he must make his own legacy…. He’s the first in his generation to do what he’s doing, and this forces him to take risks in order to secure it. He will take the risks  Sulley will not.

This gets to the heart of the difference between Mike and Sulley. Though they’re both brilliant in their own ways (Sulley is biologically and physically built to be a Scarer, though he lacks the mental prowess; Mike lacks the physical strength and proper anatomy, but he’s mentally strong—he knows all the Scare theories and all the techniques by heart, even if he’s unable to physically demonstrate them).

Mike’s parents left him with a legacy to overcome and rise above, meaning he has no prior legacy or fame or fortune to ride his family’s coattails. His ‘’legacy’’ is that he’s a Little Monster who is not a natural-born Scarer and he’s trying to change the system by proving that yes, Little Monsters like Wazowskis CAN and WILL achieve their own success. They don’t have to be a Sullivan or a Worthington to make their own reputation. Mike wants to take the world by storm. By doing so, he'll no doubt make his family proud. But Mike’s doing it more for himself than his family. This is HIS dream. This is HIS happiness. He will live his life for himself, not for anyone else. Mike thinks he can control how people and history will view him. He thinks he can control his legacy. Mike’s destiny is not to be a Scarer, BUT events and situations are unpredictable, and the only actions you can control are your own. Mike can’t control his fate, but he can control himself. He can be his OWN opportunity.

Here, Mike finally gets the chance to tell his own origin story, and here he declares his own strength and significance.

Sulley’s parents left him with a legacy to protect…. Being a Sullivan means preserving the values, traditions, and family history for future generations. If Sulley decides to get married and have kids, his own kids will probably attend Monsters University and have that same legacy to carry forward and protect. We don’t get enough insight into Sulley’s goals to know if attending MU is *HIS* goal or his dad’s. Is Sulley doing this for himself or his family?

Given this difference between them, it makes sense that Mike would take more risks and Sulley would take fewer. Sulley doesn’t work half as hard towards his goals… he doesn’t take his studies very seriously, and he just assumes good things will come to those who wait, because he’s a Sullivan, and Sullivans are afforded special privileges without having to work for it. He also thinks he doesn’t need to study simply because he’s already born for great things. He takes after his dad, probably. He already LOOKS like a Scarer, so what does he does he need to know about the Art of Scaring for?

Mike’s only risking his own legacy, whereas Sulley has been entrusted with his parents' legacy. They are, at the core, good men, but both are extremely flawed.

Mike is ambitious and passionate. He is determined to make a difference in the world. In contrast, Sulley is shown to be work-shy and indolent. He plays everything safe, thinking his name alone will get him ahead in life. They both approach the world very differently, even though they’re still young men, still figuring it out…. Mike seems to be more certain of what he wants in life. Sulley’s just along for the ride. But this is what fuels their growing antagonism.  Sulley desires the power of following in his father’s footsteps, but he lacks the academic strength of Mike’s convictions. Mike, it seems, beats Sulley to every goal… whatever Sulley can do, Mike can do better.

Sulley’s motivations are ambiguous… he wants to be a Scarer, yes…. But I wonder if it’s only because his dad wanted him to be…. What does Sulley actually want for *himself*?

Meanwhile, Mike poses a threat to Sulley’s ambitions because he seems to be an unstoppable, uncontrollable force. That little body of his packs a lot of punch. It pisses Sulley the fuck off that he’s forced to sit back and watch Mike rise faster than him, and Sulley’s only weapon against Mike’s unstoppable force is to deride and criticize him. It doesn’t even put a dent in Mike’s armor. Mike keeps on climbing. And what happens when you climb? You rise up. Again, Mike is willing to take the risk; Sulley isn’t.

So, through the entirety of the film, Sulley is set up as a foil to Mike.

They have very different motifs.

Mike be like, “Hey, I may seem young, scrappy, and hungry now, but just you wait, I’m gonna lowkey clear you bitches so bad! I can’t hear you over the sound of my awesome cuz I cooked that shit!”

And Sulley be like, “Sure bro… I’ll just be over here waiting for you to mess the fuck up so I can show everybody how much MORE awesome I am than everybody else, especially YOU, mf. I go so fucking hard I’m unironically better than your little pinky.”

When Mike is at that point in the story when it seems he may have lost faith in himself, it makes the feeling of fighting the world more intense. He could’ve simply given up and defeated himself before the world even has a chance to.  So, when something happens to validate his feeling of defeat, it further confirms how he feels about himself deep down. And he finds himself caught in a loop of negative thinking.  But Mike always tries to improve his relationship with himself. Instead of Freudian self-loathing, he pours self-love into himself, which gives him the power to take on the world.

And he uses his studies as a way to find purchase and meaning in his life. He uses his studies as a way to change the world (or at least his small corner of it), but he also uses it as a way to find his place in it.

~SELF-DEPRECIATING HUMOR IN JEWISH CULTURE: A SURVIVAL TOOL~

I can say as a person with Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents that leaning on and leading with humor despite being in the depths of something tragic is a very Jewish trait.

✡️ ✡️ ✡️ ✡️ ✡️ ✡️

…and Mike copes with his problems by resorting to deadpan teen angst and self-deprecating sarcasm, which is a very inherently Jewish trait. I mentioned already in Part 1 why this makes the casting of Billy Crystal that much more meaningful…… not that Mike is specifically meant to be Jewish, I don’t think, but that was always my headcanon based solely on his Polish-Jewish surname, and it makes me like him more…….. my great-grandparents and my grandfather were German Jews, so it’s got history for me, for sure…….. and basically, Mike’s traits are very Jewish……his story as an academic underdog is very Jewish….. it’s not just his New York Jew accent…….. it’s everything…….

First, there’s the matter of his academic prowess.

Jewish culture has a strong tradition of valuing education and intellectual pursuit. This emphasis on learning dates back centuries. Though there’s a strong emphasis on religious study and historical importance to pass on religious traditions, High Educational Attainment is also stressed. Jews, on average, have a high level of educational attainment compared to other religious groups.

Mike may or may not be the first kid in his family to attend college, but obviously he was brought up in such a particular way (whether in a strict conservative household or not) that really gives special importance to studying and focusing on academic fields, whether it’s history or culture. Obviously, he chooses Scaring as his major, but he studies all aspects of it, from the Art, History, Anatomy, Science, and Culture of Scaring. Intellectual traditions are an important part of the Jewish people, and Mike takes his studies very seriously to a point that his dedication to education seems unintentionally linked to Jewish culture, and the belief that education empowers individuals. A Jew’s education basically defines him. It’s his whole identity, and his values, which foster a deep connection to Jewish heritage and community. 

The concept of the "underdog" is also a significant theme in Jewish identity and history, stemming from the historical experience of the Jewish people as a minority group facing consistent challenges and often powerful adversaries. 

Mike is an underdog. He is the poster child of an underdog.

Mike just has a general struggle for adaptation and belonging, and this of course resonates with the underdog narrative.

While historical persecution and oppression have shaped Jewish identity and culture, they have also inspired acts of resilience, creativity, and perseverance. 

Just like the Jewish people throughout history, Mike faces constant subjugation. On campus, he’s under the rule of larger and more powerful forces, like the Top Tier Fraternity of Roar Omega Roar. This is reinforced by adversity. The RORs are almost like the freakin’ Roman Empire in the time of Jesus, if you really stop to think about it…. And the way in which they dominate those and try to exercise power and control over the ‘’marginalized’’ groups of Little Monsters like Mike and the Oozma Kappas, it almost symbolizes the underdog archetype in Jewish culture. And not that Mike is a Christ-like figure or anything, but he does become the Voice of the People in own corner of the campus; he becomes their unlikely leader and leads them to victory against the higher power.

Though he isn’t racially or religiously persecuted, he’s a Little Monster—not a natural-born Scarer—and because of this, he faces impossible hardships. But, just like the Jewish people, he demonstrates remarkable resilience and ability to survive and thrive despite severe adversity. And as I’ve said before, he has amazing intellectual adaptability: In response to discrimination and exclusion from the Scare Program simply because the school dean has a clear bias against Little Monsters, Mike can no longer simply rely on his intellectual pursuits to see him through so he instead chooses to focus on more creative outlets like the Scare Games that allows him to contribute to his success. And this is his Creative Problem Solving that you often see in the Jewish communities who have historically faced challenges requiring innovative solutions for survival. Mike builds a team of misfits from the ground up which showcases his resourcefulness and adaptability. They rise above their challenges, fueled by their own aspirations. I mean, he kicks some serious monster ass. 😎

Mike doesn’t just take a stand for himself. He rises up and stands up for the other Underdogs on campus: the Oozma Kappas. He emphasizes the importance of standing up for the underdog and challenging inequality. He takes them as his teammates mainly because he has no other choice (all the other frats are filled up, and no one else wants to take OK, for obvious reasons), and he’s desperate to sign up to the games as a last resort in getting back into the Scare Program… and he needs a fraternity to doo so, so Mike reluctantly chooses OK, but as he gets to know them better, he does genuinely come to care for them, and he’s proud to call them his brothers. And he will rise up and fight for them.

Mike may not be physically strong and so he can’t take down Johnny Worthington by physical force, but he has something stronger. He's not afraid to speak up and use his voice as a weapon to challenge complacency and assert himself. Mike is a Scorpio according to his Scare Card (born November 16), and he is a clear water sign, but he also has the heart of a lion. He is brave beyond belief (and the lion, ironically, is a symbol of Israel).

And speaking of his voice, he uses his sarcasm as a defense mechanism to mask his deeper insecurities. As a person with Jewish family members, I think it is fitting that Mike uses his wit and his sense of humor as a tool for survival. It feels true to life in the way Jews often use humor in tough times. ‘’Woe is me” really isn’t fitting for the character or the culture.

Again, not that Mike is explicitly Jewish, but it’s definitely the way Billy Crystal plays him, and Mike has lots of traits of Billy. Mike doesn’t hate himself. It’s not self-hate, it’s simply good-natured self-criticism. Self-deprecating humor is a prominent and significant feature of Jewish culture, often serving as a coping mechanism and a sometimes a form of social commentary. Self-deprecating humor is so prevalent in Jewish culture, because it’s about coping with adversity and oppression: Self-deprecation is a common form of humor among Jews who have experienced centuries of oppression and persecution. It can be seen as a way to deal with hardship and maintain dignity in challenging circumstances.

Mike does this by using superiority in wit. If he playfully points out his own flaws or perceived shortcomings before others can do so, this demonstrates his intelligence and wit, that he can think fast on his feet. Learning to laugh at yourself also fosters a sense of belonging and it subverts stereotypes: Jewish humor often involves mocking negative stereotypes, reclaiming them positively and turning them into a source of ironic humor. This can be seen as a way to challenge prejudice and dismantle harmful perceptions.

Though Mike Wazowski plays on the idea of Jews being inherently neurotic or unconventional it’s not necessarily perpetuating harmful stereotypes or disrespect Jewish history and culture. 

Soooooooooooo…. I’m just gonna paraphrase this interview Billy Crystal gave about his Jewish upbringing to the Jewish Report, because it’s sort of relevant to how he plays Mike, and how Mike is written, I mean PIXAR would be lying if they said they did not use traits of Billy to flesh out this character. Billy gave this character a whole new life.

………………………………………………………………………

JTA: You seem to be a celebrity who wears your Judaism as a badge of honour, and not in a self-hating sort of way. Would you agree?

Billy Crystal: I do. I mean, I still make fun, but it’s not about Jews – it’s about my Jews, it’s about my relatives. It’s not generalisations.

What are some of your favourite parts about being Jewish?

You mean, besides the circumcision?

You remember that, huh?

Yeah, oh yeah, that’s why I’m an insomniac. I’m waiting for that guy to come back in the room.

What else do you love about being Jewish?

The storytelling, the warmth, the sense of humour. My dad was strict about the holidays. We honoured them, we went to temple. I like the ritual, and the caring for our planet that’s written into so many of the works I read in Hebrew school.

………………………………………………………………………

 OK, so did you notice what he said there?

How he wears his Judaism as a badge of honor, like he waves it around PROUDLY (as he should!). And though there’s still a level of self-deprecating humor underneath the dignity of his Jewish heritage, he says it’s not about generalizations.

Now, why is this relevant to Mike?

Maybe Mike is not explicitly stated to be Jewish despite his Polish-Jewish surname, BUT there is definitely a class structure on this campus and this world in general…. I don’t know if I would say ‘’racial bias’’ but there is definitely a divide between those monsters born to be Scarers and those who are not (like Mike & Randy).

Mike and Randy are little pocket-sized monsters……….. Pixar keeps beating this theme over our heads that some monsters (like Mike & Randy) are *clearly* born for ‘’other things’’. Monsters like Sulley are natural-born Scarers for obvious reasons; it’s just built into his biology. Now, Mike is facing clear bias here simply due to his status as a Little Monster……… not that there’s anti-Semitic undertones to this, but if the monster world is structured this way—not necessarily by racial or religious or gender discrimination as the human world—but structured in a way that excludes certain monsters simply due to their size or species…. It sort of does seem like the monster equivalent of racial discrimination and stereotypes.

Mike & Randy try to break from these stereotypes that hold them down…. Especially Mike. He’s trying to actively break free from these generalizations that this society clearly has about Little Monsters.

Mike is proud of his own identity despite all that. No matter what people think of him, whether it be cultural, religious, personal, or other, he wears his PRIDE with confidence and without shame. It's about embracing who he is and showing it to the world. He strongly expresses his beliefs and values. He openly acknowledges and celebrates his identity, whether it's visible or not. It's about feeling comfortable and confident in who you are and expressing that to others……..

The monster world is incredibly diverse. And because Mike wears his identity proudly, he contributes to a more diverse and inclusive society. He challenges stereotypes and misconceptions about different groups of people (or monsters, in this case), by promoting understanding and acceptance, whether the other students accept him or not (and they don’t, right away). But Mike stays true to himself.

The campus seems to reinforce negative stereotypes about Little Monsters, not just their skill level, or lack thereof, if they desire to be potential Scarers, but also their intelligence and behavior. Notice everyone’s shock when Mike gets an A+ on his Anatomy of Scaring quiz….. and he smugly shows it off, as he should! They underestimate how capable he actually is simply because he’s a Little Monster.

This movie shows us the complexities of power dynamics at Ivy League schools, but it’s more complex than that when you take into account how the monster world has certain preconceived notions about certain ‘’racial groups’’ like non-Scarers, and Little Monsters in particular are associated with negative stereotypes. The weird class and social structure of Monsters University highlights the power imbalances between dominant and marginalized groups, with the dominant group portrayed as superior (the natural-born Scarers like Sulley and Johnny) and the marginalized group as inferior (like Mike & Randy and the Oozma Kappas). There’s something very artificial in the hierarchy of this school, and Mike tries to subvert this when he signs up for the Scare Games despite that NO ONE has any faith in him, especially when he takes a team of misfits under his wing; by doing so, he tries to undermine the power and authority of the established system or academic institution.

This also shows the injustice of this world……… most Little Monsters simply accept their place and refuse to challenge the stereotypes (like what the Oozma Kappas literally tell Mike later in the film, ‘’Some of us are just made for other things’’).  Mike refuses to accept this. He literally encourages Oozma Kappa (and the audience) to question their assumptions about their place in society. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. Mike struggles for agency and identity in this Dog-Eat-Dog world. And even though he doesn’t become the Top Scarer he always dreamed of being, he succeeds by rejecting the status quo, refusing to reinforce existing prejudices, and he challenges the ‘’racist tropes’’ by promoting a more equitable understanding of WHAT TRULY MAKES A MONSTER.

And he becomes…………… the best version of himself.

AND HE’S THANKFUL FOR LOVING WHO HE REALLY IS

AND HE’S SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

AND HE’S HERE

*mic drop*

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Now, Mike’s story of challenging stereotypes can of course be a metaphor for any racial or religious group…. It’s not necessarily an inherently Jewish struggle…….

But Billy Crystal of course plays him with typical Jewish mannerisms… which I outlined above. I don’t know if Disney or Pixar will *ever* have an explicit Jewish character in a major motion picture BUT Mike, for me, is probably the most positive representation we can have right now, even if it wasn’t their intention.

Slightly off topic, but because of his outcast status, ‘’Waving Through a Window’’ from Dear Evan Hansen would be his perfect theme song:

🎵 I've learned to slam on the brake Before I even turn the key Before I make the mistake Before I lead with the worst of me

Give them no reason to stare No slipping up if you slip away So I got nothing to share No, I got nothing to say

Step out, step out of the sun If you keep getting burned Step out, step out of the sun Because you've learned, because you've learned

On the outside, always looking in Will I ever be more than I've always been? 'Cause I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass I'm waving through a window Oh, I try to speak, but nobody can hear So I wait around for an answer to appear While I'm watch, watch, watching people pass I'm waving through a window, oh Can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me?

We start with stars in our eyes We start believing that we belong But every sun doesn't rise And no one tells you where you went wrong

Step out, step out of the sun If you keep getting burned Step out, step out of the sun Because you've learned, because you've learned

On the outside, always looking in Will I ever be more than I've always been? 'Cause I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass Waving through a window Oh, I try to speak, but nobody can hear So I wait around for an answer to appear While I'm watch, watch, watching people pass Waving through a window, oh Can anybody see, is anybody waving? 🎵

And despite his status as an outcast who's constantly alienated from the Kool Kids Klub, he's certainly not cynical or bitter. No, what makes Mike a great character is how Eternally Optimistic he is. How Everyman Archetype he is. How, when he’s pushed to his lowest, he gets the fuck back up again! And goes harder than before! He’s one tough cookie, that Mike Wazowski. He may be a ‘’loser’’ but the audience can easily identify with him.

I want to briefly take this time to plagiarize Roger Ebert's review of Ghost World (2001) which also stars Steve Buscemi in a big meaty part and came out the same year as Monsters, Inc., because this is my EXACT feelings for Monsters University and this wonderful world-building:

I wanted to hug this movie. It takes such a risky journey and never steps wrong. It creates specific, original, believable, lovable characters, and meanders with them through their inconsolable days, never losing its sense of humor.

That pretty much sums it up for me……. Like that’s it. That’s the movie.

(If I had a dollar for every moment that Mike looks like a kicked puppy in this movie, I’d be a millionaire……. Like this movie took my heart out and stomped all over it. BABY BOI he needs a hug. 💔💔💔)

----

This is getting too long, so in the next chapter I’ll talk more about the fun stuff…. The next chapter will focus more on Mike & Randy and their Sad Love Story. ❤️

To Be Continued……….

[space-mermaid-writing]

Of monsters and men [IronStrange]

Summary: Some kidnappers fucked up big time and now Tony is bonded to this strange demon he continues to summon by accident.

Tags: demon!Stephen Strange, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Angst, Whump, body horror, protective Stephen Strange, Stephen Strange needs a hug

Author's note: 1. The villain of the week is so unimportant, I didn't even name him 2. I made a logic mistake. This chapter is a last minute addition, but I put it at the wrong place. In the previous chapter Tony mentions Ultron. That means Jarvis is gone. Unfortunately, this chapter is 25% Jarvis' snarks. I could have changed him to Friday but they don't have the same vibe. I could have <i> not</i> posted this chapter. But I don't want you to deprive of it. It's a nice chapter. So please just ignore the issue. Beta by@harpywritesfic and @kvjjjjjj.

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Chapter 9: You need to be more careful

Tony dodged an attack, scowling. His opponents looked like humans, simple civilians, except they were flying and shooting lasers out of their eyes. As soon as the faceplate of his Iron Man armor had closed, his HUD told him they were nothing more than robots - hyper-realistic human-looking androids, designed to deceive and destroy.

“How are the new updates holding, Jarvis?” The numbers in the corner of his display seemed alright but Tony asked his A.I. anyway because he trusted Jarvis more than any other source. He valued his opinion on this matter, especially in the heat of battle.

Tony dodged another attack and blasted one of the androids in the back, right where Jarvis had marked a weak spot. The robot shut down and fell like dead weight.

It thus joined the growing number of robots Tony had already taken out of the air. The attacks had started over Manhattan, and by now they had moved to somewhere over Brooklyn. The engineer suspected, or at least hoped, that a ground team from Shield was collecting the crashed robots. Tony didn't have time to keep an eye out on them to make sure this technology didn't fall into the hands of another enemy.

“So far they are exceeding expectations. With the amount of additional power flowing through, I would have thought that the structure would be weakened in the long term.”

“You thought it would blow up into my face, didn't you?” Tony realized, amusement creeping into his tone. There were three androids left. Time to wrap this up.

“It wouldn't be the first time that a weak point only becomes visible during a field test.”

Tony was targeting another weak spot when he became distracted, too slow to dodge another attack that hit his side with a jarring force.

“Like the new hydraulic dampers just now,” Jarvis continued unfazed. “The structure of the cylinders at the arms was considerably damaged by the last hit. I advise you to return to the lab soon.”

“Right after I’ve finished this,” Tony retorted because there was no way he would just leave mid-fight.

Jarvis seemed to know this as well. He delivered his next words with a level of deadpan that shouldn't be possible for an A.I. “Of course, Sir.”

Tony sent a repulsor blast to one of the androids. It didn't have the desired effect. “J, why is the power so low?”

“The line goes past the elbow and there-”

“The hydraulics press on it. I understand.” That wasn't good. But he would manage. He still had several missiles hidden in this suit.

“May I suggest calling backup?” Jarvis said anyway, always concerned about Tony's well-being.

Before the engineer could answer, he was hit with considerable force and thrown against the nearest building. The impact was so strong that he broke through the wall and landed under a pile of bricks.

Some part of his armor made a noise that didn't sound good.

“Sir, the-”

“I know.” Tony pushed himself up onto his forearms, far too slowly, and turned just as slowly. The weight of the armor worked against him. In return, he felt every bruise this fight had given him so far. And a few more he'd had before that. Although he was protected in his armor and all hits and impacts were absorbed, it was still not as perfect as he would have liked. Tony worked on a long-term solution: Nanobots. Tiny little, perfectly programmed individual pieces that followed his every command, and stopped attacks better than a full suit of armor ever could. But he was still at the beginning of his research in that direction and it would take some time before the nanobots were anyway near ready. Until then, he would continue to improve his current armor system.

Tony opened his faceplate and searched for what had hit him.

This time it wasn't a robot, but a man with a jetpack on his back. Over his body, he wore individual pieces of armor that looked like a cheap version of an earlier Iron Man armor. But between the individual elements, there were large gaps between which a small, beefy body could be seen. The helmet left the face exposed, showing sneering eyes.

The three remaining androids gathered around him. They seemed to belong together.

“Not looking so brilliant now. You finally met your match. I'm going to bring down the great Tony Stark.”

The voice was unusually hoarse and sounded suspiciously like the voice the robots had used to talk to Tony at the beginning of the fight.

The words sounded rather personal. Tony had no idea who the man was but it looked like he had a personal vendetta against him. Well, he wasn't the first, and Tony doubted he would be the last – unfortunately.

It was time to follow Jarvis' suggestion and call backup. He pulled his legs up to sit a little more comfortably. There was a smile on his lips, probably from the adrenaline pumping through his veins and from the knowledge of how this would end.

The villain made a step towards him. “I'm going to wipe that smug smirk off your face, Stark.”

The man saw the thin line of blood that ran down Tony's face, but he didn't notice the droplets disappearing into the ground. Each drop seemed to absorb into the earth, as if the ground itself was thirsting for the evidence of the upcoming confrontation that was inevitable.

Tony huffed over the threat, the corners of his lips curling upwards. “You're so screwed.”

“You are delusional if you think-” The villain faltered when suddenly a demon appeared right next to Tony. He frowned but he wasn't intimidated by the unfamiliar figure. Not yet.

Stephen took one look at Tony, and he wasn't happy with what he saw. His eyes darkened, a storm brewing within their depths before darting over to the other human, who Stephen assessed had caused this. The anger radiating from him was almost tangible, a dark cloud that threatened to engulf the scene. “Ɏøᵾ,” he growled with voice like a chalkboard scratching, each word dripping with menace. “mȺđɇ Ⱥ mɨsŧȺꝁɇ.”

His cloak morphed into long, strong, and rather sharp tentacles, which darted towards the villain with a speed that was both mesmerizing and terrifying. The villain, realizing the danger he was in, felt a flicker of panic surge through him. Still, he wasn't fast enough to escape.

“We talked about this, Stephen.” Tony's voice stayed casual, almost nonchalant, while he looked down to investigate the damage on his hydraulic cylinders. “Keep them alive.”

“If you insist,” Stephen replied, his tone laced with a hint of reluctance. He understood Tony's principles and the moral code that governed his actions, but the primal urge to get revenge was a hard instinct to suppress. Nobody touched what was his.

Tony did insist. He had been very clear about this.

As the tentacles closed in, the villain's bravado crumbled, revealing the fear that lay beneath. “Wait! We can talk about this!” he stammered, his voice rising in pitch.

Tony glanced up, his expression unreadable. “Talk? You had your chance to talk when you decided to come after me.”

“But I-” the villain started before Stephen grabbed him by his throat. His sharp nails pressed into the soft skin of his neck and jaw, right into the soft spot directly under the jaw.

“Ħøw đȺɍɇ ɏøᵾ Ⱥđđɍɇss ħɨm” Stephen snarled in disgust. His steel blue eyes showed rage. If he could, he would drag this guy into the Dark Dimension and show him its horrors. Even if it was only for a moment. It would be enough to push him into insanity.

The androids were crushed into unrecognizable pieces by the tentacles. Since they weren't technically alive, the rule didn't apply to them. And Stephen found their very existence an insult, especially when faced with Tony's superior technology.

“What...” The man had trouble breathing and his voice was hoarse. “What are you?” He tried to free himself from the grip but he didn't stand a chance against the tentacles.

“Ɏøᵾ wøᵾłđnŧ ᵾnđɇɍsŧȺnđ ɨŧ ɇvɇn ɨf Ɨ ŧøłđ ɏøᵾ.”

His eyes lit up briefly as he summoned magic, and glowing rope coiled around the human body like snakes, constricting him in a way he could not escape.

Then Stephen let him go and the villain fell with an anxious scream. The other end of the magic rope had attached itself to the surprisingly undamaged fire escape near the large hole in the wall, ensuring that the guy didn't hit the asphalt. Instead, the rope tightened and he dangled from it, hitting the brick wall once with the momentum he had left. He had no way of getting away from there by himself.

Stephen no longer cared about him. He had more important things to do. He turned back to Tony, who had opened the front of the armor and was now sitting with his upper body out of it. “J, have the line relocated and use a stronger alloy for the dampers. That should fix the problem.” Tony looked up when Stephen crouched next to him. “Thanks for stopping by.”

Stephen ignored his words and went right to scolding the engineer. “You should be more careful.” Despite his harsh words, his grip was gentle as usual when he cupped Tony's face to identify where the blood was coming from. The contrast between his stern demeanor and the tenderness of his touch spoke volumes about their relationship – one built on trust, care, and an unspoken understanding.

There was a small laceration along Tony's hairline, which Stephen quickly healed with a flick of his wrist, the magic flowing effortlessly from him. Then his hands wandered lower, searching for other injuries he knew were there. The instinct to protect Tony was almost overwhelming.

Tony let him have this and didn't bat an eye about the lack of personal space. “What can I say? I just love getting thrown through solid walls.”

But Stephen's next words made him realize that the joke fell flat. “Not funny.” The demon's expression darkened as he found a big bruise on the side of Tony's ribs, watching the man flinch as soon as he touched the spot. He healed it as well, the warmth of his magic enveloping Tony like a protective cocoon.

Tony's face became softer, the corners of his mouth lifting in a gentler smile as he put his hand on Stephen's to get his full attention. The gesture was familiar, intimate even. “I know you're there to catch me.”

Tony only had a few people he let get close to and whom he trusted. Mostly Rhodey, Pepper and Happy. But even they had their limits regarding Tony. Each of these relationships was a delicate balance, shaped by shared experiences, unspoken expectations, and the weight of their individual burdens.

Happy was his driver and bodyguard, a steadfast presence in Tony's chaotic life. However, in a fight against superhumans, he stood no chance. Tony didn't want to drag him into that perilous world, where the stakes were often life and death. Happy's loyalty was unwavering, but Tony recognized that his friend was not equipped to face the extraordinary threats that loomed over them.

Pepper, on the other hand, had enough on her plate as the CEO of Stark Industries. The demands of her position were immense, and the pressure to maintain the company’s reputation and success often left her with little room for anything else. Their romantic relationship had been fraught with complications, and after a series of misunderstandings and emotional upheavals, she had clearly articulated her limits. Tony didn't hold it against her.

Rhodey was the closest thing Tony had to a brother. Their camaraderie was forged in the fires of battle and tempered by years of friendship. Yet, even they had clashed in the past, and there were moments when Tony felt a profound sense of betrayal. Those feelings lingered like shadows even after they had talked it out and ostensibly moved on. Trust, while strong, was not infallible, and Tony could never be one hundred percent sure. There was always some doubt left, a nagging voice in the back of his mind that questioned whether their bond could withstand the trials they faced. Despite this, Tony trusted Rhodey with his life, knowing that their shared experiences had created a foundation that was difficult to shake.

When it came to the Avengers, Tony had a complicated relationship with trust. He relied on them to have his back in a fight; mostly. Yet, he was acutely aware that most of them had their own agendas, their own motivations that could easily conflict with the greater good.

Stephen was different. He was a constant presence, always there when Tony called him. Sure, the demon had no choice since he was bonded to Tony, but that didn’t diminish the significance of their connection. In fact, Stephen easily could despise him, could probably fight against their bond. Yet, he didn’t succumb to bitterness; instead, he came willingly, often expressing his displeasure when he thought that Tony should have called him earlier in a fight. This willingness to engage, to be present in his life no matter what strengthened the depth of their bond.

It might be fake, a byproduct of a ritual gone wrong, but Tony happily indulged the illusion that Stephen would behave the same even without their bond. The way Stephen looked at him, with an intensity that was both disarming and reassuring, made it difficult for Tony to dismiss the possibility of genuine affection.

If this was a regular human, Tony would call the expression he saw in his blue eyes love.

“I am,” the demon muttered, his voice low and earnest. He turned his hand to take Tony's hand in his, and moved it to his lips. He placed a gentle kiss on his knuckles, a silent vow.

Tony understood it even without words. “Let's go home.”

Stephen smiled at that word, a warmth spreading through him at the thought. The penthouse in the tower wasn't his home, but being at Tony's side felt just like it.

[andr0nap]

okay im so normal about the idea of a monster plane actually. idk why ive literally never had interests in planes before what have you done (/j). Like is vash actually The Plane? Or is he just a creature that took over the metal structure of the plane? Is the Vash we know actually like. his body? Or is it like an anglerfish lure to make people trust him since its more human shaped? Does he just. have two sets of eyes and brains because he has two "bodies"? I have so many questions frfr

heheheh >:)

okay so!

vash is vash! he used to be able to walk around and do stuff like a normal person/independent before the crash that knocked him out and left him stuck in the engine for like a 100 years. the engine was a prototype designed specifically for the twins to test if they can power and control the machine at the same time, making them a kind of onboard bio-ai

hes not the jet itself. peacemaker is the actual plane and its just a machine. during the 100 year nap something happened and vash rooted himself in the engine and those roots spread through the structure of the plane over time

the "outer body" is just an extension of vash, roots turning into muscle and claws and eyes and teeth as a way to keep him safe and aware of whats going on outside. it has no mind of its own despite looking like a separate entity.

also fun facts!

he doesnt actually have two brains, most of the information input from the outer body gets diluted into like... subconscious info to vash. if you touch a wing or something he will register that theres something touching him without details on temperature or pressure. if his outer eyes see a missile approaching he will just know that he needs to dodge away from it. its very instinctual and stops him from being in constant sensory overload from controlling what are essentially two bodies

most of those eyes actually have very poor but specialized vision, made to track rapid movement and heat signatures (like incoming missiles). if vash had to rely on those eyes alone all hed see is that Theres Something There and that Its Moving.

a lot of peacemakers electronics got destroyed when it crashed the second time so his body just started to replace what was broken with organs roughly doing the same thing. adaptive to a terrifying degree...

[barkly-523]

About Dutch van der Linde

Hello tumblr rdr space! I do not go here, but I post on tiktok sometimes and have a dear buddy of mine who ive been talking to about some posts on here!

I will post a proper introduction at a later date, but for now I would like to put my own two cents in on some stuff ive been seeing recently, about Dutch.

Dutch is an incredibly COMPLEX character, and I feel that some people really horrifically miss that point sometimes. whether it be "Oh, he bonked his head!" or "Oh, this man is a monster!" both points are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but I believe they greatly miss the overarching theme of his character and who he is, and was, as a person. To merely dismiss all of his actions by saying "oh, hes just a monster, abuser, groomer, thats why hes the way that he is" shows nothing above a surface level understanding of his character, nor the characters of the people around him and those who choose to work with him. These characters were designed to have depth, to be studied, and understood on a deeper level. Why take such a basic explanation? I am not here to say Dutch is not without flaws (because he has alot of those), but I AM here to say that calling dutch a "groomer" or some sort of "cult leader, master manipulator" is just, factually incorrect.

Firstly, with the grooming point. This is an incredibly stigmatized word nowadays, so its crazy to use in general here, but by no means were people "groomed" into being outlaws. These people had flaws of their own, took bad paths, and ended up crossing paths with Dutch. Why did they cross paths with him? Well, I went through every "how they joined the gang" story I could find, and its about a 50/50 split between they tried to rob or kill dutch, Or that they were on the run and dutch gave them a safe place to stay, with some exceptions. The odds of these people bumping into someone far worse, in all cases, are exceptional. Most of the gang were in bad places when dutch found them, and they were getting desperate. Its incredibly possible they wouldve bumped into someone who wouldve killed them instead. John was saved from being hanged. Had Dutch and Hosea not been there, he wouldve died. Arthur outright says "dutch saved me, saved most of us." and although things did not turn out right at the end of the day, to believe that dutch was nothing more than a power-hungry manipulator is shown to be incorrect in the media itself. Colm exists. Hes literally right there. An antagonist who; doesnt know the names of the men in his gang, is shown to hit Kieran, who cares more for numbers than connection. Their feud goes back YEARS, and it all seems to stem from a fatal disagreement about how things were being run. When they split paths, Dutch keeps a tight knit gang of people who he considers family, Colm continues to grow his gang in numbers. At the very start of the game, dutch makes it clear that hed prefer the gang doesnt split up, that they stick together so *he can be sure everyone is okay.* He shows sympathy for Sadies situation, and takes her in to help her. Not once is it stated shes obligated to be there, in fact, its stated that she can stay as long as she needs to, to get back on her feet. She has the final say on whether she stays in the gang or not. The reason so many people stayed in the gang until it was actively collapsing, is not because dutch was forcing them to stay. They saw him as family just as he saw them.

Its why his character arc is so interesting. Its why watching his downfall is impactful. he ISNT a bad man, he does bad things out of desperation towards the end of the game, just as other gang members did in the very beginning. Dutch had bad tendencies, but he had people there to help him stay on the right track. His beliefs were good, its why he had people who stuck with him. They believed in what he taught. He had incredibly intelligent people in his gang, I'll use Lenny and Hosea as my examples for now. Lenny was taught by his father to judge peoples character, and even if his time with the gang was short he absolutely wouldve picked up on dutchs behavior if he was hiding behind some sort of mask. and HOSEA, has been with the dude for 20 YEARS. You cannot fake something for that long, and hosea is far from stupid aswell. He is a conman by nature. If dutch was trying to con everyone, surely he wouldve noticed. Arthur still regards dutch incredibly highly for a good majority of the game. He sees the man as a mentor and is clearly deeply affected watching dutch spiral and do bad things as the game goes on. At the beginning, when told Dutch had shot a girl on the blackwater job, his first response is to say that it "doesnt sound like him". Dutch is shown to have remorse for his actions, although he chooses to rarely talk about blackwater, and avoids the subject when its brought up, he explains to hosea, with shame, that he "really messed up" in blackwater. Micah had egged dutch on (as stated by John in a camp interaction) and dutch is shown to be regretful, that job really put everything in motion, but I truly believe micahs manipulation is what changed dutch.

Micah fed into his impulsive side, and tried to reassure him when things went wrong. When Arthur was kidnapped by Colm, Micah explained that Arthur was the type to wander, and surely, theyd see him back at camp. Dutch, ONCE AGAIN, shows regret. He shouldnt have put Arthur in such a position, and knows it. Dutch has impulsive tendencies, he has paranoid thoughts. This is shown in multiple camp interactions and even stated in one of the games first journal entries about the land they were going to settle on before the ferry job. To simply blow off all the depth of his character by saying "oh, hes bad" is so,, lame? Why focus on dutch specifically to say he did all of these bad things on his own accord when micah is, right there. Dutch literally goes crawling back to him in the epilogue. Partly for revenge, since seeing arthur on the cliffside was able to briefly break him out of the funk hed been in for the last few months (albeit far too late), but also partly because I dont think he knows how to be alone. I dont think he can handle it. Hosea and Arthur had been by his side the longest, and he had to watch both of them die. Late game conversations between dutch and arthur have always been fascinating to me, and even in Guarma dutch is still set on going back to keep the gang together. Thats his family, and he cannot lose them too. He outright states he'll do whatever it takes to make sure they survive. Arthur is startled by this, as dutch has been shown to be deadly and irrational, he isnt processing things well, and cannot handle the pressure on his shoulders, and it certainly doesnt help that Micah is in his ear telling him that Arthur and John are betraying him. He clearly doesnt want to believe it, but he cannot wrap his head around hoseas death, and assumes that the only way it couldve happened was if someone ratted, completely overlooking micah.

Dutch is not a smart man, and truthfully, he should have never been in a position of power, but he is not evil. He was desperate, and he was trying to keep his family together. Although I do not agree with the "Trolley Theory" for reasons stated above, I highly doubt him bashing his head like that helped with his mental state either. Dutch is desperate. Dutch does bad things, but he is far from a bad man. He helped the people in his gang, and although the found family turned sour in the end, they mattered to him, and it mattered to the gang. Dutch, CANONICALLY, was not always "bad" either. Arthur, Dutch, and Hosea robbed a bank, took what they needed, and gave the rest to the local orphanage. Dutch scolded Arthur for robbing someone who was "too poor" and said that doing that made them just as bad as the system they were fighting against, Dutch helped Hosea get on the right track and stopped him from stealing just about anything he could get his hands on. Dutch is a man who had good ideologies, and wanted to help people in his own way, but the pressures kept adding up and it broke him. Dutch, in RDR1, is a more objectively "bad" character, But look at how they fleshed him out in rdr2. Was the cliff scene nearly as impactful before the release of rdr2? absolutely not! Playing as john, we were thrown in with a baseline knowledge of their history, and now knowing the full story makes the cliff scene quite the harrowing experience if youre able to grasp the intricacies of dutchs character, to look at him as more than "just a villain".

This turned out to be far more ranty then I wanted, but I am so tired of seeing so much mischaracterization and demonization of a character with literally days worth of content to look at and study that shows some of the points I see from people to just be blatantly wrong. Lol

[kitten-kokomo]

1:do you ship j x thad?

2:if so how do you think j would react to thad as a disassembly drone? also huge fan

1. YEASYESYESYESYES!!! Jhad is my murder drones OTP. I thought of it one day when I realized that (in my own world of headcanon and shipping preference, anyways) Uzi has N, Lizzy has V, and Thad has nobody, which, as a Thad Stan(tm), I could not let stand. And I realized J exists, and I thought about it and was like, no, and then looked at it again and was like, YES. They’re such a random-ass pairing but I love them so much?? Like, it’s literally perfect. Corporate’s bitch with emotional problems meets adorably stupid sweetheart Chad who is physically incapable of being hurt or hurting someone. And the first time they meet, she’s trying to kill him. And also the second time. And the third. Basically all of their interactions.

2. Okay, so, there are two options we can take here, depending on how angsty we’re feeling. (I’m assuming that this is a scenario where Thad was turned into a DD at some point). Option 1 is J being really sad cuz her crush friend snack she’s just saving for later that’s all, go away, is cursed like her. He’s never going to get to see the sun again, or see a worker and not immediately think of the oil coursing below their casing. He’s cursed like her, to live in searing agony forever, without even the freedom of death. Chained to suffering for eternity by a monster with yellow eyes.

(I, um, I have a lot of thoughts about how J is doing)

Option 2: oh no he’s hot

Also, bonus thoughts on if Thad had always been a DD:

I think Thad would still be pretty chill and friendly towards DDs, but also, our boy is an athlete. He would absolutely be a great murderer. I also think that he’d make little games out of it. Like, how many workers can he kill in a minute? Throwing a living one in the air, then flying up to catch and kill them before they land.

All of that would definitely not endear him to Serial Designation “Corporate Efficiency” J. But also, I think he’d grow on her by being his usual sweet (aside from the murdering) self, which she would then deny to herself because attachments are a weakness, especially where the Solver is concerned.

(Worker!J would find him laughable)

Also, oh my god stawppit I’m cryinggggggg your so sweet I love youuuuu <3

[songwolfwildblogs]

Sup I'm about to infodump for 1000+ words about my admin au. It might turn into fanfiction halfway through again

Part 1

So let's go over some fun stuff first then we go into the angst

So as mentioned at the end of the last infodump post, Error and Fresh are Killer’s sons. Error is adopted and Fresh is somehow biological.

Lemme explain.

Fresh was created via killer (who was still just admin at this point) finding a clutch of unhatched parasite eggs and using some of his magic to make them hatch being unaware that it would give Fresh his DNA via parasite magic-consuming bullshitery. Fresh was the only parasite in the clutch to hatch, the rest did not make it.

Fresh sort of imprinted on killer/admin when he hatched. Killer/admin was the first thing Fresh saw so in his baby parasite brain that meant parent.

Killer/admin had to deal with fresh constantly on his shoulder and having to hide him since at this point the council had formed and he didn't exactly trust the council fully.

Fresh grew up in an au specifically designed to cater to Fresh’s needs made by admin/killer, Fresh before he got his first body was already a bit spoiled but now that he had a body? All bets were off Killer/admin was spoiling this parasite rotten.

As for the whole error being adopted by admin/killer, I have no idea how that happened but Error is killer's son now (If you have any ideas lemme know)

The au fresh grew up in was unpopulated For the most part unless fresh needed a new host which was when admin/killer would make a new monster for fresh to take over indirectly teaching that anyone other than family are just potential hosts.

Fresh grew up watching mostly kids vhs tapes getting admin/killer to fix them with God powers when They broke. Fresh was also taught to sword fight by admin/killer but he gravitated towards a wiffle bat he found on the ground (error also taught him how to use explosives)

Fresh is kept a secret for a bit until Ink and Life (reapertale toriel) noticed that a few things were off. 1 there was an au that not even ink couldn't access, and 2 life sensed that a new life was created that felt similar to admin/killer, meaning that he had a biological kid somehow

So

During a meeting life asks about it and everyone just kinda slow turns while Killer/admin tries denying it before after being pressured admitted that he had kids and when someone asked what he meant by kids since life only asked about one, he refused to elaborate causing an argument to break out since the council don't know what to do with this information.

Meanwhile, error and admin/killer just kinda sit there awkwardly. Eventually, the argument dies down because the council has other problems. Eventually, fresh is old enough to leave the au he grew up in, and he begins to do fresh things. The council quickly learns (minus error since he already knew since fresh is his brother) that fresh is the son, life sensed which uh ya was kinda confusing.

Fresh has been offered a spot on the council since he is powerful due to his heritage. But he always refused because “that ain't my style”

Speaking of the council, (we’ll get back to the family dynamic don't you worry) why don't we talk about them?

The council members include:

The reapertale cast

Error

Ink

Dream

Nightmare

Core frisk

And Admin

The reapertale cast is mostly the same minus reaper getting his skull broken open but life tried her best to repair it (didn't really work but she tried)

Error is extremely loyal to his father being the only council to be flat out against the revolt other than Admin/killer himself. Error has a big sense of pride about his family (well mainly about admin/killer not much about fresh) and when his dad is overthrown he convinces himself that admin/killer has been wrongly overthrown and continues to stand by him. When killer faces trial and shows guilt he convinces himself that killer has been pressured and manipulated into seeing his past actions as wrong.

Dream in this au is a punk rocker who just wants to make music and shit but he was forced to joined the council since you can't exactly fight against the admin’s call. Dream is extremely critical towards the current state of the multiversal government and is constantly trying to propose solutions that would actually help people only for it to be rejected. When the revolt starts dream is the one leading the charge since he believes it will be the best thing for the multiverse

Ink is uh interesting. When the revolt started he didn't pick a side since he didn't exactly know what to do so why not just let the multiverse do its thing. Ink also has a weird relationship with Admin. Like admin will pick him up by the scarf when ink is getting rowdy and ink it's just a friend thing. Like admin finds ink annoying but ink thinks their friends level of weird.

Nightmare was also forced to join the council, he was doing his spreading negativity thing for a bit but then when he had to join the council he had to follow multiversal law meaning he had to get government approval beforehand if they wanted continue going on missions which everyone in the gang (including nightmare) hated and they tried to object to it but it didn't go down well

Core frisk is mostly the same but is probably the most qualified member of the council

The council after the revolt are still in place but begin opening seats to allow new members to be elected (error is currently on trial for his role in being against the revolt but I'd postponed for now and he's on probation, Fresh is being Monitored)

The elections are still underway by the time Killer is caught.

let's get into an ending I mentioned previously but didn't go into full detail about

The ending where killer takes back his place as admin

I call this ending “It runs in the family” (warning this a bit edgy)

This ending Happens when Killer does not improve and remains the same. He sneaks out of the castle, finds his sons, and after some fuckery he proves he's the admin… and the group decides To take back the throne. there are two ways this could go, probable version where they lose and get killed. The other version is where they win and take back the throne after a lot of bloodshed, nightmare and ink are spared due to nightmare taking in killer and ink because he didn't participate in the revolt and core frisk saw this coming and closed off the omega timeline

when killer takes back the place of admin he decides he was too nice last time and becomes even more of a tyrant and makes his sons the new council causing a Never Ending cycle of the 3 of them agreeing and not changing anything ruining the lives of those under them. Fresh and Error get some aus to rule over which you can guess how that goes (badly, the answer is badly)

But yeah the runs in the family ending is uh… ya

If you have any ideas for this au lemme know, also thank you to the neverniko discord for helping me with ideas aswell as my irl bestie!

Also if you have any ideas let know!

[kamenstranger]

Kamen Rider J + KR Trilogy Bluray review

This has been a long time time coming. I had originally planned to review J a couple years back, but once Media Blasters announced their bluray set in the middle of 2021, I decided to hold off until then. Then some other things happened with that set, but we’ll get to that in due time. For now, I want to focus on the movie itself, and we should start with the production. As I brought up way back in the ZO review, there were plans for a proposed television sequel/continuation. Keita Amemiya had very early concepts of an upgraded ZO with contrasting boots, gloves, and a scarf. The villains would be based on iconic Rider monsters like the Bee Woman and Cobraman/Ambassador Hell, continuing the modern homages the film had with the Bat and Spider creatures. These plans never went beyond concept art, as it was quickly decided to instead do another movie, mainly for cost and the uncertainty of the economy. But once a movie had been chosen over a TV series, ZO was pushed aside as it was felt the movie status was better suited to an original Rider. (although J would ironically look very much like ZO, just with a narrow mouth plate and light green, almost root like structures instead of the gold) Unused elements from Shin and ZO would make their way into J, primarily the stronger association with the Rider’s connection to the earth. Amemiya’s contributions would mainly be in the selection and designs of the monsters, while Shozo Uehara was convinced to write the script by Amemiya personally. Keep in mind, Uehara was the original writer on Black, and it’s still not clear why he left that project. But he wasn’t keen to work with Toei without some persuasion. J also had a fast turn around for the schedule, a mere 20 days. As a result of that tight turn around… well, let’s just say we’re gonna fly through this story synopsis.

We open with our protagonist, Kouji Segawa (Yuta Mochizuki) an environmental photographer currently documenting the dwindling wild life in the mountains. He and his friend, Kana (Yuka Nomura) are set upon by three extra terrestrial beings; Garai, Zu, and Agito, who serve a giant a techno-organic monstrosity known as the Fog Mother, whose offspring devoured the Dinosaurs. Kana is selected as a sacrifice for the soon to hatch new batch, while Kouji is killed trying to protect her. He is revived deep underground, chosen by earth spirits as a warrior to protect the planet from the alien Fog, turning him into Kamen Rider J. A talking Grasshopper named Berry joins him on his quest to defeat the aliens and save Kana. Sensing the immense power of J, the Fog Mother sends Agito to kill Kouji. After a brief struggle, Agito turns into a lizardman, but Kouji assumes his J form for the first time and attacks on nearly equal footing.

Can we stop to appreciate this creature suit? It’s like a much more refined mutant from Kamen Rider Black, and the detail is simply incredible. Adding to the that is the uniqueness of this being a quadruped in the style on Anguirus.

Speaking of Black, J’s shown with fleshy bits and smoke whenever he’s damaged, leaning into the organic quality. I'm not sure how intentional it was, but even Jiro Okamoto’s body language is very much like Kotaro in the film. Another thing I really like about this fight is that J struggles. He has an idea of what he’s doing but there’s also a lot of improvisation, and by the end of the relatively short fight he’s tired. Most Rider’s have an instant grasp on their powers once they transform, but J isn’t a skilled fighter and over exerts himself in his first outing. ZO also had a similar scenario with the first Doras fight, but J struggles even more and I kinda dig that. The first battle being set in a ravine is also a nice change up from the urban decay look of ZO. The fight ultimately climaxes with J Punching out the eyeball and brains of Agito, sending him down the cliff side. Kouji continues his journey, eventually coming to a foggy forest area where he’s now confronted by Zu in an almost dreamlike arena. She quickly turns into a Wasp Woman and attacks. We end up at the ever reliable quarry. This fight is also shockingly scary. I know we point to the early Showa Riders as being wildly dangerous with the actors way too high up, but this fight is downright terrifying to watch in J. At one point they’re suspended over a cliff side and it just doesn’t stop. The camera keeps moving with them and I legit got a sinking feeling watching it.

Amemiya later commented that this is one of his three favorite shots over his career, and I completely understand why. In a last ditch effort, she sends the two of them crashing into the Fog Mother, where Zu dies. But hey, Kouji is conveniently at the third of the Fog Underlings, Garai, who seemingly kills Berry and becomes a Cobra Man. Our third fight is the most unique visually, what with it being in the Fog Mother. It becomes claustrophobic as J runs through the fleshy tunnel system with sometimes the only light coming from the glow of Garai’s repurposed LaserBlade prop-- which is probably an in-joke from Amemiya’s earliest work being on the particle effects for the Space Sheriff series.

This is inner-cut with poor Kana being besieged by the Fog Mother’s newly birthed children, dangling in a cage overhead as they nip at her. The cage breaks and she has to hang onto the rope. It’s surprisingly harrowing. But the show stopping sequence happens after Garai is defeated: the “Jumbo Formation” scene, where J exits the Fog Mother goes Ultra sized to combat her. We start with low angle shots up of J, followed by shots of his feet as he walks, the camera framed behind a treeline in the foreground. We move up to waist height, Radio Towers in the foreground, and then finally a shot of J’s head from a mountain ridge.

The entire ending sequence is undoubtedly where a good chunk of the budget went. The Fog Mother is fairly complicated and detailed for this type of production and they wrecked the hell out of it with J whaling on it.

This is also a point of contention on some level. Amemiya was reportedly vehemently against it, as was Ishinomori. Rider, particularly of this era, was much less flashy, right down do the monsters just dying and not exploding. So this Ultraman style growing felt at odds with everything else, a bit too fantastical, even more than a psychic Fetus Grasshopper in Shin. But they needed a big climax for the film and didn’t have a lot of time. Ishinomori relented on the condition that it be a one off ability granted as a gift from the earth, which is heavily implied to be the case within the film itself. He did not want J defined by just being the Rider that could grow like Ultraman. So uh, yeah, interesting to see where things went afterwards in all the anniversary films. Still, its hard to deny the spectacle of the whole thing, culminating with J delivering what was quite possibly the coolest Rider kick up to that point with an atmospheric re-entry burning foot. We get one last fake out with the Fog Mother before she’s truly killed and Kouji is finally able to rest. Kana is saved, life begins to return to the mountain, Kana and Kouji return to the normal lives, and Kouji hears Berry thank him as we transition to the end credits featuring the amazing Kokoro Tsunagu Ai.

Kamen Rider J… is an odd duck in its placement, both as a Rider film and the works of Amemiya. It feels like a compromise, something that was needed to fill a slot at the Toei Super Hero Fair, in much the same way ZO was a year prior, but without the same benefits ZO had. Don’t misunderstand, there are some amazing visuals in this, particularly some of the stunts, which I must stress Yuta Mochizuki is doing almost all of the out of suit actions. Likewise, the creature designs are on point and the overall look is what you’d expect from Amemiya, Takayuki Takeya, Nobuo Yajima, and Hiroshi Butsuda. Massive talent all around.

If nothing else J looks surprisingly great for a film made in the post bubble era, given the obvious constraints of the time. J manages to have some impeccably great visuals above even larger productions. But it also feels like like a stop gap between full on flourish. J can come off as a more kid friendly test tun for the following years Hakaider, which ended up having a lot of visual and tonal similarities to J. A number of the fights lack music or cut it midway to emphasize the punches in much the same surreal manner. I’d go as far to say J and Hakaider are more alike than J and ZO. J doesn’t have a “Falling Pipe” sound, though. The areas that are affected by the bubble and time crunch is something you’ll notice in some areas- particularly with the shockingly sparse henshin sequences of which there is only one on screen. The Hero suit itself is also a tad too close to ZO. Supposedly this was done to convey a double Rider homage, a Nigo to ZO’s Ichigo. But it does kinda feel like “Easy retool” was also on the mind of the Bandai side of things. Where the film suffers most however is the story. J is one of the most painfully sparse Rider stories I have seen. Sure, ZO had a basic story, too, but hit on all the evergreen Rider beats while still having twists to the formula and some subplot elements like Hiroshi and his mad scientist dad. That last bit also allowed for a sorta older brother dynamic with Masaru and Hiroshi, giving a through-line of interconnection between our Rider and the supporting characters. J tries to recapture that type of concise story while still doing something different, which is simply too tall an ask, especially in half the time. We don’t even really know what Kana is to Kouji. Sure, Yūta Mochizuki embodies the older brother vibe well, but the connection Kouji has to Kana is tenuous at best. The one flashback we get after the Agito fight seems to imply she’s from around the area, has empathy for the dying animals, and she just happened to cross paths with Kouji. The entire plot of J is Kouji meets Kana, Kana is kidnapped by aliens, Kouji killed by aliens, earth spirits revive him as J, 4 fights that each lead into one another, J wins and story over. I did not abridge much at all in this review. This is even more basic than your average Showa episode.

I will applaud J for at least doing something a little more esoteric by dialing up the eco warrior angle and ethereal aesthetic. But while that part is more prevalent thematically, it also doesn’t do a whole lot beyond mentioning pollution and a dying ecosystem within the mountains. Sure there’s construction equipment at one point, but that’s it. Which that point also gets muddled when that’s just a brief aside to the main antagonists who, while polluters, are also aliens. So you’re denied the evil of a very human misdeed, which to me is kinda toothless. Ishinomori gets his environmental motif in, but to what end? I guess we at least avoid the cliché of all early 90s media having some generic evil logger, or Uehara’s early draft having a Galactic EPA create J (I’m serious.) But what we have also feels like Gaia/ZO leftovers, and ZO was already using elements that didn’t make it into Shin. It’s pulling from the same well, and J hit the last drop. Apparently, Uehara had a more fleshed out story in mind, with an entire love subplot between Zu and Garai. Most of that made in into a novelization, and most of it is superfluous. But there was a proper backstory for Kana which has her as an Alien with great power. That tidbit would’ve went a ways to explain why she’s seemingly alone in the mountains with no family and is targeted by the Fog Mother. But J’s Shooting schedule was a minuscule 20 days, less than half the time they shot ZO. Amemiya wasn’t even able to maintain a cohesive team as with ZO, meaning the action and SFX scene had to be handled separate just due to time. So even a couple of minutes of backstory might’ve been pushing it. Ironically, Toei would delay J by a month so it wouldn’t be over shadowed by the Sailor Moon R movie. Wise choice, but damn, they could’ve had more time to film and maybe given us just a bit more for a real cream puff of a movie.

Still, the team got visual shorthand right. The Fog Mother looks like a cosmic industrial factory, constantly spewing smoke or fog from her maternal monolithic monochromatic menage of machinery. It contrasts beautifully with J’s heavily Green visage and says more than the actual story does. And that’s kinda J’s entire deal. The visuals are nice, the vibe is cool, they have sweet synth tracks dangerously close to Vangelis’ End Titles from Blade Runner, and… there’s not much else to it. J was meant to fill 40 some odd minutes and not be boring. They got an insane scary stunt and a fairly damn good Ultraman homage, all in under a month. Mission accomplished. The fact it ended up sandwiched between a much better Rider Film and a much more interesting indulgent project only exacerbates J as a victim of it’s overly tight production schedule. But while it’s far less ambitious and less fun to analyze compared to Shin, and not as polished as ZO, there is merit to the picture itself, especially on a technical level that is still impressive given the deadlines.

On a slight downer, this was a swansong for many involved. This was the last Rider project Ishinomori had direct involvement with; this was one of Shozo Uehara’s last works before Ohranger, this was the last time Katsushi Murakami worked on Rider; this would be the last Rider Film to see the Toei Super Hero fair, which ended just a year later in ‘95 And this was the last Toku Rider for 6 years. It’s kinda weird and a tad sad to think that for a while the end of Rider appeared to be on a visually stunning but ultimately very corporate mandate to fill out a slot in an event that wouldn’t last beyond the next year. I doubt many involved thought Rider would be away for so long after this. Surely with the Annual releases there would be another short film or V-cinema? Yet it never came. But as Ishinomori said, Rider would return when the world wanted it. But that’s a story for another time. For now, I want to get into the real meat of this review. Media Blasters Rider Elite Kollection.

Let me ask a serious question, has there been a company still in existence outside Discotek that hasn’t done something incredibly stupid with a Toku Series? I think Criterion and maybe Arrow are the only ones. Shout had a shoddy record with Sentai subs, Millcreek is… Millcreek and clearly did not run any form of QC on their Ultra Releases, Funimation screwed up a perfectly good version of Shin Godzilla for home release, there’s the Sub mess with Shin Ultraman from Cleopatra. And now we come to Media Blasters turn. Oh boy, where to start with this? Before getting into the set itself, which I surprisingly have good things to say about, we have to talk about the stuff surrounding it. Cause this was announced way too early (7-12-’21) and then the Rightstuf buyout happened which affected Media Blasters since they’re mainly a hentai company and CrunchyRoll has a puritan stick up their ass about that. Then we had the limited edition release which had a slight error with the audio being de-synched on Shin-- which to their credit they did fix with replacements. This wasn’t a Cleopatra Entertainment level screw up.

No, the big thing happened when the standard edition went up a few months later. Before, the $70 limited edition set was the only option and exclusive to MB’s store, and it originally advertised the 1994 short film “Kamen Rider World” as being an exclusive to that edition. Why, I do not know. Toei is a notoriously weird company and it simply could’ve been too expensive for anything other than a limited release. Who knows? But then it was listed on the pre-order page for the $40 standard release. Understandably, a number of people weren’t happy about that. Now, I am against exclusives gating off such things. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but generally it’s a good thing when more people have access to the thing in question. Maybe something changed so it could have a wider release, which is good.

But I think it’s very likely a not insignificant number of people made a purchasing decision on what was advertised exclusive, only to then have it in a set that’s $30 cheaper. The only thing you wouldn’t be getting on the standard release is a slip cover, and that’s not worth an entire other bluray set. But then, because people complained, it was stated that it wouldn’t be in the standard release. Which seems to be missing the fucking point. Not only that, the interview with Keita Amemiya was also removed from the standard edition and that was never meant to be an exclusive in the first place. BUT THEN it was revealed that Kamen Rider World would be included with the upcoming Kamen Rider The First And The Next set-- What the fuck are we doing here? The optics of that are bad. Regardless of whatever the reasoning may be, that appears scummy as hell. Media Blasters put out a $70 set with an exclusive feature as a selling point, turned around and advertised the standard ver. as having it too, removed it before production, retroactively made the Interview with Keita Amemiya an exclusive to the $70 set so I guess those buyers got something unique, and then bundled the original Exclusive with what is-- let’s be honest, going to be the least desired Rider release.

I’m not saying they did that on purpose, I’m not saying that they squeezed an extra $30 out of 1,000 early adopters with false advertising. I’m not saying they’re trying to sweeten the deal on a shitty movie pack that Toei probably saddled them with. But it sure would look that way to a lot of people, especially the ones that plopped $70 down. Also just how inconvenient is that gonna be for the standard edition buyer to have the ZO/J team up separate from the boxset with ZO and J? You’ve already broken the seal of exclusivity, but now there’s extra fuckery on top of it.

In any case, I’m reviewing that very $70 limited edition Kollection. Why they spell it like it’s Mortal Kombat related is anyone’s guess. Also, no, I didn’t pay $70 for this. Strictly speaking I was waiting on the standard release and then everything happened and soured my tastes, so I’m borrowing this. That said, the standard edition is, as of this writing, still on sale and $10 off MSRP. So now it’s $40 less than the limited set. Keep an eye on it, I’m guessing it’ll go on clearance eventually. Or get it by whatever means seem fit to you, I don’t care. I am taking a look at the corrected version as well. As I mentioned earlier, that was something that MB made good on.

First and foremost I want to talk about the translation. The only experience I had with MB on the Sub front was with Hakaider, and that’s pretty much the only version I’ve known given how far back they got the license. But Rider is different, we have a lot of fan subs and I was curious how they would compare. Taking a look at the J subs we can see some differing interpretations from Media Blasters and MegaAnon. Often the same gist, but different tone and slightly changed contextualization.

There are some bits that bug me, like here where the spoken dialogue is literally “Kana-Chan” I can literally hear her name being said. I understand from the context it’s being inferred to get her to run. That’s no unheard of in subs, but it still bugs me. Another example would be the meeting between Kouji and the Earth spirits where he repeats an answer back as a question “We are Spirits of the Earth (Chikūjin)” “Earth Spirits?(Chikūjin?)” the subs simply put “What?” It’s not *wrong* but again, if you sub a term as one thing and that term is immediately repeated but now subbed differently, that’s distracting. That happens a few times with terms like Onii-chan being “Mister” in one scene, then “Big Brother” which is fine, the first two kinda work as synonyms and “mister” arguably makes more sense colloquially. But then they’ll follow it in the exact same scene as “Help me.” Why are you doing it that way? That's so weird.

That being said, it’s a minor point in the grand scheme and if it really comes down to it, I prefer Media Blasters. For one thing, they sub the on screen text including the credits. That is an immediate win. I mean even massive anime companies don’t do that. Looking at you, Funimation subs for The Woman called Fujiko Mine. Secondly, they spell the names right.

Yeah, the MegaAnon subs for some reason thought Garai was called Gain. Despite it not sounding like that and, ya know, that could’ve been looked up even in 2012. Japan has a wiki. How these compare to the TV-Nihon subs on the other hand is something I’m not equipped nor interested in looking at. I can’t imagine there would be much more nuance other than possibly having different choices in very select areas and TN spelling the names right. Media Blasters J’s subs are Fine. I wish they were more consistent, but they’re fine. I will however touch briefly upon ZO compared to the WeeabooShogun version. Weeaboo’s styling places a good emphasis on character voice and making choices that not only translate the meaning, but fit the respective personas. The most obvious example is with Winspector, taking Bikel’s “Leave it to me” catchphrase and interpreting it as “fuggitaboutit” because his character has a very prominent and distinctive accent. We can argue if North-Eastern Wiseguy is the best course for that, but it is at least thinking about that angle and how it’s an aspect of the character that wouldn’t come across to a non native speaker. You get the point across while also injecting personality into the reading experience. Now, ZO does not have anything as drastic as Bikel’s Accent, but I brought Winspector up to give you an idea of how WeeabooShogun goes about their choices. It’s not just about accuracy, but tone and personality-- all the more important with things that don’t have direct translations or synonyms and you HAVE to be interpretive. It is a part of translation as much as it pisses off certain subsets. Frankly, ZO was the one I was most interested in because of this comparison, and because it’s the one I have the most experience with.

Although first thing you’ll notice is the color grading is different, with MediaBlasters on the left and WeeabooShogun the right. I expected that with J because my JPN source was the DVD release. But both of these ZO are supposed to be bluray and I was shocked at how nice the MB release looks, since the one on the right is not at all bad looking. The first impression might be to say the MB release looks even better and less washed out...cause it does. By comparison the apparent JPN Bluray looks like the brightness was kicked up. But I’m not sure which is more accurate. The thing that gives me pause is there’s an introduction in the special features for the Kamen Rider World short, and it mentions how the short used stock footage from J and the color grading didn’t match the rest of the short, but that this bluray fixes that error. I don’t know if that means it didn’t match in the theaters and the home release fixed that and it’s presented that way here-- or if MB themselves did the fix for this specific release. Which I have thoughts about that specific case-- but does it extend to the rest of the set such as this, or did they simply do a better job than Toei on corrections due to age?

Cause it must be stressed that it’s not uncommon for a number of NA releases to have better quality than the JPN versions, and some of that is the color being more accurate. But is that the case here? I honestly do not know and I don’t feel completely comfortable commenting because of it. I would need someone in the know like FortMax to explain it. I would trust her analysis in the field. The most I can say here is the MB release has darker and more moody shadows and is a lot more natural looking. It’s really noticeable on skin tones, where the JPN source I have almost has a very slight green tinge. And frankly, I would not at all doubt that Toei would take a 30 year old print and do the bare minimal. Keep in mind, they uploaded the LaserDisc version of ZO to Youtube. So yeah, Media Blasters might have given us the better more proper “As released” version with the appropriate post processing needed for a 30 year old washed out source. But I can’t say with 100% certainty.

Back to the subs, things are initally on more equal footing because text is subbed on both this and the fansubs. But I’ll give MB a leg up here. Some of the subs on the WS version disappear even as the Japanese Text lingers on screen, MB keeps it up. Additionally, MB times their subs if a character trails off or pauses in-between dialogue. That’s harder to do than just keeping the words up during those moments, but it looks better when the subs match it. The text is also larger and easier to read.

And, if you remember my ZO review, you’ll know that one of the things that bugged me was Doras’ POV did not sub the text despite containing contextual information on what was going on, it was a bizarre moment, seeing as the credits were subbed. Guess what the Media Blasters release actually does? More points to them. Otherwise most of the differences are in phrasing and it’s typically very basic stuff like “You piece of Junk” vs “You piece of crap.” Other times the sentences are simplified and often for the better. I like that MB’s subs are more concise compared to WS, which maybe get a tad overzealous and overly descriptive.

That said, there are moments I prefer Weeaboo’s, such as here. “You haven’t believed a word I’ve told you” is more natural than “You don’t believe my story.” Which comes off as a bit stiff. Heck, “You don’t believe me” would even flow better while still being to the point. And yes, like the J subs, we have instances of a character’s name being said and them putting something else other than the name. Also a character stammering, which is replicated on the WS subs but not on MB, so you’re missing a bit of nuance. But there are less moments that stick out compared to J. One major thing that might bug some people is Media Blasters uses Neonoid for the creatures names.

In Japanese it’s Neo Seimeitai and that’s usually subbed as Neo-Lifeform. I prefer that, but I can’t fully knock the use of Neonoid, it’s what Toei uses in media printings for the Complete Works and the like. Or they put a z in Neo-Organism. There is however an argument that an official Japanese English designation should be sidelined for a better sounding (and often more sensible) one. The most famous example with Toei would be the official international name “Space Cop Gavan” being made as “Space Sheriff Gavan” which sounds far better with that alliteration in English. Still, I’m rather shocked by how much I liked this version of ZO. I wasn’t sure if I was going to show some friends the WeeabooShogun version or the Media Blaster one, but I think I’m going to go with Media Blasters. I have some bits I don’t care for, but overall I think the MB reads better thanks to the conciseness and timing. The larger sub size on the MB version also makes that easier. Oh, and if you’re wondering my thoughts on Shin, much of the same. Sometimes they make weirdly wordy choices like “Subarashi” being “It’s more than we could’ve hoped for.” barely having enough time to read it. Other times it’s more concise, and they sub all the little important signs. Now let’s shift out focus to the really fun part of the boxset, the special features. This thing is loaded. First up we’ve got three audio commentaries, one for each film. Shin has Matt Burkett and Kevin Derendorf, ZO has Mike Dent and Matt Burkett, and J has Kevin Derendorf and Mike Dent.

The commentaries themselves are great, have good information, and a passionate scrappiness that you get from fans of a particular subject gushing. Almost like the audio equivalent of a Fanzine, and I think that’s wonderful. The information therein is good and has citations to various mooks, books, and print magazine interviews to back up factual statements. Additionally there’s educated speculations of contemporary events which may have partially influenced Ishinomori at the time, such as the big goings on with Genetics in the 90s. Shin’s commentary in part focuses on the misconceptions (mostly outside Japan) of the movie’s misunderstood reputation. Much like “Ohranger almost canceled Sentai” being a widely spread falsity in NA, Shin had a similar occurrence with it being too dark and violent and therefore unpopular. It wasn’t, it was a #1 hit on video and well received critically. But Toei had a shift due to the economy, and while Shin did shockingly well, the reality is Anime and things geared towards women always did better than adult oriented works. So much like I brought up regarding the end of the Toei Comedy series, they wanted that Sailor Moon money to weather a recession. And the things they were making live action would be more kid friendly, hence ZO (in theory) and more so J… also in theory. The rest of the commentary has various trivia of the actors, filming locations, etc. Loads and loads of production history. There’s no dead air, it’s very dense with information. To a lesser extent that extends to ZO and J’s commentaries which, while far more casual and gushy, are still packed with a goldmine of information on the production details. I think my favorite moment in ZO was finding out the Gold Accents on the suit was supposed to resemble blood vessels, which I never considered. Knowing that also re-contextualizes the piping on the Black Sun suit in a similar light.

J’s on the other hand name drops a lot of creatives, and as I’ve said before, it’s depressing how little is written in English about the people behind the magic. As I was taking notes for this review it became very apparent watching this commentary how that still rings true. Nobuo Yajima in particular has credits going back to Invasion of the Neptune Men. He worked on some of the earliest Sentai, and when he was working on J he was also doing Kakuranger and BlueSwat. He doesn’t have a page on the Ranger Wiki, his Rider page only lists Shin Prologue, and Metal Heroes only lists the Rescue Trilogy among his work. Same thing with Sadao Iizuka. He only has big Godzilla and Ultra Pages, which sure, that’s his biggest contributions. But he did optical effects on Kamen Rider J. Hell he did optical effects for Toei as far back as Battle Fever J and as recent as Heisei Generations Final. He helped get Amemiya onboard to work on Gavan. Zero mention on Rider, Sentai, or Metal Heroes. Want something more than me pointing at a commentary? Dude has an auto-bio Sadao Iizuka and Hajime Matsumoto. Pages 299-301 lists his major work. But it’s in Japanese, and that’s kinda the issue here, isn’t it? Damn shame. Outside all that, there's curious tidbit on the commentary that indicates that the SD Rider OVA was intended to be in this set but they couldn’t get the license. I don’t know how serious or literal that statement should be taken, but that would’ve made it like the Japanese trilogy Bluray set which has that as a bonus. There is however a contrast to all this positivity. For one thing there are no subtitles for the commentary, so you don’t have an option available if you’re hard of hearing or deaf. That’s not at all uncommon, but I felt it should be mentioned. The bigger oddity is the discrepancy between the various audio sources. This was clearly done over a service like discord. Everyone is in a different environment, has a different mic, different audio set up, etc. It’s not unwatchable or even unpleasant, you’re not getting dogs barking in the background or sirens. But it’s weird that something on a $40-70 bluray box set has commentary with the phonic finesse of a livestream. I’m not going to knock someone not having a $150+ Elgato and a full sound booth-- the simple act of being in different locations or having different set ups will not guarantee zero dichotomy and white noise. Nor would I expect a tiny company like Media Blasters to fly three nerds out to record commentary on a niche cult trilogy. I have self awareness regarding the prevalence of the things I like, and this stuff ain’t popular enough for that treatment. This is the most sensible thing to do if you’re gonna do it. It beats a dirt cave recording.

...But it’s slightly irksome to hear something with that disconnect. There’s also an instance of talking over one another on the ZO track. That only happens once, I don’t blame the commentators for that, they handle it well, it’s brief, but that also should’ve been edited out. If you told someone this was commentary for the films uploaded to patreon, it would be believable, if shocking for how informative it is. But if you told someone they were part of a licensed Bluray set, they’d say you were lying. The commentaries are great, I’m glad they’re here, they enhance the boxset for me. I respect the effort and undertaking that went into them to gather all the information presented. Hell, you might even get a deeper appreciation for some of films afterwards. It’s still a selling point. But it’s also not polished and it’s something too keep in mind as I talk about this, again, $70 set. Had the audio not varied in the way it does, I might be saying the commentaries alone are worth picking up the trilogy, even if only one or two movies appeal to you. But I also love BTS information.

Next we have The Image Galley which is damn nice. Just lots of great high quality photos that show an insane amount of detail. Some are production stills, others are more recent photos of the suits. Every little imperfection, damaged piece and sculpted details you’d never notice in the original film are clear and crisp for your viewing pleasure.

I do kinda wish it was a normal galley and not a video file slide show, particularly since the zoomed shots don’t pan the full length of the photos, just the head and torso. On the other hand, there is a nice feature I’ve not seen anywhere else, and that’s subtitles for the Posters in the image gallery. That is very much appreciated. If I can give this set it’s subbing as much onscreen text as possible. Also the Image Gallery includes Kamen Rider World material. So on the standard version, are you going to get photos of the thing that’s not included? Certainly a choice.

Amemiya and the Grasshopper. This is an original interview made for the Bluray and is apparently now exclusive. It’s a sub 20 minute sit down with the man himself. But it’s not just a simple pointing of the Camera, this has proper editing and visuals aids. When Amemiya is discussing his inspirations and involvement with Tokusatsu we get images of Ultraman, Ultraseven, panels from the Kamen Rider Manga, and of course plethora of movie clips. They went all in on this. The discussions also give very brief insights to how he became involved with varying production departments, from creature deigns and SFX, to directing. Along with anecdotes and stories, like how Makoto Tsuji once told him a childhood story of seeing a bug/man monster in the woodgrain ceiling above his bed, which Amemiya used as inspiration for one of the nightmare sequences in Shin. Another of my favorite stories is him being asked to direct ZO after already seeing the teaser in the theater when he took his daughter to see Sailor Moon. That’s great. He also goes into not liking to separate the SFX team from the main shooting team in the “Tsuburaya” style, but rather one large unit to maintain consistency on location. Even when it came to the stop motion scenes in ZO, the rest of the crew would be on hand to make sure the lighting would be right between the miniatures and the sound stage. He also notes the difficulties of not being able to transfer CGI renders to 35mm prints, so they had to film the CG off a flat monitor and treat it like a composite and heavily adjust the contrast in post. We also get some insight on J, and a key factor of why the story is the way it is was because of some blowback that ZO received for being too scary for kids. So J was made to be “far more kid friendly” and dead simple to follow. I have question about that, given J has multiple impalings and was aimed even younger than ZO’s 10+ target.

Oh, and the Bee woman battle sounds way worse when you hear how they made the wires taut with 4x4s, and a taut wires snap if they’re not relaxed slowly. I don’t want to go over every detail here, but this interview is probably the best stand alone special feature on the set. This interview is also referenced in the commentaries which makes the exclusion on the standard version all the more baffling. I guess on the plus side you’re still getting the information of the interview relayed to you even in its absence. I wish I could stop bringing it up, but between the Photo Gallery having Kamen Rider World material and the Commentaries bringing up the interview, and J’s flat out telling you to watch The World afterwards, you’re going to be constantly remind of the shit you do not have on the standard release.

A Message from Keita Amemiya This is touted as a special feature but it’s simply the last 20 seconds of the Interview in its raw form. I’m… not sure why this is here. This is still apparently on the standard release. So again, you’re getting yet another reminder.

Kamen Rider World. Look, I’m gonna be real, this wasn't worth the extra 30 This set cost. But I also get it, it’s the principle of having something in tip top quality on Bluray, to have something that you presumed would not see the light of day again outside Japan, to have a more complete feeling package. That short itself I don’t have much to say about. It’s 8 minutes long and was made for theme parks. You expecting an analysis from that? This was a cute way to to smash some pre-existing material together with original footage utilizing pre-existing suits. J fights a giant Shadow Moon. Don’t buy The First/Next set just to get this if you missed out.

You know what isn’t in this box set, though? Trailers. Shin, ZO, J. None of the trailers or teasers are part of the set. We get a snippet of ZO’s Teaser (The one that used the Black Suit) in the Amemiya interview, but that’s the closest we get. Trailers are such a common inclusion that it’s very odd not to see them. I’d say it could be a license thing with the other Toei Super Fair stuff. But Hakaider had the Toei Superhero fair trailer with Ohranger and B-Fighter, and it wouldn’t explain the lack of Shin’s trailer which wouldn’t have Sentai or Metal Hero footage anyway. I dunno, maybe that might’ve been a whole separate thing to go through, similar to how the Movies of shows aren’t included in sets. But it is a shame when nowadays we’re getting Japanese special features like the Anniversary round tables for Gavan and Black, the ‘87 This is Kamen Rider Black TV special, etc. I’ll still take the commentaries and the like as a nice consolation to something I can just look up on youtube, but it is odd.

Final Thoughts. Hmm, not done one of these in a while.

I am very split on this set. Let me be clear, a lot of this isn’t even going to be applicable because the limited set is long sold out. You have my previous movie reviews, the J review here, and my thoughts on the commentaries and photo gallery. It’s all that’s relevant for making a purchasing decision at this point. Do you want the movies and the commentaries for 30ish? I think that $10 per movie with the commentaries as a nice little bonus isn’t bad. You’d typically pay that for a barebones release. The transfers look gorgeous, you get to have them on bluray, I think ZO alone is worth having. If you only care about the main features, which is the main point, yes this set will give you that and it does it pretty goddamn well. Bonus Material is just gravy on top, even if it’s not the most polished. But there are also all the little annoying bits to consider. And not to mention what went down with the short and the interview. If you take a look at that and think “Wow, fuck giving them money.” I would not blame you one bit. I love physical media, I get wanting to support your niche interests and smaller companies. Hell, I was pleasantly surprised how many things I loved about this pack. But even if you have zero interest in the special features, it still leaves a bitter taste knowing how they handled it. Some Super Bullshit 64 went down here and I don’t want a part of that.

Had all of that been different or they at least apologized but still kept the features in place, I’d still criticize the act and have all my little issues with certain choices. But I’d have less reservations. Especially going to Japan to interview Amemiya, which is a fantastic surprise… one that you cannot get now and should have been on the standard set. If I’m being brutally honest? I’m hoping future Rider releases don’t come from Media Blasters. Hell, I wouldn’t even trust a bare bones Lady Battle Cop release from them after this. By comparison, I’d rather get a write up by Mike Dent on a Discotek release and that be the only special feature made for the set. Is it as exciting as a full on commentary? No, but unless someone screws up the font it’s a consistent experience. Is it as cool as an original 19 minute interview with a creator heavily involved with the production? No, but I know that unless an entire disc is missing, that write up will be on the copy of X I buy.

And further more, this idea of limited or early adoption fucking blows and no one should ever fall for it. Really think of the multitude of companies I brought up and how often they have fucked up or straight up lied. MillCreek released Ultra Q with a damn copyright logo in the subtitles. Ultraman, Ultraseven, Return of, Ace, Taro, and Leo all have misspellings. Mebius has poor grammar and spelling in spots. Gridman was set to be resubbed cause they knew the original was so bad, and then the DVDs came out with all the errors and shoddy bootleg quality translation in-tact as an official product. Remember when Shout bragged about “improving” the picture quality of Zero-One on Bluray cause of deinterlacing-- which is both bare minimum standard practice and something bluray players automatically do. Remember how it and Kuuga only looked like ass online because most webplayers don’t do that and they didn’t know? Don’t forget Cleopatra Media screwed up the subs on Shin Ultraman and sent out replacements which also had an issue, and then they stopped responding.

And of course this very set from Media Blasters had an audio syncing issue on Shin. Yes it got fixed, yes I will give credit for actually doing so-- which is a depressing thing to say. But it still happened on a $70 limited to 1,000 production numbered set. And if that made you hesitate, you got screwed out of two features- one of which wasn’t even supposed to be exclusive in the first place.

I said this last time I reviewed Ultra, but Tokusatsu in NA is in a weird and kinda stupid place. In some ways it reminds me of how anime was pre-toonami and into the early TOM 1.0 era. It’s a clusterfuck of niche and often expensive products still relying heavily on fan efforts, but also a lot of dumb shit happens with alarming regularity. We’re stuck with whatever we get, at least physically. (Not to say we don’t get that garbage with anything super popular and mainstream, mind you.)

More than anything, I want to stress a word of caution. Cause NA Toku fans have been screwed over more often than not. No matter what gets licensed or how good or cool first release bonuses appear, no matter who they get from the fan community to contribute, no matter how much the limited stuff is enticing, no matter how much those features turn out to actually be of quality-- Don’t trust them. You have more reason not than to place faith in an unknown. Support the things you like, yes. But wisely. If a company has a good proven track record and you want to show support for that quality-- like Discotek, Arrow Video, Criterion, do so. Buy that DVD set off MediaOCD, Pre-order with healthy reservations on commitment, and let’em know you want more if you like it. Cherish the good, because despite the cynicism, getting the releases we have is still a minor miracle. We could not have gotten licensed Rider or Metal Heroes a little over a decade ago. But do not be blinded by that. You must have standards. And always. ALWAYS keep in the back of your mind that the relationship between corporate and customer is always trepidatious and can rot at any moment-- no matter how small, beloved, or boutique a label is.

[palesmokeisinthevoid]

Got done drawing the whole Greenhorne team for Bloxtopia

The quotes are all their War cries

Pales! He got some slight redesigns since the last time I fully drew him (mainly all his limbs are black because the fact the actual avatar he’s based on has a black tail while he’s light grey kind of irked me so now its kind of a gradient on his arms and legs (though you can’t see the gradient because of sleeves). Also added some details to his beanie since as it turns out his beanie has stars and piercings on it. He’s wearing Smokey’s hoodie over the Adventurer armor since that was the last armor I got before Pales became a chef, though he was actually wearing Bee armor. His sword is the Chopper Sword.

Pilby! Whatever deity is guiding this journey offered them a job and considering that their only other job offer is far has been from hell they definitely weren’t going to pass this opportunity. In game their “hair” was a wig so they didn’t have the bow but I drew them with it anyway. They had the Heart outfit which makes them look like a magical girl and I love that for them. Their mic is the star mic but I’m pretty sure I used an outdated version of its design so uh Woops.

Split! She’s laid back which means she keeps stealing things from people and she ended up pissing off Pales at some point by hiding behind them when a monster was targeting them. I like drawing centaurs in theory but in practice dear god I never want to again but I’m going to have to. I also can’t draw bananas. She’s got the suit vestments which. I also can’t draw clothes on centaurs. So that’s fun. And her wand is the Arcane wand which was the easiest part of Split to draw.

Spud!! Can you tell he’s my favorite/j. I saw a design for her a while back where she had a few gnarpian parts stitched to her which is screwed up but also I love tormenting characters I love with body horror. Also trans flag sticker on his bucket because yes. Also the reason I call him the sanest party member is because everytime another party member had a questionable moment he was the other character present (Ie, Pales with the “keep everything clean” interaction, Pilby with the “Calming fruit hypotheticals” event, and Split just straight up gifting Spud! An empty can) He had the penguin vestments but I wasn’t really sure how to draw them since I imagine them dragging across the floor would be a tripping hazard for Spud! So I made it a hoodie instead. Thought about putting googly eyes on her bucket but decided against it. Also her staff is the Alien staff.

Anyway back to frothing at the mouth about Miitopia an Roblox games, feel free to ask questions in fact please do I never get any-

[wutwutno1]

V and Uzi cuddling up in n's tumby 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💕💕💕💕💕💓💓💓 (writing)

Normally, Uzi would be panicking right now.

She found herself in a tight warm environment. The floor sagged slightly with her weight and the walls pulsed rhythmically around her. The vessel groaned and gurgled. A warm slime coated everything and soaked into her hair and clothes. She was, for lack of a better word, trapped inside this environment. Her only sources of light being her eyes, phone, and the soft neon yellow LED glow from the folds in the soft plush surfaces.

On top of all that, she knew what it was; a stomach, and not just any stomach either. It was a disassembly drone stomach. Her younger self would be panicking. Screaming, crying, punching, but right now she knew she was safe. After all, it wasn't just any disassembly drone stomach; it was N's.

Uzi felt safe in her friend's belly. It was nice and relaxing for her. Uzi leaned back on one of the stomach walls, the soft fabric cradling her as she turned her phone off to sleep. She could hear N saying something to someone, but it sounded too far away and muffled for Uzi to make out what he was saying.

She heard a soft gulp from above. She didn't think too much of it, after all, N did like to swallow small plushies and trinkets he thought Uzi would like. That was until the head of a certain disassembly drone popped into the space.

"V?" Uzi cried out, clutching her hands to her chest, "What are you doing here?"

V laughed as the rest of her was pushed completely inside N's stomach and on top of Uzi. "Well, I couldn't let you have all the fun. N kept talking about how much you enjoyed being in here, and I gotta say, you have excellent taste, Uzi." Uzi couldn't speak. This was her safe place. The place she went to escape reality, and especially V and her torment. But here V was, in her safe space and on top of her. She knew this was the end, it had to be. There's no other reason for her to be in here, and although N was here, he couldn't stop V from doing whatever she wanted to Uzi inside his stomach.

Uzi held her breath, waiting for the searing pain of the nanite acid, or the warm oil flowing across her casing from a stab or slice. It seemed like forever before she felt V do something. She felt V pull herself closer, wrapping her arms around Uzi's neck and resting her head on her shoulder. Uzi was confused. She felt V's tail wrap around her waist, holding her and V together.

"W-what are you doing?" Uzi managed to squeak out, holding her arms up trying to figure out what to do. V carefully placed the cylinder of her nanite acid stinger on Uzi's lips, silencing her.

"Back in the mansion, N would swallow me all the time. I loved it, and I missed the feeling. You know, he only does this to people he's close with, right? He never did this with J, no matter how much she begged and ordered." V chuckled to herself and buried herself further into Uzi's neck before continuing, "What I'm trying to say is, you have a good thing going with him right now. I'd even say he likes you, maybe even more than a friend." V smiles to herself, reminiscing on the good times she and N had before they were turned into monsters and forced to hunt their own kind. "Uzi, if I were you, I'd ask him out right now." To this, Uzi froze.

"V, I can't do that! I'm a worker drone and he's..." "Perfect," V interjected, "He's perfect and you know it, I can see it on your face." Uzi thought to herself about how awful it was to have a visor that showed her exact emotions. She was cursing the designer who gave drones the ability to blush specifically. "W-well, I know. I just don't want to ruin what we have, you know?" Uzi then wrapped her arms around V, returning the cuddle. She buries her head into V's neck just as V has done with her. "Uzi, I can tell you right now that's impossible. I see the way he looks at you when your back is turned. I see the smile on his face every time he thinks of you. Hell, who do you think he rambles on and on for hours about you too? My point is, he likes you, and you like him."

Uzi is stunned, had she really missed the signs? Hearing what V said, she began to wonder. She really liked him. She has had a secret crush on him since the prom and she was really hoping that what V said was true. "I guess," Uzi began, "I guess I like him like that."

Uzi could feel V do something with her hands behind her back but didn't say anything about it. V pipes up with, "No, say your true feelings." "I...really like N, and I would like to date him." Uzi whispered, barely able to get her words out.

"Now say it louder," V smirked as Uzi gathered the courage to repeat herself. "I really like N, and I would like to date him!" V yelled, "One more time! Louder!" Uzi shouted with all her might, "I really like N, and I would like to date him!"

Suddenly, N's voice came from behind Uzi's head. "Uzi? You want to date me?" V smirked and pulled out her phone from behind Uzi's back, which was on a call with N. Uzi's blush grew three times brighter and all she could do was sputter and squeak as V pulled back into her cuddle with Uzi deep inside N.

[theduchessofboredom]

🛫 Distance - Chapter 4 🛬

Well, that has only taken ages 🙃 This chapter has been released in German for months actually, but I made such good progress with my other projects that translating kinda fell off the plate a bit 😅 But here we go now!

Chap. 4: April II (Back on course)

As usual with a little snippet ⬇️

The sound of the front door opening snapped him out of his brief trance and shortly afterwards, as expected, his little brother trudged into the kitchen. “Hey Seto, sorry, we were still at the Black Clown.” The name of the store felt like a stab in his chest, but he didn't get a chance to dwell on it. “Someone new was there,” Mokuba simply kept going, “from another school, really cool and really good at DDM and Capsule Monsters, so we lost track of time a bit. Besides, I wasn't expecting you, wasn't the conference call about the new factory supposed to be today?” Another heavy hit, right in the pit of the stomach.  Since Seto didn't answer immediately, Mokuba simply continued to think aloud, “Come to think of it, this is already the …,” the boy turned his eyes to the ceiling while apparently counting down the weeks in his head, “... the third time in a row that the call has been canceled.” Like the raging waves of a storm surge, memories of Duke and what they used to do on these evenings broke into Seto's mind – something that unfortunately still happened far too often, even three weeks after their last … meeting. “Seto?” He winced slightly and banished the images and feelings back behind their invisible dams with a barely noticeable shake of his head. “We ... didn't get permission to build it. Besides, the costs would have probably exploded anyway. That's why I ... put an end to the whole thing.” That tug in his chest again.

Chapter word count: 6465

Chapters: 4/? Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga) Rating: General Audiences  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply  Relationships: Kaiba Seto/Otogi Ryuuji | Duke Devlin  Characters: Kaiba Seto, Otogi Ryuuji | Duke Devlin, Kaiba Mokuba, Pegasus J. Crawford | Maximillion Pegasus, Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler, Isono | Roland, Original Characters  Additional Tags: Mastershipping - Freeform, Long Shot, POV Third Person, POV Kaiba Seto, POV Duke Devlin, Interns & Internships, Long-Distance Relationship, Los Angeles, Romance, Drama, Sequel  Series: Part 2 of Common Ground Summary: 

Five months after the fateful school trip, Seto and Duke are still seeing each other regularly without the most important people in their lives knowing about it. The thing-with-us is good the way it is – who cares what it actually means? But their time at school is drawing to a close and ultimately, what Seto has secretly feared for a long time happens: Duke is offered a six-month internship at Industrial Illusions, opening him all the doors to a successful career as a game designer – an offer he can't possibly refuse. However, the journey back to the other side of the Pacific is not just an opportunity for Duke. While he has to confront the demons of the past, Seto has to ask himself whether his own future is really as clearly mapped out as he always assumed.

[amazingmsme]

your lib hcs were so good omg, do you have any for them as lees? i so need wiggly to be absolutely WRECKED, he’s so cocky and self important all the time, he needs to be taken down a peg fr. plus the fact that he made tickling his whole thing is so perfect for teasing.. “if you don’t enjoy this, why did you make it a part of your brand? it’s like you were thinking about it, like you wanted it!”

OKAY U GAVE US LER!THE LORDS IN BLACK HCS.

…we need the lee! Hcs now 👁👁 /j/nf

Do you have any lee headcanons for the Lords in Black?

Back by popular demand, it’s the lords lees in black! You’ve heard of tickle monsters, now get ready for tickled monsters! Again, this got p long so gonna put it under the cut

All the libs blush their respective colors

Based off the doll designs, all of their tummies are fuzzy & a different color than the rest of their fur, so they’re all pretty ticklish there, some more than others 😉

Pokey

He’s one of the more fun & “chill” lords, so it’s not much of a surprise that he just kinda rolls over & lets his bros wreck his shit

He thinks it’s fun & enjoys the feeling itself as well as the feeling of laughing freely

He has deep, rich laugh that sounds like pure joy itself. If you get him really laughing it can legit shake the room

Because the hivemind is tuned in to him, they know exactly when he’s in a lee mood. They coordinate their attack & take turns tickling him & he lets it happen because he promised them happiness & world peace & if this is what they wanna do he won’t stop them!

His most ticklish spots are his neck & belly because those muscles are most associated with singing (vocal cords & diaphragm) & ribs since they cage the lungs. Oh, & ears. I may be tickle trash, but I try to have some kind of reasoning behind why I headcanon characters as being ticklish certain places

I think Tinky & Wiggly are the ones who tickle him the most because they both have bully energy

Blinky

Funny how they just love watching other people get their shit wrecked but when it’s HIS turn he’s covering his face out of embarrassment

Arguably the most flustered, but Wiggly gives him a run for his money, he’s just more angy about it

Absolutely no idea why, but I’m getting ticklish hands vibes. Probably the long sleeves over the hands

Watcher with a thousand eyes=eyes in the back of his head=ticklish scalp? 👀👀👀

Has a really cute high pitched giggle that’s very bubbly

The shiny leggings & boots draw a lot of attention to the lower body, & it makes me think his worst spots are his hips, knees & feet. & the baggy hoodie makes me feel like his armpits are also up there

Tinky

This unhinged goatman constantly has to be put in his place by his brothers & tickling is the best (& easiest) way to do so

He absolutely provokes them to wreck his shit because he thinks it’s so much fun & he loves to laugh & be silly & make. & he always feels so proud of himself to dragging the rest of them down to “his level” but then they immediately make him regret it… then he does it again an hour later

Very open about how much he loves it, but still gets embarrassed when his brothers tease him about it

He has hooves instead of feet, & if you were to try to buff them up or polish them he’d be such a giggly snorting mess

He has a shrill, hysterical cackle like how he laughs in The Summoning

He has a lil goat tail & if you scratch at the small of his back he arches away with the loudest screech you’ve ever heard

His most ticklish spots are his ears/neck, thighs & knees, & hooves if you use a rough enough touch

His ears are super soft & velvety & if you rub them between your fingers he can’t stop snorting between giggles

Tickling makes him so hyper & excited & his bros have to work extra hard to tide him out

Nibbly

Besides Tinky, he is the happiest & most playful of the lib & always has that classic wide grin plastered on his face. & he has a bright, joyous laugh to match!

Because he has such a big mouth, his laugh is really loud & bombastic. He also has a really cute giggle that’s sweet as honey

Gets really flustered if you use his own techniques & teases against him

Can’t stand tickle bites or raspberries despite how much he loves to dish them out

The fluffy arm sleeves really got me thinking about how it probably tickles him on accident when he moves, especially around his armpits

Even when he’s not tickled, he’s just very giggly

Since his whole thing is eating, his tummy is one of his worst spots. Also his thighs, sides & armpits

Wiggly

What you’ve all been waiting for tbh, am I right?

Biggest fucking lee out of all the lib but is in such hard denial mode. The Tickle Me Wiggly doll was the first step to acceptance & he keeps trying to make excuses for why he chose the name

Like it absolutely could’ve been just a Wiggly doll, no tickling required but he made his choice & stuck with it

Keeps insisting he had to make something unassuming & innocent & all his bros are just like mmmmhmmmm 😏

He’s sooo easy to fluster but be careful, he gets mad when he’s embarrassed. Not his usual scary levels of anger but def pissy

Even tho he loves it he will always try to run away. Gotta keep up appearances

His laugh is shrill & borders on cackling. Sometimes it’s giggly & bouncy & broken up by hiccups like in the middle of Made in America

A very jittery & nervous lee. He laughs in anticipation & curls in on himself & tries to talk himself out of the situation he absolutely put himself in

All of the lords wreck his shit on a regular basis because it’s the only way they can knock him down a peg

Most ticklish spots are of course his belly well, ribs, feet & knees, but he’s basically a walking tickle spot

Hands down the most ticklish out of all the lords in black

Swears up a storm & when tickled. Also some pretty severe sounding threats that he’d never actually carry out

[marky-iplier]

Aight, writing idea. 👏

Wilford Warfstache meets William J Barnum. He accidentally takes a portal into the past and sees his past life unfold. As per a cruel 'joke' by Actor who tampered with the portal

AAA I may have taken this in the wrong approach but this one is kinda like that? in a way? I really hope so TT so enjoy :'3

Face The Past (Wilford Warfstache/William J Barnum)

 Jumping through realities was always something I could do. I wasn't sure how I was able to do it. The reality wasn't something people would perceive through their lenses, well at least through mine. 

I wasn't sure how I got here. The portal was supposed to lead me to another reality, but this seemed... familiar. A big manor, with a beautiful interior design, classy. Did Actor do this? How could he lead me here? I had no clue,

"Who... Who are you?" A familiar voice appeared behind me. I turned around to see a man with a mustache, wearing glasses, a yellow shirt along red suspenders. He looked like... me.

"Why do you look... a lot like me..." I put down the glass of martini on the nearest flat surface beside me. The man looked at me up and down, observing my look, 

"Where do you come from? How... How do you just appear in the middle of the room? I thought I was the only one left here," he stuttered a bit. Oh. A realization just hit me. No. No. Not this place again.

"Excuse me, I asked you a question," he continued. I tried to calm myself down before I slowly went on a full breakdown. This couldn't be happening, this man, the old me before all the catastrophe happened.

"Oh, William... I'm sorry that you have to get through this." The man was on the verge of going into full madness. If I interfere with this, would it lead me to this moment?

"I... How do you know my name? WHO ARE YOU?" I went closer to him as he backed up from me. He pulled out a gun and aimed it at me,

"Woah, woah. I do still have this habit till this day but I don't think adding the little fella into this is necessary." I walked closer to him as I planted my finger on the gun, and he slowly put it down, "Wh... What..."

"I know, everything must seem confusing for you but..." I looked down at the gun and back at him, "Everything is going to be fine. And the reality isn't as complex as it may seem." I could see the tears in his eyes as he fell to his knees, I turned around to see Y/n's dead body, cold, on the floor. 

The horror that my past self needed to go through, the grief, the confusion. I lowered my body to match his height, putting my hand on his shoulder, "I killed them. I... I'm a monster for this. I caused this loneliness inside of me. I may have gone insane and... and.."

"No. William..." I stopped for a moment, trying to gather words to convey at that moment, 

"...You are NOT a monster. This loneliness you're going through, it's not your fault," I continued. The words that I would tell my past self were finally delivered to him. Perhaps, Actor sending me back here with the hope of it going bad had failed.

He looked up at me and started hugging me, crying on my shoulder. I smiled softly, patting him on the shoulder. I felt something, inside of me... A joy? Comfort? I was not sure what it was. But this moment had triggered that feeling.