#What in the fourth warner sibling?

[neotragus]

Hmmm, you know, I just WONDER who the odd ball in this is.

[cinemaocd]

My april films list

The Scar/Blizna (1976): When I was in college my roommate was in a Polish class and she had access to a library of films and we watched a lot of Krzysztof Kieślowski and they are all good, I think. This one is about a mid level manager who inherits a white elephant of a project: clear a forest to build an industrial plant. The local people and the forest itself turn against him. It's magical realism with that Slavic touch of fatalism that always feels relevant.

Sweetie (1989): I saw this in the 90s at a film festival and so it was a bit of a shock when The Piano came out and it felt like you could not have two more different films at least on the surface, but both are directed by Jane Campion. Sweetie is a frank and often dark comedy about an ungovernable woman--a cautionary tale about the infantilisation of women, seen through the eyes of her long suffering sibling.  Akira (1987): Iconic anime with a beautiful smooth style. Copied so frequently it can look a bit basic to those who've grown up with its imitators, but the heart of it is a great score and atmospheric noir setting that make the set pieces like the night motorcycle ride through Tokyo the perfect accompaniment to millennial angst. Near Dark (1987): Katherine Bigelow's shot at the sexy vampire genre features most of the cast of Aliens as a troop of vampires who follow around a Confederate soldier. Bill Paxton does an entertainingly nasty turn as one of the baddies. Feels like an Aliens/Lost Boys AU and that is a compliment, really.

Cleo from 5-7 (1962): Not to be like this already in what amounts to a two sentence blurb, but the summary for this film describes Cleo as a hypochondriac? Excuse me but she is waiting around to find out if she has cancer. It seems to me that this is a movie about the way women are dismissed and not seen, even when they are famous and actually the center of attention wherever they go. On the surface she looks like a spoiled diva, but behind the scenes we see she is frightened and lonely. Anyway fuck the patriarchy and Free Cleo! Twelve Angry Men (1957): We rewatched this because my son is on some weird reddit sub thread discord where everyone rpgs as jurors from this movie...I'm not joking. Imagining a super niche fandom for Jack Warner. It exists. THe internet is a wild place. Anyway, this holds up. Don't mix up Syndey Lumet and Sydney Pollack like I did, lol. Embarrassing!

Ashes and Diamonds (1958): Polish film master, Andrez Wadja's be bop riff on neo realism, is a chronicle of the final day of German occupation, and a Hail Mary attempt by a young resistance fighter to wrest the country back from the Soviet Army which is already there. It's a hopeless mission, born of drunken desperation in smokey back rooms, one that comes apart in daylight. It's feels like Rebel without a Cause, but like...he has a cause? There a sense of tragic waste that mirrors Nicholas Ray's vision of restless American youth. Scoop (2024): A rather weak entry in the behind the scenes journalism drama genre that I seem to be unable to resist in any form. This has Billy Piper as a booking agent who manages the coup of getting Prince Andrew to sit down for an interview with the press about the pedophilia allegations. Your average episode of The Thick of It, probably has more meat than this made for TV film.

The Two Popes (2019): For those playing along at home this was my fourth time watching this. What can I say, two of my fave old lovies flirting away in Pope costumes. It's a comfort film. You are not immune to propaganda. Bulworth (1998): Featuring just about every working black actor of the era, this movie was kind of ahead of its time. About a liberal politician who is so depressed about the state of his party being owned by powerful business interests that he decides to commit suicide by hiring a hitman to kill him so that his family will at least get the insurance. Warren Beatty at his most ridiculous, this is underrated gem.

Great Expectations (1974) After revisiting this version, I went back to David Lean, which is no surprise. This is a made for TV movie that has a lot of familiar faces from 50s British film including Robert Morley and my boi Anthony Quayle. Michael York is Pip. Heat (1995): I might become slightly obsessed with Michael Mann after watching all this moody atmosphere punctuated with bursts of violence, with long passages set to a synth score that made Chris Fleming want to crash his car. Some beautiful lighting and camera work in the final set piece which takes place on an airport runway. Iconic and yet, bloated and overlong and I just don't know why I like it so much? Maybe it's Al Pacino's reactions which are just so off the wall in some scenes, and the disconcerting normality of the other people in the same scenes, ya know? Like they are in two different movies. I shot Andy Warhol (1996): Watched this for Jared Harris (who is adorable as always and terrific as always and completely sinks into the role as always) and came away remembering why Lily Taylor was a 90s icon/IT girl and boy can she act. Like wow. Andy Warhol is the title character, but it's more about Valerie Solanas the radical feminist lesbian who shot him because she believed he stole her work. (The movie implies that he did, a little bit...). Her SCUM manifesto remains controversial to say the least, but her story is a utterly heartbreaking, told with humanity and nuance. Actually a great choice for Pride month because it talks about gay history and it's not pretty or comfortable but it's necessary to learn. Hopscotch (1980): Delightful comedy starring Walter Matthau and Judy Collins as a spy couple. Combines actually decent spy thriller with actually funny stuff and it's romantic and sweet as well.

[olddirtybadfic]

Brotherly Love: If There Must Be Mpreg, Warn a Brotha (And Warn a Sista) (Part four of seven)

Warner brothers? More like War-garyen brothers.

Except without the dragons or pseudo-medieval politics.

Part one is here. Part two is here. Part three is here.

DEAD GOODFEATHERS DO NOT EAT

Content Warning: Consensual romantic relationship between two siblings; mpreg; aged-up characters; questionable knowledge of psychology; usage of mid-noughties slang that aged like milk (which Yakko will not be drinking); abortion mention; oh dear gods an author avatar and her avatar's furry friend; a fourth Warner; attempt at writing Scratchansniff’s accent out phonetically; big emotions, including: *extremely Gonzo voice* GUILT and *extremely Septa Unella voice* SHAME SHAME SHAME (ding ding); animane-y, totally insane-y, Dot is slut-shame-y

-O-o-O-o-O-

Yakko was just coming back from getting the newspaper. This entailed annoying Ralph, the security guard, until he balled it up and threw it at Yakko.

He was walking along, tossing the balled-up paper up and down with each step when he noticed Hello Nurse entering the psychiatric building.

“Wait a minute….Dot went to the convention with Hello Nurse,” Yakko thought.

He thought back to how the bathroom door was closed when he walked past—it couldn’t have been Wakko in the bathroom, because he’d just left him in the bedroom. Then it hit Yakko.

Dot was home.

Yakko shoved the paper in his pocket and ran the rest of the way home.

“How long has she been home?” he wondered. “And when did she come in? Oh my god…Did she see us in bed, naked?!”

Yakko flew up the ladder and into the tower.

Everything was quiet. There was no sign of Dot or Wakko in the front room.

Yakko went to the kitchen. They weren’t there either.

The bathroom door was closed and Yakko could hear the sound of a blowdryer from within. That had to be Dot.

Yakko entered the bedroom, where he found Wakko, sitting on his top bunk, crying softly.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Yakko said, scaling the bunks. He reached a hand out to comfort Wakko, but he pulled away. The sobs racked his small body.

“Dot knows,” Wakko sobbed.

Yakko was afraid of that. However, he was still shocked. A tiny part of him still had hope that she hadn’t found out.

“She…knows?” Yakko said, his horror growing each second.

“I don’t know how, but she knows. I thought she was gone for the weekend,” Wakko continued to sob.

“Well….It’s not that bad. At least we don’t have to sneak around anymore,” Yakko said, forcing optimism. “She’ll probably give us lots of space.” Yakko realized the minute he finished speaking that this was the wrong thing to say.

“It’s all my fault. I seduced you into doing this. I’m such a whore.” Wakko hid his face in his pillow.

“Those were Dot’s words, weren’t they?” Yakko thought, suddenly angry at his sister. “No. If I hadn’t told you about my feelings, you wouldn’t have acted the way you did,” Yakko explained, desperately trying to stop his brother’s tears. He reached out a hand to hold Wakko, but Wakko gently pushed it away.

“We can’t,” he said simply.

“We….can’t touch?”

“If we touch, I’ll only be tempted to seduce you again. I’ll just ruin you.”

“I’m already ruined, and none of it is your fault,” Yakko started.

“Yes, it is!” Wakko snapped. “Please, just….Let’s not touch each other anymore,” he whispered, his voice cracking.

“Okay.” Yakko had to comply, but on the inside, he was fuming at Dot.

-O-o-O-

He caught Dot coming out of the bathroom. Dot only stopped to glare at him for a few seconds, then stomped away. Yakko grabbed her by the shoulder before she could disappear down the hall.

“Shouldn’t you and your brother be heading out to a shack in the woods now?” she spat, trying to shake Yakko off.

“Dot, we have to talk,” Yakko stated firmly. “And besides, he’s your brother, too.”

“Not after what he did with you, he’s not. I don’t even know that boy,” Dot hissed.

“Well, we still need to talk.” Yakko refused to give up. Even if it took him all night, he’d get Dot to apologize for yelling at Wakko.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Are you shiggity-sure about that?” Yakko leaned in close to Dot.

Dot crossed her arms and glared at a point off to the side for a few seconds. Then she sighed angrily and turned her glare on Yakko. “Y’know, I’d expected better from you.”

“Pardon?” Yakko raised a non-existent eyebrow.

“For god’s sake, Yakko, you know what people think of incest. You understand how gross it is to be attracted to your blood relatives. You know better than to try to seduce your brother!” Dot scolded.

“And Wakko doesn’t?” Yakko found his anger rising again.

“Yakko, I don’t think Wakko even knows what galaxy we live in. I seriously doubt he could grasp such a complex issue as incest.”

Yakko couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Did she seriously think Wakko was stupid?

“But that’s not the point. If he started making advances on you, why didn’t you stop him? If you understood what would happen if you went too far, why didn’t you do something?”

“Maybe I didn’t want to!” Yakko said sharply. “Maybe I enjoyed it! Yes, you heard correctly. I enjoyed it!”

Dot’s glare dropped and was replaced by an expression of pure horror. “What….How could you?!”

“How could I? Maybe because I love Wakko! Not in that way, in that way. It was all me; I told him I loved him and he was just reacting to it. Did you get that? I made the first move. It was my fault.”

“Oh my god….” Dot’s expression was now one of disgust rather than horror.

“And because I love Wakko, I don’t appreciate you putting him down like that. He may not seem it to you, but he is just as smart as either of us and is perfectly capable of understanding incest. Do you know that he’s the one who thought to hide it from you so we wouldn’t get caught? Did you ever think that just maybe he might be hurt by you calling him a whore? Did you ever think that maybe he might have regrets over the whole thing? I’m sure you didn’t because you don’t know shit about our brother!” Yakko yelled.

They were right outside the bedroom door, but he didn’t care. if he couldn’t touch Wakko, he could find other ways to show his love.

“Well, after that little rant, I do know something about both of you. You’re both perverts and I want nothing to do with you. I’m going to stay with Hello Nurse.” With that, she wrenched herself away from Yakko and stomped off to pack her things.

-O-o-O-

Yakko’s first instinct was to grab Dot again, sit her down, and give her a long talk about this whole thing. His second instinct was to give her a good slap.

It was his third instinct, the one that told him to walk away, that won. He set off towards the bathroom to take a nice hot shower to relax his nerves. Or maybe a nice cold shower to relax his….other muscles.

As he was walking, the closet door next to the bathroom suddenly opened and Yakko was pulled inside.

Yakko groped around, trying to get his bearings, until a flashlight turned on. He looked towards the source of light and saw Wakko, sitting behind a box. Immediately, Wakko threw himself at Yakko.

“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Wakko said softly, pressing himself against Yakko. A few seconds later, Yakko could feel Wakko’s tears wetting his fur.

“It’s okay now. I’m not against continuing this,” he soothed, stroking Wakko’s ears. “We’ll find some way to work it out.”

“How can you be so sure?” Wakko stared up at Yakko with teary black eyes.

“I’m the oldest brother. It’s what I do,” Yakko responded. He looked around. “Since when do we have a closet here?”

Wakko sniffled. “Since now.”

“All righty then.” Yakko went back to holding Wakko.

The door swung open and they were met with a very disturbed and angry Dot.

“You two are seriously fucked up and not in the good way,” she hissed before stomping away.

Wakko turned away from Yakko, curled into a little ball, and continued to cry.

“Wakko…” Yakko reached out for his brother, but Wakko pulled away.

Yakko didn’t care; he pulled Wakko towards him in a warm embrace. This time, Wakko didn’t resist as Yakko half cradled him in his arms, half held him in his lap.

“Don’t worry. Everything’ll work out,” Yakko soothed. “Somehow.”

-O-o-O-

By the next morning, Dot had packed up and spent the better part of the early morning at Hello Nurse’s house.

Yakko and Wakko spent the night in Yakko’s bunk. It would have been too weird, being in their own bunks, knowing that Dot wasn’t sleeping between them. Sure she’d been away at night earlier that week, but they'd known she would come back. Now, they weren’t so sure she’d ever want to talk to them again.

Wakko fell asleep quickly, having worn himself out with the crying. However, Yakko lay in bed, awake, until at least 3:00AM.

“Is what we’re doing really so wrong? I mean, society says it’s wrong, but society says that premarital sex is wrong, and people do that anyway. There are so many people out there who don’t love each other the way Wakko and I do, and they have sex and go through the motions of being in love, even to the point where they’ll get married! And we’re not hurting anyone so what’s wrong with it?” Yakko pondered.

In a flash, it came to Yakko. He knew who could help them.

He ran to the phone to leave a message on Dr. Scratchansniff’s answering machine.

-O-o-O-

The next morning, Yakko somehow managed to wake up at 8:00AM. He was about to roll over and go back to sleep when he realized something was missing.

Wakko wasn’t in bed with him.

Yakko sat up, worried. What if Wakko had run off? What if he decided it was best for them to not even live together? What if he went to go get Dot?

“Dot was pretty pissed off at us,” Yakko thought. “Who knows what she’s capable of doing to Wakko?”

Yakko sprang out of bed and through the bedroom doorway. As he was walking down the hall, he heard a sniffle coming from within the bathroom.

The door was open a crack so Yakko could see Wakko, kneeling over the toilet, his body heaving. A few seconds later, he began to vomit into the toilet.

Yakko pushed the door open and quietly entered. “You okay in here?” he asked, just before Wakko started vomiting again.

“I’m fine now, I think,” Wakko responded, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It was probably just something I ate. That green cheese in the back of the fridge did look a bit dodgy.”

Yakko gave Wakko a sideways look. He’d seen Wakko eat worse things (like gum from under a theater seat), and he’d been perfectly fine afterwards.

“Are you sure you’re not coming down with something?” Yakko asked, putting a hand on his brother’s forehead. No sign of a fever.

“I’m sure. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.” Wakko closed the toilet lid.

“Would you be up to a visit with Scratchy, then?”

Wakko perked up. “What are we gonna do to him this time?”

“Slow down, Wakko.” Yakko put his hands on Wakko’s shoulders to calm him. “We won’t be doing anything like that this time. Scratchy’s going to help us get Dot back, and he’s been helping me since before I told you about my feelings for you, so we should take it easy on him. Besides, I don’t want you to overexert yourself and start getting sick again.”

“Yakko, I’m fine. But I’ll be good.” A little halo appeared over Wakko’s head.

The brothers had an early appointment at around 9:00, so they had to leave shortly.

Yakko was beginning to have second thoughts about scheduling the appointment so early. He hadn’t gotten a full night of sleep, but he was fine. It was Wakko that he was worried about. He didn’t think his brother was as ��fine” as he said he was. He’d seen Wakko run to the bathroom a couple more times. He’d said that he “just had to go really badly,” but when Wakko told him he’d pass on having breakfast, Yakko knew something wasn’t right.

It was around 8:30 when Yakko was fully convinced that Wakko was a little more than under the weather. He’d had to wake his brother up after he’d fallen asleep—while standing at the front door.

It was too late to cancel and reschedule the appointment. Besides, they needed help now. The sooner they got Dot back, the better.

Still, he couldn’t have Wakko climbing down the ladder in such a condition. Yakko conjured up an elevator and the two rode down without difficulty.

By the time they got to the psychiatry building, Wakko was leaning weakly against Yakko. From his glassy-eyed expression, Yakko could tell Wakko was just barely aware that they had arrived.

They took a seat on the couch in the waiting room, instead of their usual chairs. It would be too weird, sitting in those chairs without Dot, and the couch would definitely be more comfortable right now.

For once in his life, Yakko actually sat quietly in the waiting room. This was because the minute they sat on the couch, Wakko fell asleep.

Yakko gazed down at him. Although he was sleeping, Wakko’s expression was anything but peaceful. Yakko could see tiny beads of sweat on the tense face.

Yakko was just as tense about the whole situation as Wakko; he just didn’t show it as much. If he freaked out, Wakko would freak out more than usual, and there had to be at least one rational person around. Usually that would be Dot, if both of the brothers were incapacitated, but of course she wasn’t speaking to them.

“If Scratchy can’t help us, nobody can,” Yakko thought, almost ready to just throw in the towel. Clearly, his feelings for Wakko weren’t going to change. Dot was pretty set in her ways, so she wasn’t going to suddenly start liking their relationship. If they really couldn’t get Dot back, then to hell with it.

Not that Yakko wanted to live without his sister. He just realized that sometimes you had to know when to quit.

Looking down at Wakko again made Yakko realize he couldn’t quit. If they couldn’t get Dot to even speak to them, Wakko would continue to blame himself for the whole thing. Yakko realized that it was probably nobody’s fault, but carrying this kind of emotional burden could seriously harm a person—and it would be made doubly heavy, considering how emotional Wakko could get. Would he start punishing himself? To what extent?

“No,” Yakko thought. “We’re gonna get Dot back, whether she likes it or not.”

Just then, Hello Nurse came into the waiting room. “Dr. Scratchansniff is ready to see you now,” she announced.

In his office, Scratchy began to mentally prepare himself for the visit. Sure, the Warners seemed to be backing off on the zaniness lately, and Dot wasn’t with them this time, but the brothers could be pretty boisterous on their own. In fact, they might be even zanier as Dot was sometimes the force that curbed their insanity.

So Scratchy was more than a little surprised to see Yakko walk in quietly, supporting a sleepy-looking Wakko. He watched as the brothers climbed onto the couch and settled in, Wakko leaning heavily on Yakko. Yakko slid his arm around his little brother, then looked up at the psychiatrist.

“He’s not feeling very well,” Yakko explained.

“I see,” Scratchy responded, examining the glazed-over look in Wakko’s eyes. “Are you sure you don’t vant to reschedule?”

“I’m fine. Really,” Wakko insisted, his voice quiet.

“All right.” Sratchy sat back down in the chair in front of the couch. “So if you don’t mind my asking, vhy is Dot not vith you?”

“That’s what we needed to talk to you about,” Yakko answered, looking a little pained. “You know how I told you about my feelings for Wakko?”

“Ja?”

“And you told me to write them down?”

“Ja?”

“Well, I did, and it helped. For a while. Then my feelings started to get stronger, and well….”

“Here we are,” Wakko concluded, cuddling up to Yakko.

“Here you are? Vhat do you mean, ‘here?’” Scratchy was confused.

The brothers realized they’d skipped a lot of vital points. It wasn’t that obvious that they loved each other in a romantic way based on their actions right now.

“I told Wakko that I loved him, fully expecting him to be disgusted and hate me,” Yakko started.

“But then I told Yakko I loved him back,” Wakko continued.

“So we were all happy and in love until Dot found out. She yelled at Wakko, called him a whore—”

“Among other things,” Wakko interjected.

“And then she verbally ripped me a new one. Then she said she wanted nothing to do with us, and left.”

“And here we are,” Wakko finished.

Scratchy was shocked. Not by Yakko and Wakko’s incestuous relationship, but by Dot’s reaction. He never thought he’d see the day the Warner trio broke up. He’d thought nothing could get in the way of their bond. Plainly, he’d been wrong. Now, sanity be damned, he needed to fix it.

They continued to discuss the details of the past few days until the timer beeped. Their hour was up.

“Vhat I think you should do is come in for a group appointment, maybe a few days from now, ja? Dot is staying vith the Nurse right now, but maybe you should take a short break from each ozher before confronting her.”

Yakko perked up. Yes! That was exactly what he needed. He was only likely to yell at Dot right now, which wouldn’t help them make amends any faster. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. And Wakko….Well, if Dot was still angry at him, he didn’t seem to be in any condition to take her on right now.

Yakko scheduled an appointment for two days from the present one.

-O-o-O-

The brothers arrived home shortly after 10:15. Tiredness finally kicked in, prompting Yakko to go back to bed until noon.

Wakko tried very hard to cuddle up to Yakko and do the same, but his body wouldn’t let him. Running to the bathroom to toss his cookies was really getting annoying, especially since he hadn’t even gotten to eat yet.

As he was wiping his mouth for what felt like the 785th time that morning, he noticed his gag bag behind the toilet. He also noticed that something was nearly falling out of it.

Wakko picked up the something, which was a small box with the words, “Mistake-Free Test” written on it. He recognized it as the pregnancy test from that commercial that only came on late at night; it was the one with the stream hitting the little plastic stick. He snickered inwardly. He never knew what would come out of the gag bag, did he?

Then Wakko’s thoughts came to a screeching halt. Usually, he pulled things out of the gag bag because he instinctively knew he needed them. Sometimes he didn’t know what exactly he needed, but just reached in and got the perfect tool for the situation.

The next few thoughts came slowly, but surely. He always pulled what he needed from the gag bag. He’d just pulled out a pregnancy test. A few days ago, he and Yakko did the dirty. Toon gestation was very different from human gestation….

Almost without thinking, Wakko sat on the toilet, pulled out the plastic stick, and peed on it. Then he waited the obligatory one minute for the results. While he was waiting, he read the instructions. Blue meant negative, pink meant positive.

Wakko checked his watch (which magically appeared on his wrist). Only twenty seconds had gone by. It was only a minute, yet it was taking a week.

Wakko alternated staring at his watch and staring at the stick. The last second of the minute ticked away. The result screen was still blue. Wakko’s heart soared.

Then it hit the ceiling and came plummeting back to earth as the screen suddenly turned from blue to pink.

Wakko snatched up the box. “Works in….one minute and one second?!” he read. “What the hell kind of random waiting time is that?!”

In the bedroom, Yakko couldn’t sleep. Despite his outward behavior, he really didn’t hold out much hope for getting Dot back. Sure, Scratchy was a good psychiatrist, but this whole incest thing was too big to be solved. Yakko couldn’t get rid of his feelings for Wakko using his journal, and Dot would never approve of their relationship. But what the hell, he’d give it a try. What did they have to lose?

Yakko finally realized that he wasn’t going back to sleep. He was too wired. So he decided to go in the bathroom and splash water on his face. Then maybe he’d stare intensely at his reflection while piano music played, possibly with a spinning effect.

When he got to the bathroom, the door was mostly closed, but through a tiny crack, he could see Wakko sitting in front of the toilet.

“Wakko?” Yakko called softly. Wakko didn’t answer. He seemed to have not even heard Yakko.

Yakko pushed open the bathroom door, fearing his brother was hurt, or even worse, that he’d hurt himself on purpose. “Wakko, are you okay?” he asked.

Wakko was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet, staring at something in he held in his hands. As Yakko came closer, he walked around in front of Wakko to see what he was holding, then stopped dead in his tracks when he saw what it was.

It was a pregnancy test.

Thinking fast, Yakko saw the instructions sitting on the counter, snatched them up, and started to speed-read them until Wakko spoke.

“It’s positive.”

Yakko turned around, absolutely speechless. Personally, he didn’t like these times when he could think of absolutely nothing to say and he didn’t like that they were becoming more common.

Then Wakko turned to look up at him with an utterly destroyed look on his face and the words came rushing back.

“Oh my god….I can’t believe I did this to you….It’s mine isn’t? Of course it is, you’ve never done that with anybody else. Oh god, I never wanted to hurt you. This is all my fault. What have I done? I never meant for you to go through all this. Oh god, what about Dot! She’s going to find out about it sooner or later. She’ll never approve. What have I done to you….”

To Wakko’s complete surprise, Yakko broke down and began to cry. Yakko had always tried to be the strong, fearless older brother, never letting anything bother him, always the optimist. And most importantly, he never cried. Now, he was curled up in the fetal position, bawling his eyes out. Wakko knew exactly what his brother needed and it wasn’t in the gag bag.

Yakko suddenly looked up to see Wakko walking towards him and putting his arms around him.

“Let me be the strong brother this time,” Wakko whispered.

Yakko succumbed to the embrace. His tears subsided slightly as Wakko quietly comforted him, assuring, “Everything’s going to be all right.”

-O-o-O-

The next day, they went to their group appointment and it went horribly. Dot showed up, no less angry about the situation. They had started to talk about the whole thing, until Yakko said that Dot had to know about a recent discovery.

The minute Wakko told Dot he was pregnant and it was Yakko’s child, any chance they had of getting Dot to move back in hurled itself out the window. She instantly went into “destroy Wakko mode,” calling him a “filthy strumpet” and then yelling at Yakko for being a “disgusting pervert.” Then she yelled about how Wakko should abort the fetus because no child deserved to have the disgrace of having such perverts for parents. Wakko ran crying into the inner office, while Yakko shouted Dot down for saying such horrible things. Soon, blows were exchanged and Scratchy had to pull Yakko and Dot off of each other while Hello Nurse comforted a wailing Wakko.

In the end, Dot refused to ever speak to her brothers again. A week later, she packed up her things and left Hello Nurse’s house for Domino City—located on the east coast of the United States, a whole continent’s width from Burbank.

Five years later, Yakko looked across the water tower at Wakko playing with their son, Zakko. He was a very healthy, happy child, especially since the nature of his parentage was kept a secret from him. Both brothers decided that until Zakko was old enough to understand, he was better off not knowing. They didn’t want to scar his little brain and make him feel like it was his fault Dot left, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.

Yakko gazed admiringly at Zakko. He was an adorable little pup; he looked just like Wakko, but he’d clearly inherited Yakko’s personality. He’d been talking since he was little more than a year old and he could always think of something funny to say. But sometimes, when he was lost in thought or asleep, his tongue would slip out of the corner of his mouth and he’d look even more like a mini-Wakko.

Then, if Zakko struck a cute pose after saying something particularly funny, he remind Yakko of Dot.

Yakko had to wonder how Dot was doing. Was she faring as well as he, Wakko, and Zakko were? Was she happy? Would they ever see her again? Would she change her mind if she could see how wonderful her nephew was?

Zakko came to sit on the couch and watch TV while Wakko went to check on dinner. Yakko had noticed that Wakko had changed significantly since Zakko was born. Sure he was still wacky, but not as much as he’d been before. He’d toned down the gross behavior as well, and seemed overall more mature. The only things that hadn’t changed was the fact that he kept his gag bag and he still wore his cap.

Yakko had changed, too. He was still talkative, but he greatly toned down the amount of off-color jokes he made. He’d also put his talents to use teaching Zakko the countries of the world, but of course, he had to update his song a little. And he and Zakko could talk for hours on end, while Wakko added to the conversation from time to time.

He’d also started wearing a shirt, but that was really not a big deal.

During a commercial break, Zakko went to go set the table. As he was going back into the living room, he noticed a picture hanging on the wall by the doorway. It was a peculiar picture. He figured it was from when his father and uncle were younger. Actually, they didn’t look too different from the way they did in the photo, so that was why he could recognize them.

In the photograph, three kids were posing. Yakko, on the left seemed to have a knowing smile on his face, like he’d just figured out something really funny. He had one hand in the pocket of his slacks, which were still too big for him. In the middle was Wakko, in his blue sweatshirt and red cap. He had a blissful expression on his face, his tongue dangling from the corner of his mouth. He held a humongous mallet behind his back.

The third kid, a girl, puzzled Zakko to no end. She resembled Dad and Uncle Yakko, but he’d never seen her before. In fact, he’d never even heard Wakko or Yakko mention a female Warner.

Yakko noticed Zakko looking at the picture and had to sigh. He’d tell him about Dot one day, he swore. But he just wasn’t ready right now.

“Uncle Yakko, who’s that girl with you and Dad?” Zakko finally asked.

Yakko gazed at the picture a few seconds longer before answering, “Someone we knew a very long time ago.”

The End

“Wait, wait, WAIT!”

In a white void, a tiny mammoth was yelling. The mammoth sat next to a teenaged girl, sitting cross-legged. The girl held a clipboard with a stack of filler paper and almost too-short-to-use pencil, which she’d dropped when the mammoth started yelling.

The mammoth, whose name was Hrothella, stood up, her hands on her hips. “You cannot end the story like that!”

The girl (whom we will call Fae), having recovered from the (very) slight surprise of the mammoth yelling, was unaffected. “And why not?” she responded dryly.

“Because it’s terrible! Sure, it’s written okay, but it’s the most depressing thing I’ve seen since I read Les Miserables!” Hrothella answered. “The Warner siblings break up forever? What kind of ending is that?”

“Uh….An emotionally moving ending?”

“Yes, but a really, really sad one!” Hrothella continued.

“So what’s your point?”

Hrothella sighed, exasperatedly. Humans could be so dense. “My point is that, yes, it’s okay to throw in a sad ending to a story here and there, but not in an Animaniacs fanfic! The Animaniacs are all about fun and zaniness—not this drama-soaked, so-soapy-you-could-wash-dishes-with-it depress-fest you just wrote! It has to be funny, wacky, happy!”

Fae raised an eyebrow. “So you want ‘zany?’”

“Yes!”

“Happy?” The eyebrow twitched.

“Yes!”

“Wacky?” The mouth twitched.

“Hells, yeah!” Hrothella jumped a foot off the bed, then noticed the crazy grin on Fae’s face. “Wait…What are you doing? What are you writing? Hey, don’t you ignore me, Missy! You’d better not cut me off with the next chapter—”

-O-o-O-o-O-

And the moral of today’s story is: Never go full Targaryen.

[goofyrpmaniacs]

Is there any reason why you couldn’t just play along? Make them feel happy for a bit? Any reason at all?

( he would keep stepping closer as his appearance become more and more life like, turning from a cartoon skeleton to a real one, complete with the dead stench )

Yakkira: U-uhh...w-well...

Wakkira: Y-you see...

Spot: I honestly can't blame the Warners...

Y and W: SPOT!!

Spot: What?? Do you honestly think WE'D play along with this? The Warners literally said they didn't need a fourth sibling!! I mean, heck! They didn't ask for this!! From what I've heard, YOU gathered their DNA samples,--without their permission, might I add--to make a fourth sibling. And, who I think, is worse than the Warners since they were literally about to leak their secrets just to be included. If anything, you weren't being fair to them. *pokes SKG on the chest* So I think YOU owe the Warners an apology.

[yessadirichards]

‘Gran Turismo' and ‘Barbie’ neck-and-neck at box office

JAKE COYLENEW YORK

“Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story” and “Barbie” are in a dead heat for the box-office crown, with the video game adaptation just edging Greta Gerwig’s pop sensation, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Sony Pictures reported that “Gran Turismo” opened with $17.3 million over the weekend, while Warner Bros. estimated that “Barbie,” in its sixth week of release, took in $17.1 million. Those totals could change when final ticket sales are counted Monday.

Due to a few wrinkles, it's all but certain that “Barbie” sold more tickets than any other movie Friday through Sunday, even if “Gran Turismo” is claiming the checker flag.

One reason: It was an usual weekend in multiplexes. U.S. movie theaters held the second annual National Cinema Day on Sunday, with $4 tickets to all films and showtimes at nearly all of the country’s theaters.

“Barbie” was expected to be easily the top draw during the discounted day, with a particular boost coming from repeat viewings. With a domestic total of $594.8 million in ticket sales, “Barbie” has passed “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($574 million) to become the year’s biggest domestic hit. With $1.34 billion worldwide, “Barbie” will also soon surpass the leading $1.35 million worldwide tally of “Mario."

National Cinema Day is meant to lure moviegoers to theaters during a typically slow period — and recoup the lost ticket revenue by selling a lot of popcorn. Last year's event drew 8.1 million moviegoers, making it the busiest day of the year in theaters. Warner Bros. estimated that “Barbie” would gross $7.8 million on Sunday, which would mean almost 2 million people saw the film that day.

So what was the top movie in theaters this weekend?

“Barbie,” says Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros. “Without any question.”

Though “Barbie” is the weekend's top draw, “Gran Turismo” has a slight — and somewhat debatable — edge in gross earnings. In its weekend totals for “Gran Turismo,” Sony is also factoring in a hefty $3.9 million from preview screenings held before Thursday, along with $1.4 million in Thursday previews. Such accounting, while common practice for Hollywood, has stretched the definition of an opening "weekend.”

“We’ve made a big issue of it only because ‘Barbie’ has had incredible holds,” says Goldstein. "To take away the number one, which would make it five weekends at number one since it opened, kind of doesn’t feel right for the ‘Barbie’ filmmakers who really deserve the accolades.”

Sony executives declined to comment.

Either way, it's a so-so start for “Gran Turismo," which cost about $60 million to make. But the film, about a young man whose love of the PlayStation video game helps turn him into a real-life racer, has gone over well with audiences. Moviegoers gave the Neill Blomkamp-directed movie an “A��� CinemaScore.

The ongoing strike by actors and screenwriters has taken away the studios' ability to promote films with their casts. To help spread the word on “Gran Turismo,” Sony held several weeks of preview screenings and fan events.

“Obviously, every movie is in pursuit of being the number one film," says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. "But at the end of the day, ‘Barbie’ is just an out-and-out smash global blockbuster. No matter how you slice it, ‘Barbie’ is always going to be a winner no matter the outcome of this weekend. Sony, left without stars to go out and promote the movie, had to rely on the audience becoming the marketing voice.”

Last week's top film, the DC Comics release “Blue Beetle,” slid to third place in its second week, with $12.8 million. The Warner Bros. film has made $46.3 million in two weeks, making it another misfire for DC.

Christopher Nolan's “Oppenheimer” trailed in fourth, with $9 million in its sixth week. Like its “Barbenheimer” sibling, the Universal Pictures release has played remarkably well beyond the point at which most films fall off in theaters. “Oppenheimer” has passed $300 million domestically and reached $777.1 million globally.

A handful of other new releases also hit theaters. MGM’s high-school comedy “Bottoms” got off to a strong start in limited release, grossing an average of $51,600 per location in 10 theaters. The Liam Neeson thriller “Retribution" debuted with $3.3 million in 1,750 theaters for Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.

“The Hill,” a sports drama starring Dennis Quaid, launched with $2.5 million from 1,570 locations for Briarcliff and Open Road. And “Golda,” starring Helen Mirren as the former Israeli prime minister, debuted with $2 million in 883 theaters for Bleecker Street.

According to Comscore, the North American box office is now just $70 million shy of breaking $4 billion for the summer. After an up-and-down season that saw some major releases like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny," “The Flash” and “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One” fall short of expectations, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have spurred a comeback. If the box office manages to reach $4 billion for the summer, it would be the first time since 2019.

[atiredmessstuff]

Here is a brief explanation of the entries (I excluded the ones that are more self explanatory)

Tier 1

Dot's full name. Princess Angelina Contessa Louisa Francesca Banana Fanna Bo Besca III

Hotline controversy. Episode 6 was pulled from Hulu for some time because during the PATB segment a tv advert starring Brain included a real sex hotline

Pink is the genius theory. Popular theory based on the fact that the theme song mentions one being the genius and the other insane but not specifying which one is which. It has more evidence, but I want to keep this brief. You can read it here

Hello Nurse name. It's Heloise Nerz

Uhhh. A sound Yakko sometimes makes as a kind of verbal tic.It was improvised by his voice actor

Yakko balloon incident. A Yakko inflatable balloon was displayed on top of the real life wb water tower to promote the show. However, when Bob Daley, who ran the studio at the time, saw the balloon, he thought that it was a misshapen Mickey Mouse and they were being attacked by Disney.

The Warner's ages. Revealed in the Talkin' Toons podcast . 14, 11 and 9 respectively

Cartoonus characterus. The Warner's species according to Tom Ruegger

Tier 2

Green ducks. Originally the show was going to star a family/group of green ducks. Eventually the team scraped the concept due to ducks being overused in cartoons

Yakky, Smakky & Wakky. A "prototype" of what eventually became the Warners. Yakky (who became Yakko) was the chatty one, Smakky the violent one and Wakky the weird one (this two were fuse together to create wakko). There was also a nameless female character that became Dot.

Brinky. The ship between Pinky and the Brain. Very popular amongst the fandom

Fandom Angst. Despite being a comedy show, the fandom tends to create lots of angsty fan works

Salad breadsticks soup. These beautiful images:

Milk fic. Angst fanfic called "Big Brother's Responsibility" that starts with Yakko drinking milk and having a mental breakdown because he had a fight with is siblings and is lactose intolerant. It became a running joke in the fandom

Please Please Please Get A Life Foundation. Episode form the og show that makes fun at animaniacs fans.

Tier 3

Marx brothers influence. Yakko is heavily inspired in Groucho and Wakko in Harpo

Lakko warner. A character that was supposed to appeared in the cancelled movie "Wandering Warners We" as the fourth warner

Yax. Crack shipp between Yakko Warner and Max Goof

Minerva Mink fake unreleased shorts. For a long time it was rumored that more Minerva Mink cartoons were produced but never released. It was later revealed that these cartoons never existed in the first place, making them false lost media

Animaniacs bible. The show's bible ( a reference document used by screenwriters for information on characters, settings, and other elements of a project)

Cancelled movies. In 1995 there were plans for a movie ( Wandering Warners We) that was scrapped because of wb prioritizing space jam. This Means Warners (set in world war II), Revolutionary Warners (an adaptation of Oliver Twist) and Warner Land (in which the siblings harras santa) were also scrapped ideas.

Cut characters. Characters that didn't make it into the show. These include Bossy Beaver and Doyle (a beaver duo), The Fleas and Nipsy and Russell (a raccoon duo)

Animaniacs live. A concert musical live show where Rob Paulsen (the voice of Yakko and Pinky), Randy Rogel (one of the animaniacs songwriters) perform songs from the show.

Reboot concept art in cuphead art style. There is concept art made by Studio MDHR (the studio behind cuphead) of the Warners in a rubber hose art style.

Nickelaney. It references how the show's intro was butchered in the nickelodeon reruns by writing their name in the beginning, shortening the song and replacing all the variable lines with "nickelaney". It was so bad that apparently lots of at the time fans refused to watch the reruns. A similar thing happened with PATB

Yakko's boat. An image of Yakko with a toy boat that somehow became a meme (I remember seeing it mostly on Instagram)

Salppy dementia episode. Episode 83. Known for being the the most serious and emotional episode of all the series. Sadly it was largely based on Tom Ruegger's memories of visiting his aunt at a nursing home.

Axe fic. A fic called Soliloquy of Regret where Yakko starts killing people with an axe. The first half consists of Yakko slowly descending into madness and the second is about the animaniacs cast trying to stop the apocalypse. Unlike the milk fic that is just angst for the sake of being angst, the axe fic its so insane that ends up being entertaining (at least for me jajs)

Yakko Alvin Warner. Yakko's second name is Alvin according to the comics

Tier 4

1-855-HULU-FAN. At one point after the release of S1 of the reboot you could call this phone number to "talk" to the Warners (it was actually a prerecorded voice message)

Pay for play/pay or play contracts debate. The closed captioning in the og series mistakenly had the line as "pay for play" contracts instead "of pay or play". This sparked an online debate in the old fandom about which line was the correct

Hello Nurse is a secret agent. It's revealed in the comics.

Broadcast Nuisance delated scenes. Some parts of the episode were cut and redubbed because the warners were being too cruel

I'm mad theatrical version. The song was originally released as a theatrical short for Thumbelina. This version included additional title cards that are partially found lost media.

Album exclusive songs. Some albums included songs that weren't in the series ( I'll Take an Island, Several Drops of Rain, the Hello Song)

Pinky is a masochist. There are some instances were pinky seems to enjoy being in pain (though this is inconsistent throughout the show)

Buddy was real. In universe, Buddy was a character whose boring cartoons lead to the creation of the Warners. Turns out he wasn't created for the show, he's a real Looney Tunes character who was the lead star of Warner Bros. cartoons from 1933 to 1935.

Kathy Page Cowan credits running gag. During season 1 and 2 of the og series Kathryn Page (Tom ruegger's assistant) was credited with all sorts of random things as a gag.

Jesus episode. Little Drummer Warners (episode 49). The Earners sing a song to baby Jesus. I added it due to its more serious tone compared to other episodes and just because, aside from the episode where they go to hell, is the only instance where the Warners interact with a religious figure.

Six flags. In the 90s the warners made appearances as costumed characters at Six Flags Theme Parks.

Cancelled robot chicken sketch. It would involve the Warners doing edgy stuff. Apparently cancellation was partly due to the original voice actors refusing to reprise their role out of respect for their characters. As an additional fact, a few years later they made a PATB parody with Maurice LaMarche reprising his role as Brain. In an interview he admitted he regrets doing it..

Sakko Warner. Is the cousin of the Warners who appears in the 33rd issue of the comics.

Tier 5

Episode #55 missing bumper. This episode has a chase scene bumper that's missing from the DVDs

Official twitter retweeted lewd fanart. Yeah according to tv tropes this apparently happened and I say apparently because I couldn't find any other source. So take it with a pinch of salt

He died for our sins. This cursed image from Burning Man 2008

Speedy Gonzales auditioned for Brain. Cartoon Network Latin America released a series of shorts called "biografía toon" that feature the biographies of various cartoon characters. In the one about Speedy Gonzales it's revealed that he tried to audition for the role of Brain.

The warners teast like chicken.

The reason why wakko doesn't wear pants. Issue #42 of the comics is revealed that Wakko doesn't wear pants because it causes those around him to get hurt by random things.

Narf is my safe word tshirt. Rob Paulsen was selling these tshirts trough his website.

Animanicast (unofficial podcast)

Bubble bath guy. A Tumblr user infamous for commenting weird stuff in animaniacs related blogs. Most of their ramblings included the words "bubble bath" hence their name. Nobody knows what was their deal.

Tier 6

Episode 100. Joke entry. There is no episode 100

A Christmas Plotz: The Hip-Hop Musical. It's a 1995 hip-hop audiobook adaptation of "A Christmas Plotz." It's pretty terrible.

alt.tv.animaniacs. A now defunct og animaniacs newsgroup that served as the main online gathering place for the old fandom.

Legion1979 (so sorry I messed up their name in the image). A Tumblr blog that analysed every episode of the og animaniacs, giving their opinion ands some interesting facts.

Animania IV. Fourth of the fourteen Animania fanfests held by the og fandom. It took place in early August 1995 when a group of participants in the alt.tv.animaniacs newsgroup decided to meet each other in Southern California. Hearing this, the producers at Warner Bros. Animation invited them to visit the studio and meet the people who were working on the show. If you want to learn more about it check this website and this video

Keeper1st. A well know fan in the days of the old fandom. He was an active member of alt.tv.animaniacs and wrote many webpages about the show back when it was airing including the transcript of the animancs bible, the cultural references guide for animaniacs and the animaniacs mega lyrics files. Here is his website

Bonus tier (actually things I forgot to add at the moment)

The Geological clock A song from the og series that was cut. It's speculated that it heavily inspired A Brief History of History

Nonbinary Wakko. Popular headcanon based of this panel form the comics

Leg fic. Fic where Pinky losses his leg in a sausage factory during one of Brain attempts at taking over the world but it grows back

Suavo pinky was at one point banned from the sexypedia due to his fans spamming suggestion blogs. The moderators decided to add him to the forbidden characters list just to piss them off. Luckily, the ban has been lifted

So I made an animaniacs iceberg

sad 3am rambles. You can skip it

Yeah, I know the iceberg thing is outdated but I made it as a way to look back at the show and the fandom one last time.

I took a break from animaniacs in the wait for season 3. When I came back I realized how much I had forgotten about the show and it kinda scared me. I decided to write these facts and fandom anecdotes just to have a reminder in case some day I forget.

This is it. I don't have hopes for a season 4 or any other animaniacs media. I'll probably stay here for another week. I don't want to get into personal stuff, so I'll just say that animaniacs was the best thing that happened to me in 2020. I'm going through some rough stuff so I'm glad I got the chance to watch these characters one last time. Even though my interest in the show isn't the same as it used to be, I still hold it very close to my heart ❤️

[granteddrop]

NOTE: I didn’t write the joke- it’s based on @vampirefunkmetal​ ‘s very good post that you can read [by clicking here] !!

Image description is from @yourfriendthefangirl​ ! :D

[Image Description: A fifteen-panel black and white fan art comic of the Warner siblings from Animaniacs. All of the panels feature the artist’s name, GrantedDrop, hidden somewhere in the image and overlaying the image as a semi-transparent watermark.

In the first panel, Wakko is sitting in the foreground of a hallway, frowning in confusion with tongue out and arms crossed. A large question mark floats in the air near Wakko’s head. In the background, Yakko and Dot peek around the corner of the hallway.

The second panel is a closeup of Yakko and Dot with vaguely concerned expressions on their faces.

The third panel is the same closeup, but now Yakko and Dot are looking at one another with eyebrows raised. Dot is shrugging with one arm.

The fourth panel features all of the Warner siblings, with Yakko bending down to rest a hand on Wakko’s shoulder and Wakko turning to look at him. Yakko is asking, “What’s wrong, sib?” Dot is leaning forward with her hands clasped near her chin and saying, “Yeah, you can talk to us!”

In the fifth panel, Dot is holding Wakko’s right arm, and Yakko is kneeling down and holding Wakko’s left hand. Yakko and Dot are both smiling. Wakko has one foot braced against the floor, as if getting ready to stand, and is frowning slightly at the viewer while saying, “People keep telling me that gender is what’s in your pants...”

In the sixth panel, Dot and Yakko yank Wakko up into the air, and there are arrows and vague outlines of Wakko’s body left behind to indicate the rapid motion. Yakko is standing with a hand on his hip and is smiling at the viewer with one eyebrow raised.

In the seventh panel, Wakko lands, standing and sticking out one leg, gesturing down at it. Dot and Yakko stare at it, frowning in contemplation with their hands held up to their chins. Wakko is saying, “But I’m not wearing any pants!”

In the eighth panel, Dot and Wakko look over at Yakko. Dot is holding the edge of her skirt and saying, “Well, Yakko, you’re the only one of us with pants.” Yakko is frowning and rifling around inside his pants pocket, saying, “Hmm...”

In the ninth panel, Yakko holds up a finger triumphantly, with his other hand still in his pocket and a proud smile on his face, saying “Aha! I thiiink I found it!”. Dot and Wakko stare at him in surprise and curiosity.

The tenth panel is a closeup of Dot and Wakko, who are looking up at Yakko’s arms, which are holding a large quantity of deli meat above their heads. Dot and Wakko both have confused looks on their faces, and Wakko is saying, “Deli meat?”

The eleventh panel features Yakko’s hands dropping an enormous pile of deli meat on top of Dot and Wakko, obscuring them entirely. The word “FLUMP” appears over the sticks of meat to indicate the sound of them hitting the ground.

The twelfth panel shows just the pile of deli meat, with a speech bubble emerging from where Dot was standing that reads, “‘Best by:...’ How many decades ago?!”

In the thirteenth panel, Yakko is standing next to the pile of meat with a smile on his face and his hands raised in a shrug as he looks at Dot and Wakko. Dot and Wakko’s faces are scrunched in exertion as they pop their upper bodies out of the meat pile. Yakko is saying, “Well, I guess that settles it.”

In the fourteenth panel, Yakko is smiling with his arms crossed and looking over at Dot. Dot and Wakko are still half-way inside the meat pile, and Wakko is looking at Dot with a blank expression. Dot is smiling and saying, “Yeah, their concept of gender’s just a bunch of out-of-date baloney.”

In the fifteenth and final panel, all of the Warner siblings turn to smile smugly at the viewer with half-closed eyes. The word “End” is written in the bottom right corner. /End ID]

[cf56]

We all know Wakko is afraid of clowns, but in the fourth episode of the original series The Warners are flying a hot air balloon with a clown face on it. This makes me wonder if something rather "unpleasant" happened while they were flying, causing Wakko to fear clowns by association? Like me with Footballs (long story)

I certainly don't see any reason why that couldn't be the case. Otherwise, why wouldn't Wakko be scared of the balloon? Three possibilites:

He wasn't scared of clowns yet.

He doesn't know it's a clown balloon.

He isn't scared of inanimate objects that look like clowns, only real clowns.

It begs the question, of course, of what that unpleasant incident could have been. I don't think it would have involved a crash or anything, as he and his siblings have fallen from high heights many times before and been completely fine afterwards. My thought is that it could have been something else besides him or his siblings being harmed- maybe a bird hit the balloon and died. I think something like that would affect Wakko deeply and perhaps make him fear clowns.

I hope you won't mind if I use your ask as an opportunity to go into this more deeply. We don't have much evidence to get an objective answer as to why Wakko fears clowns, but maybe there's enough to allow us to single out some possibilities that are more likely than the others. Let's start by looking at the most important episode on this topic, "Clown and Out."

The episode starts by showcasing Mr. Plotz's fear of clowns, which is very similar to Wakko's. He is shown on a therapy couch with Scratchansniff repeating the mantra "A clown is my friend. A clown will not bite me and throw me in the basement. A clown is not a big spider." It seems possible that his fear of clowns stems from It (both the novel and the original TV series were released a few years before Animaniacs). At the end of the episode, Wakko is shown repeating the same mantra, though the spider part is (presumably) cut-off.

Wakko's fear of clowns stemming from watching It would be an easy explanation. However, it's muddled by the fact that, when he meets a clown exactly like Pennywise in the reboot, he's not scared of that one. Maybe the mantra could also relate to the possible balloon incident, with the fear of "a clown biting me and throwing me into a basement" represents the balloon crashing.

It could be a case of Scratchansniff being his usual incompetent self and trying to apply the same treatment to two patients with fundamentally different problems. Wakko wouldn't know the difference between good treatment and bad treatment and would likely just go along with whatever the doctor says, even if it doesn't apply to his personal problems with clowns.

Now, how scared of clowns is Wakko? Extremely. Scratchansniff says "Wakko has one of the most extreme cases of clownophobia I have ever seen. Wakko's fear of clowns... is so great that he becomes kooky and extremely unpredictable." Keep in mind that Scratchansniff, incompetence aside, has over 50 years of experience, so that is saying a lot. Could an extreme phobia like this come just from watching one horror movie?

Wakko has a visceral reaction to seeing a clown. It makes him paranoid enough to bring a stool over to the tower door just so he can stand and watch through the peephole. He does this in the middle of playing hide-and-seek with his siblings on his birthday, an activity which he presumably enjoys very much.

However, it doesn't make him lose all reason. He doesn't immediately resort to violence, even though, being Wakko, he very easily could. He first tries to ask the clown to go away repeatedly, explaining that he's scared, and only after the clown refuses to leave does Wakko resort to violence and tricks to get him to go away permanently. (To Mars.) It should be noted that Wakko, after his siblings ask him what he's been doing, says that he had to get rid of "the" clown. Not a clown. Does Wakko, at this point, believe there's only one clown in the world that tries to constantly terrorize him? Probably not, but it's a funny thought to consider.

So, now, having gone over the important information from the primary episode about Wakko's fear of clowns, let me present my several personal theories on why Wakko fears clowns.

It's simply an irrational fear that has no particular cause.

If I feared clowns, this would be the reason. They don't leave you alone. They keep trying to entertain you, even if you're clearly not entertained by them or even scared of them. Wakko asks the clown in this episode to leave several times, but he doesn't listen. Could Wakko's fear of clowns be related to a lack of control, perhaps relating to the lack of control he felt when locked in the tower?

The Warners are often shown to be legitimately scared of things they find to be unfunny or unentertaining, such as Baloney the Dinosaur. Maybe Wakko is scared of clowns simply because he finds them to be unfunny. I don't see any reason this couldn't be the case, but I won't discuss this possibility any further, because it's a boring answer.

This is the one I find most intriguing. Wakko hates clowns because of his own internal insecurities. The Warners look a lot like clowns, with their white faces and red noses. Maybe Wakko sees clowns as a reflection of the way everyone else sees him and his siblings, or the way he thinks they see them: annoying, unfunny "entertainers" who won't leave you alone. No one takes clowns seriously just like no one takes the Warners seriously.

Let me be clear: in any case, I don't think Wakko is aware of the reason he fears clowns. He just knows he does.

Sometimes, looking at the meta answer to a question can help you find the in-universe answer. I'm not sure that's the case here. Out-of-universe, the writers probably just gave him a random phobia for the sake of making an entertaining episode, and there's no deeper meaning behind it. He's just scared of clowns. I could be wrong, of course. There could be a super detailed Animaniacs lorebook out there recording the whole backstory of every little plot point and character trait in Animaniacs. If it exists, I'd love to see it, but obviously that's probably not the case.

I think the most helpful information we have to help find the answer to this question is Wakko's reaction to Nickelwise. Why is Wakko afraid of most clowns, but not afraid of Nickelwise? The differences between Nickelwise and other clowns might tell us exactly what Wakko fears about most other clowns.

The reason Wakko gives for not fearing Nickelwise is that he's a "cutie", and his eyes "look like mine."

So, in other words, Wakko doesn't fear Nickelwise because he relates to him. The thing that this most strongly proves is that Wakko's fear of clowns isn't totally irrational. If it was, he'd be afraid of Nickelwise no matter what. There is a reason for it.

I think this could support my fourth theory. If Wakko's fear of clowns stems from others' warped perceptions of him, then a clown that more closely represents who he truly is would be less scary to him.

Another possible reason that Wakko doesn't fear Nickelwise, which is never mentioned in the episode, is that he only fears clowns that are meant to be funny, not clowns that are meant to be scary. This could support my second or third theories.

Have we been able to rule out any theories with this information? No. Have we been able to establish any theories that are particularly more likely than the others? Not really. I think it could be any of the theories, including the balloon incident one, or a combination of several of them. The truth is there's just no objective way to know with the incomplete information we're given, so all we have is speculation. But it's fun to speculate! Thanks for your interesting theory and for giving me an opportunity to speculate, anon. And good luck in your fight against footballs.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

Fourth Warner Sibling Real (NOT Clickbait) (MAYBE Clickbait)

So I don’t know if you guys know this but I’ve been making an Animaniacs save on my Sims 4 game, and I thought it’d be fun to make the Norita family house. So I pulled up “23 and WB” and skipped ahead in the episode to find the pic of the house from the outside. I skipped ahead a bit too far and ended up at the scene where the Warners explain their “relation” to the Noritas, but I??? Noticed something???

With the way this family tree is set up, it looks like there’s a fourth Warner????

I know it was eventually revealing their results were fudged, but with as close a relation as siblings you’d think that part specifically would be hard to fuck up. What’s really throwing me, though, is that this sibling only seems to be connected to Yakko; whatever parent was considered connected to the fam tree is only connected to the blank circle and Yakko, with Dot and Wakko’s lines being separate, only connected to Yakko; you’d think for a quick camera shot they’d just go the easy route of having simpler linework, right? But with this more “complex” linework, it makes it look like Yakko has a half-sibling via the parent that was supposedly connected to the Noritas.

Am I overthinking this? Absolutely. Was this intentional? Probably not. Am I going to obsess over it? Yes, I am insane.

[galactic-glamour-girl-posts]

Animaniacs : Wish Upon a Warner AU

I don't have a fully written out story for it yet (and I'm not sure if I ever will to be honest), but I thought this was a fun idea.

What is the "Wish Upon a Warner" AU? It's an AU where the world of "Wakko's Wish" and the world of "Animaniacs" are alternate dimensions. The main idea of this AU is that the Toon!Warners end up stuck in Warnerstock and eventually meet their older, royal counterparts. (I'm not gonna say how they get there yet, I have something in mind but I wanna see if people are actually interested in this AU first). Hijinks (and angst) ensue.

Some notes:

-Wakko's Wish, the movie, doesn't exist in this AU. Everything that happened in that movie (minus any fourth wall jokes where they reference the fact that it is a movie) happened in an alternate dimension.

-For the Royal!Warners, it's set 3 years after the events of Wakko's Wish; but for the Toon!Warners it's set in 1998, same year the original show ended. I chose for it to be set in 1998 because, without going into too much detail, the show's cancellation is the catalyst for the Toon!Warners ending up in Warnerstock.

-I made the Royal!Warners fae so that anything that the Warners do that could be explained with cartoon logic, for them they instead use magic (for example, they don't have hammer spaces, but they CAN summon objects, and they aren't squash and stretch characters, but they can transform their bodies, etc). They still look about the same as they do in Wakko's Wish, just older and in different outfits.

-The Royal!Warners can age and have the same lifespan as any human, whilst the Toon!Warners are...well, still toons. No adulthood for them-they're still (physically) 14, 11 and 9.

-Everyone else in Warnerstock is either a human or a talking animal-no toons here!

-Despite the AU taking place before the reboot, I do intend to have some characters from it be in the AU. Nils Neidhardt is a Wish Fulfilment Facilitator like Pip, Julia is a villager who moved to Acme Falls after Salazar was dethroned, Nora Rita Norita is the CEO of an elixir company (and rival to Hello Nurse), etc.

-Royal!Yakko is 17 years old and is trying to grow up a bit too fast, attempting to reject his family's signature zany and childlike nature. Now that he has a kingdom to rule over and that he's almost 18, he feels the pressure to stop goofing around and act like an adult, for the sake of the kingdom (his anxiety isn't exactly helping either). Meanwhile, Toon!Yakko is disappointed his older self is such a "stick in the mud" now, and cranks up his zaniness around him. Royal!Yakko thinks he's doing it to annoy him, but really Toon!Yakko just wants him to loosen up, and not fully lose his "inner" child.

-Royal!Wakko, and like his toon counterpart, always had the tendency to mimic others' mannerisms. Now that he's 14-as old as Yakko was when they searched for the Wishing Star-he's taken that to the extreme by trying to act just like his older brother. He does this mostly out of admiration, but also partly because he struggles with things Yakko, both his siblings really, are good at (reading, communication skills, etc) and he feels shame over this. Eventually he expresses his desire to be more like them to Toon!Wakko, who responds in confusion. Why would his older self want to act like Yakko? He's not Yakko-he's Wakko! Did he forget? They go back and forth on this a lot, although over time, with Toon Wakko's help, Royal!Wakko learns to not be ashamed for what he may lack, and to celebrate his own strengths by being his true self.

-Royal!Dot, or "Angelina" as she insists everyone call her now, is 12 years old and has fully recovered from her sickness. She wants to make up for the years she spent suffering from her illness and having to rely on her brothers to take care of her. Now that she's older, she's tired of being seen as the "cute, helpless little girl" of the family-she wants to prove that she's mature, independent, tough, reliable...and definitely not a burden. First order of business to show off her maturity was to she insist that everyone to call her "Princess Angelina", which she thought was a more mature sounding name than "Dot". Toon!Dot is surprised to learn that her older self was sick, then expresses delight at the idea of her brothers taking care of her whilst she lays in bed all day. Angelina accidently lets it slip she feels guilty over being a burden to her brothers when she was younger, even though Wakko's never said so and Yakko keeps insisting otherwise, that she isn't, and never was, a burden, that her brothers took care of her because they love her, and don't regret a second of it. Toon!Dot reminds her that if Royal!Yakko was anything like her Yakko, then he's not one to sugar coat things, so if he says he feels that way, he means it. Besides, “We already know that we’re strong, but sometimes it pays to be seen as the cute, helpless little girl.”

-The Royal!Warners let the Toon!Warners stay at the castle with them (they are technically family) whilst they figure out a way to use their magic to reach Burbank.

This is the second Animaniacs AU I've made, the first being a "The Looney Tunes Show" AU. However, unlike that one, I might develop this one into a fanfic, since I have more ideas for it (a Pinky and the Brain subplot, which characters the Toon!Warners meet before meeting the Royal!Warners, etc). But no promises! (I am NOT a writer 😅)

[queen-of-my-goofball-army]

"Helloooooooo nurse!

Uhhhhh

Wait a minute, you expect us poor innocent children to climb that dangerous scaffolding and paint naked people over a church?" (Yakko Warner original Animaniacs 1993-1998)

"Yeah I'm zainer than Billy, to the max! Leader of the animated maniacs" (Yakko Warner reboot of Animaniacs 2020-)

Hey everyone! Now that I'm finally officially finished with math I can get back to making edits more frequently! I wanted to start by making my husbandos since really I don't have a lot of comfort characters that I haven't made edits for that didn't make the cut. The only other one's were Katie from The Michells Vs The Machine's which everyone has already heard me talk about endlessly. So I've decided that we're going to forgo my rambling about the same characters over and over and instead move along to making edits for characters that I've never made one's for and haven't talked about a whole lot, my husbandos from cartoons. There is a surprisingly short list so I figured that it would be the easiest for me to slowly get back to work making edits again.

Most of you that have talked to me for all of five minutes know that one of my favorite shows from my childhood was Animaniacs. It gave me two relatable characters that grew to make up my adult and teen personality when I got older. I've already talked about my love of Dot to death by this point in my life. Everyone and their mother that follows me knows that she's not just my favorite character on the show but my favorite female character in any cartoon ever. But what most people don't know is that my two favorite Warner siblings are constantly going at it for the coveted spot as favorite Warner. As most of you can probably guess my husbando in the Animaniacs universe is the oldest brother Yakko Warner.

To talk about Yakko we have to time travel a bit. We have to go back to when I was nine sitting in my fourth grade class when one of my favorite teachers that I've ever had in my entire life, Mrs McFarland pulled down her projector. We had just started studying geography for the first time. She told us beforehand that there were new countries and places that were no longer countries anymore that were listed in the song. But she thought that it was the best way to teach us the material. The moment that I saw this little ball of energy and adorableness bouncing around I knew that I was hooked. Some part of me already knew that he would be one of the characters that would "ruin" me for the future type that I've come to have.

I promised myself that I would go home that day and start watching the actual show. Fast forward almost thirteen years later and I still love him just as much as I did back then if not more. Every time I go back and rewatch the show again I love him even more. It's a curse but at this point I wouldn't have it any other way. We all have those characters that have shaped the way that we want our significant others to be when we're younger and for me the first of all of those was Yakko Warner.

I feel like a lot of the time Yakko's intelligence gets vastly undermined. A good chunk of the educational songs went to him in the original show something that the reboot has yet to receive. I hope that in the second season we get a second calling to Yakko's Nations Of The World or something like that. Every time I remember the original Animaniacs one of the biggest things that I remember is the educational stuff. They treated children like adults and taught them things that really mattered and so many things that I know today is due to the things that Yakko taught me. He literally helped me understand multiplication also when I was in the fourth grade. I got a medal from my principal as well for knowing them. In the reboot there was a severe lack of Yakko intelligence I feel like. That was my biggest problem with it, and even then it wasn't huge. A lot more character went to Dot instead and she was the intellectual sibling while Yakko was the goofball flirty jokester. While that was a big part of his personality in the '93 version I do hope that we get the snarky intellectual soon.

Another thing that I love about Yakko is his protective streak as the older brother. He's always the first one to step into danger rather than letting his siblings go into trouble alone especially in the original show he was the first one to interact with the dangerous entity. He's the best brother ever and I will gladly die on this hill. I've fought for this boy for a majority of my childhood and will continue to do so for the rest of my days.

All my life I've loved cartoons. I consider Animaniacs, both the reboot and the original, one of my favorite cartoons. The original left a huge creative impact on my life with me creating my first self insert OC with my rabbit Lizzy. Ever since I was a kid I've always considered Yakko to be the best of all my cartoon husbandos. He's the one that I love the most and no matter what that will never change. I'll always love my factual intellectual boi that got me through elementary school.

[thunderlina]

Lakko time! As previously introduced over on @poorlydrawnwarners, here’s the grumpy boyo himself. This was mostly done because as practice, and I think they both came out pretty alright. The line art is a bit messy but other than that I like how these turned out.

More information about Lakko himself under the cut!

He’s based on the cut fourth Warner sibling from the scrapped movie concept, Wandering Warners We, but I’ll admit that my take on him has diverged quite a bit from Tom Ruegger’s original description. Most notably, he’s not Yakko, Wakko, and Dot’s brother, but rather, their cousin! The Warner kids have such a great dynamic as-is that I felt a fourth member would feel like an intruder.

My Lakko is instead their 2nd cousin, who’s just a huge jerk all around honestly. He’s a real no-nonsense snob who thinks he’s better than his cousins and refuses to let them (specifically Yakko) forget that.

He and Yakko have a particularly interesting relationship. Lakko will complain for hours about how “immature” and “annoying” Yakko is, to the extent that most people, even Yakko himself, assume that he legitimately hates him. This is not the case, though. In reality, Lakko’s strictness and tendency to scold his cousin’s every move comes not from malice, but from a belief that Yakko and his siblings would be much better off if he could just “calm down and think things through for once.” Yakko, of course, couldn’t care less about what Lakko thinks is best for him, and goes about doing his usual zany thing anyways.

Another tidbit about Lakko is that his name isn’t even really Lakko, it’s actually Leonard. The nickname “Lakko” was affectionately given to him by Yakko to match himself and Wakko. Lakko, unsuprisingly, can’t stand the nickname, but his cousins continue to use it anyways.

Lakko also has a younger brother, named Samuel. Sam almost never talks and mostly just follows his big brother around, relentlessly attacking those Lakko deems deserving with a flurry of smacks. Because of this, he’s gained the nickname Smakko.

Smakko, similar to Lakko, is derived from another concept Warner sibling who didn’t make the final cut, in this case, “Smakky Warner.” His design, though not pictured, is more reminiscent of “Wakky Warner”, however, since the actual Smakky looked way too similar to the final Wakko.

Both of these characters were originally devised as antagonists for a project of mine I’ve just been calling “the Atrament AU”, which was essentially my own re-imagining of the basic concept of BABQFTIM. Though instead of BATIM and Cuphead characters, it would’ve focused more heavily on not only Animaniacs, but also characters from the Uncle $crooge comics, Felix the Cat, and Oswald-era Disney. Whether or not anything is ever going to come of it, I have no idea, but Lakko and Smakko were fun enough characters that I felt like rolling with them outside of that particular project.

For more Lakko content, check out my sideblog @poorlydrawnwarners! I’m confident that you’ll see them again there more than you ever will over here!

[weekendwarriorblog]

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS Starts Out Quite Meta But Ends the Series on a Glorious Grand Finale

I’ve actually been looking forward to some sort of The Matrix relaunch, even though I highly doubted it might ever happen, maybe because the “final” installment, The Matrix Revolutions, just killed off any joy I had from the first two installments… and then, that movie bombed as well. Maybe it was the idea that Warner Media could put it on its streaming platform, HBO Max, along with the original trilogy was too great a lure to just let it fade away.

Now, it’s 18 years later, and Lana Wachowski is directing without her sibling, and well, it’s a very different animal, but not necessarily in a bad way. We start out by meeting Jessica Henwick’s Bugs, the type of hacker who would have been hanging out with Keanu Reeves’ Neo back in the day. After being chased by agents, she ends up convincing one of them (played by Yahya Abdul Mateen II) that he is, in fact, Morpheus reborn, and she tries to convince him that Neo is still alive, and they need to find him. Neo (Keanu Reeves) is actually back in his guise as Thomas Anderson, now the world’s greatest game developer, and apparently, that first “Matrix” trilogy was actually his award-winning game. He’s now been commissioned, mostly against his will, to make a fourth game. Yes, kids, Lana Wachowski has fully taken us into Meta territory, literally making fun of her earlier movies as if they were literally just a video game in the current world. (Semi-Spoiler: Carrie-Ann Moss in this world is known as Tiffany (vs. Trinity) and her new husband Chad is actually John Wick director Chad Stahelski, just to make things even more Meta.)

It takes some time before we’re back into the Matrix we know and love, particularly the “real world” where the battle between humans and machines is now over, and they’re now working together to make the world better. How sweet. Having found and revived Neo, the new rebels’ next mission is to revive Trinity, but there are still forces standing in their way, those who preferred the old Matrix, and they’re going to do whatever it takes to keep the two of them apart.

Obviously, it’s a little difficult writing about The Matrix Resurrections too in-depth, since there are some spoilery surprises and twists throughout, especially in the second half, so I’ll try to be as vague as humanly possible. As far as the two main actors, Keanu Reeves has successfully carried on the good will he’s earned from making the “John Wick” movies and his decision to return for last year’s Bill and Ted Face the Music. His 20-year-older Anderson/Neo seems fairly laid back and maybe not quite so serious as the early aughts version. Maybe it’s just the long hair and beard the character (and Reeves) has grown in recent years. Carrie Ann Moss has a notably smaller role, but she’s still great and even gets to show off her ability to do just as much of the martial arts we loved Trinity for in the earlier films. Henwick’s martial arts ability more than makes up the difference otherwise.

More importantly, there’s some great new characters besides the ones mentioned earlier, including Jonathan Groff as… well, spoiler!.. “Smith,” Thomas’ boss at the game company, and Neil Patrick Harris as Thomas’ analyst, known as The Analyst. Without outwardly spoiling anything, you can probably figure out what part they will eventually play in the story. Abdul Mateen makes for a fantastic Morpheus surrogate, although his version of the character is where things start getting a little weird.

For much of the first half, the movie reminded me of the late Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, because it was so Meta even in terms of making fun of its own legacy. That was fun for a while, but the movie then frequently started hitting its fair share of lulls, as it delved into over-exposition and psycho-babble. Some might like that stuff more than others, but it’s obvious that Ms. Wachowski just does stronger work as an action director.

Because of this, the last act just slays, as we’re treated to some of the amazing fight sequences for which The Matrix is famous. A seemingly innocuous (but very cool FX-heavy) fight in a coffee shop turns into what is called “swarm mode” where literally every human in the Matrix is being thrown at Neo and Trinity. It’s the kind of big screen spectacle at a scale with which the Wachowski name was made, and boy, does it feel good to get to that point in the movie without the need for a lot of groaning or kvelling. Everyone’s mileage may vary, but to me, it was just a nice way to bring the earlier coolness of the premise back.

The Matrix Resurrections looks pretty great and is frequently weird as hell, but it’s also a suitable grand finale to the original trilogy, to the point where you might feel justified for giving it a chance even if you had issues with how the original trilogy ended.

Rating: 7.5/10

[ducktracy]

181. the case of the stuttering pig (1937)

disclaimer: this review contains antisemitic content, stereotypes, and imagery. i in no way endorse any of this, but it’s just as important to bring awareness to these depictions rather than shove them under the rug. please, PLEASE let me know if i make any mistakes or say something offensive, i want to take responsibility for my actions and use this as an opportunity to educate myself. any outside commentary is more than welcome. thank you for your patience and understanding.

release date: october 30th, 1937

series: looney tunes

director: frank tashlin

starring: mel blanc (porky, the guy in the third row), billy bletcher (lawyer goodwill), sara berner (petunia)

just in time for the halloween season, we explore one of tashlin’s best directorial efforts to date. the case of the stuttering pig (its title derived from the case of the stuttering bishop, a warner bros. film released only 4 months prior) is the first of many warner bros. cartoons to take a jab at the ever popular dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. here, porky and his family (4 brothers and petunia, who serves as his sister rather than a love interest) are terrorized by the nefarious lawyer goodwill, the family lawyer who turns himself into a mr. hyde facsimile, hoping to kill the family in order to snag some inheritance money.

frank tashlin’s cinematography is in peak form as the cartoon opens to a ghastly exposition--william tell’s “the storm” rages alongside a furious storm. intricate camera angles include an upshot on a giant old house, trees whipping in the wind against the flashing lightning, and a close up of the window shudders snapping against the exterior. the snaps of the window shudders soon melt into the droning tick of a clock inside, an upshot exposing dynamic, drawn out shadows against the walls. tashlin handles the contrast between values exceptionally well. backgrounds are crisp, clear, and pronounced.

cue a vertical pan of porky’s siblings (patrick, peter, percy, portus, and petunia) all lined up against the wall in a row of chairs. each appear apprehensive, obviously on edge. not porky, though. porky’s at the very end of the row, looking on with a hilariously blank smile plastered on his face. 

suddenly, a knock at the door interrupts the silence. cue the famous tashlin jump cut: we only see volney white’s animation of porky jumping out of his seat, but the next shot reveals all of the siblings hanging from a chandelier, with porky trepidatiously inquiring “who-who-who-who-who-who’s theh-the-the-the-the-there...?” you can still feel mel’s attempts to distinguish his own unique porky stutter from the authentic stutter provided by joe dougherty--this delivery is more dougherty-esque than some of his others. 

billy bletcher’s syrupy sweet vocals ring out from behind the door, the disembodied voice introducing himself as lawyer goodwill. the decision not to showcase who’s behind the door is a smart one. suspense is absolutely rife all throughout the cartoon, and the beginning is no exception. with a peppy “okey deh-eh-eh-deh-do... oh-oh-okey deh-deh... okay!”, porky is followed by his siblings as he happily allows this mysterious lawyer goodwill inside. the suddenly calm, almost wholesome atmosphere inside, reassured by the self-proclaimed friendly presence of lawyer goodwill is disrupted as soon as the door opens, wind howling and blowing the entire family down the hallway as goodwill fights his way inside, his face (and head, for that matter) completely concealed by his hat and collar. tashlin plays on this as goodwill removes his hat, a mere nub placed where his neck should be as a waterfall of rain pours out from the hat. nevertheless, goodwill reveals himself, a portly yet good-natured looking fellow as he tells the children it’s time to attend to “business”.

lawyer goodwill gathers the kids around to discuss the matter of their late uncle solomon (a pig caricature of oliver hardy, just one of a handful) and his will. the animation is slightly blurred and jittery from the double exposure effects of the shadows--animation historian mark kausler has this to say (transcribed from his excellent commentary that i’m partially parroting):

“they used to hand crank the cameras here. this was before electric drive animation cameras--that’s why the shadows are so flickery, because they had to back the film up and then re-expose it to get the transparency of the shadow.”

uncle solomon’s will states that his heirs will inherit his money. however, if something were to happen to them, then lawyer goodwill gets the cash instead. goodwill exits the house, reassuring that nothing will happen to the kids... “...i hope!”

there’s a gorgeous, moody upshot of the porch as goodwill lumbers down the steps. volney white is at the hand of this scene, easy to spot thanks to his telltale speed: goodwill practically glides across the screen as he heads towards offscreen, only to whip back and put a hand over his hear, nefariously straining to hear if he’s being followed. volney’s pose and expression are as strong as ever--i made a reel of his animation awhile ago if you’d like to check it out!

bob bentley takes over to animate goodwill’s transformation into the monster--his animation is very meticulous and well crafted. a good way to spot him is to see if characters have thicker eyebrows in some scenes than others. goodwill swaps clothes in favor of a hat and cape almost effortlessly, gliding across the screen like butter. the flow isn’t interrupted, not even by the overlay of tables decorated with test tubes, skulls, etc. 

all of goodwill’s potential queries on how to transform into a hideous beast are answered with a bottle of “jekyll and hide juice” (starting at only $9.99! call now and get another FREE at no cost to you! it’s a steal, folks!)  nestled conveniently on his shelf of various poisons. he pours the concoction into a cocktail, acting like a regular bartender as he shows off by pouring the mixture from glass to glass. tashlin’s timing, both behaviorally and comically, are succinct as goodwill finally downs the mixture. he grips the table, taking heaving breaths, staring at the audience, until... nothing. he heaves a dubious shrug. 

instead, goodwill opts to use a milkshake mixer (a relatively new invention whose novelty value would have scored much bigger laughs then than it does today, but still remains amusing at the very least) to mix his concoction, downing it once more.

bob bentley’s animation of the monster is nothing short of gorgeous. well defined, well crafted, and dimensional. however, it does encapsulate antisemitic stereotypes and caricatures, from the big nose to clawed hands and pointy ears, as well as the desire for money. as skillful as the animation is, and as solid as the cartoon is, these are problems that still need to be addressed. understand that when i’m praising the animation, i’m focusing on the techniques themselves and the technicalities behind it, not the content that’s being animated itself. (thank you anon for taking the time to educate me! it’s much appreciated.) 

billy bletcher snarls in his trademark deep voice, even quipping “you wouldn’t think i was lawyer goodwill now, would you?” he talks directly to the audience, getting right close in their face, jabbing his spindly finger and bulbous nose. he even goes as far as to berate his public by screeching “you bunch of softies! YEAH, YOU IN THE THIRD ROW! ya BIG SOFTIE!” the fourth wall breaking is nothing short of genius. just IMAGINE seeing this in a dark, packed movie theater! the effect would be phenomenal! (especially if you were the guy in the third row! i’m sure all of the third-row-sitting patrons felt quite satisfied at these showings.) the monster vows to dispose of the family, sneering at our inability to help save our heroes.

said heroes are contentedly socializing in the living room, peppy porky talking about how safe and sound they are in their own little house. so, of course, that serves as the cue for a gnarly hand to grab the light switch and kill the lights. i love the detail of the shadow creeping along the wall before you even see the hand itself--little decisions like that go such a long way.

the lights go out, and all we hear is the pluck of an electric slide guitar. the lights come on, and one of porky’s alliteratively named siblings is gone, with an x cleverly marked in his place. the ritual occurs four times, with porky remarking each of the names of his fallen siblings (”peh-peh-patrick!” “eh-peh-peh-peh-eh-peter!” “eh-peh-peh-eh-peh-percy!” “puh-portus!”). the lights go out once more, and x’s mark where porky and petunia were just sitting prior. definitely an artsy and interesting way to convey the kidnappings--even more so when we see porky and petunia trepidatiously popping their heads out from behind the armchair after the camera trucks in on their deserted spot.

volney white animates the close up of petunia clutching to porky, stuttering (from fear, that is) “g-g-gee, p-p-porky, i’m scared!” her voice here is provided by sara berner as opposed to berneice hansell, who voiced her in her last appearance in porky’s romance. ironically, hansell would take over for petunia again after bob clampett adopted (and subsequently redesigned) her character. you can hear the evolution of her voice here. 

porky reassures her that they’ll find the brothers as we cue a clever pan from inside to outside the house, spotlighting the basement. the backgrounds are so gorgeous and moody! we find the pigs tied up in stocks, with the monster sneering about how he’ll do away with all the pigs once he nabs porky and petunia. once more, our ever-aware villain resorts to heckling the poor sap in the third row: “and if that guy in the third row comes up, I’LL FIX HIM TOO! you big CREAMPUFF!” again--this is exceedingly entertaining to watch 83 years later on a laptop screen, but imagine what a riot this would be in theaters! frank tashlin understood that the audience was paying to watch his cartoons, and he knew how to make it worth their time. the cartoons catered to the audience rather than the studio executives always make for the best ones--tex avery was especially keen of this, as we’ll soon explore.

back to porky and petunia, both cautiously traipsing down the hallway as porky calls the names of his fallen brothers, both straining to hear any signs of life. while the poses aren’t nearly pushed to the same extremes as they would be in tashlin’s second directorial stint from 1943-1946, they’re still quite nice and accentuated just enough. certainly stronger than the poses present in the other directors’ cartoons. seeing as tashlin was a newspaper cartoonist, his illustrative, comic look translates well into his own cartoons. it’s almost as if his comic art has leapt right off the page, but also meshes well enough with the animation to have a good sense of motion to it. it’s the best of both worlds.

while porky is unaware, petunia is yanked off screen by a hand protruding from a trick wall panel. suddenly, the villain himself tinkers behind porky, mimicking his movements. porky even manages to grab a hold of his gangly hand, assuming it’s petunia, going so far as to look him straight in the eyes and shush him. the volney white animated villain looks strikingly different than that of bob bentley’s--volney’s is exceedingly more streamlined and design driven, especially around the eyes. he’s not nearly as hairy, grotesque, or dimensional. not that that’s a bad thing! in fact, i love when animators are able to make their styles so distinguishable from the other animators. not only is it fun, it makes identifying animation much easier.

when porky finally realizes that he’s being stalked by the monster, he does the signature volney white eye take and runs for the hills, er, stairs. tashlin’s speed dominates as porky scales flights of stairs at lightning speeds--it’s dizzying to even watch! eventually, porky jumps right into the arms of the monster, clinging to him (thinking it’s petunia) as he describes what he just saw: “i eh-seh-saw the most teh-teh-teh-eh--awful leh-leh-lookin’ man, all beh-beh-big and beh-beh-eh-bleh-black... beh-beh-BIG teeth...” all the while, porky is grabbing onto the villain’s nose and clinging to him like a baby. the animation is positively hilarious, especially when porky recognizes who he’s being cradled by, actually connecting nose to snout as he lets out a scream and barrels down the staircase once more, the same footage from before just in reverse. a wonderful scene with great dialogue and hilarious animation. bob clampett would borrow this in his own jeepers creepers just two years later, with a ghost in place of the monster.

porky locks himself in the basement, discovering his siblings tied up in stocks (”leh-leh-land sakes alive!”), his attempts to free them interrupted by the sound of the villain knocking the door down. interestingly enough, after we pan to the monster infiltrating the premises, the next shot is the entire family huddled in a corner, indicating that porky did manage to free them after all. the technique is reminiscent of the cartoon’s beginning, where we see only porky jump out of his seat before showing all of the siblings hiding in the chandelier. 

just as it looks like the pig family is bacon, a random chair from offscreen is lobbed at the monster, sending him tumbling right into the stocks. the family is just as perplexed as the viewer, asking in unison “who DID that?”

“ME!” mel blanc’s gruff, more natural voice rings out from behind the screen. the locked up monster ogles at the audience, pointing a gangly finger as he snarls “who are YOU?” mel’s tough guy new yoik accent snarls back “I’M DA GUY IN DA THOID ROW, YA BIG SOURPUSS!” iris out on a deflated, dejected villain--just IMAGINE witnessing this in real time in the theaters! 

this cartoon is one of the reasons why frank tashlin is one of my favorite directors of all time. it’s got all of the tashlin essentiasl. the effects animation by A.C. gamer at the beginning is lovely, doing a wonderful job of establishing such an eerie mood. the raging, wild storm juxtaposes perfectly with the unsettlingly still atmosphere inside the house. lawyer goodwill makes an excellent villain, topped off with billy bletcher’s vocals and bob bentley’s skilled animation. the constant fourth wall breaking with him... need i say more? it’s such a great way to involve the audience with the picture and really suck in their attention, especially that ending. the animation is excellent, the backgrounds are gorgeous, it’s absolutely rife with atmosphere. this is tashlin’s best effort thus far and one of his best efforts overall.

however, the antisemitic stereotypes and caricatures should be accounted for. while i do say you should watch this one to get an idea of frank tashlin’s mastery as a director, tread with caution and discretion. i absolutely don’t endorse these concepts. so, if you do want to watch it, you can go to HBOmax or click this link, just be advised.

[nautiscarader]

Okay, so I’ve had a few days to think about the Animaniacs 2020 reboot, and to formulate my opinion - not that it matters to anyone. 

I should preface it with my history with Animaniacs. While the og show was televised in my country when I was a little kid, I only watched it occasionally. I have, however, watched a good chunk of it when I was in college, and learned English, and I have to say this: i was HOWLING with laughter at the wordplays, and ingenuity that was baked into the songs and jokes. Animaniacs remain my number one recommendation for anyone who would like to get better at it. 

I am also a huge fan of abstract and nonsense, so you can imagine how much fun I’ve had with stories like “Chairman of the bored”, when it is revealed that the only force in the universe able to stop the Warners is sheer boredom. 

This is what I’ve been looking forward to when I sat to watch the new Animaniacs. 

And with that said, I am saddened to inform you, that the new series is... very good.

Which is still below “phenomenal” of the original, hence the “sad” part. More under cut

There is a LOT of great things to talk about in the new Animaniacs: the wordplays and jokes are as good as before, the animation is crisp (though I will come back to one aspect of it), the songs are fun and catchy, especially the one about Reboots from the first episode, which I have been humming non-stop for the past two days. The comedy is wacky and unmistakably in their style, and Warners as always shoot at their targets with impeccable aim.

The modernised settings and technology is visible, but not distracting. Warners still feel like demigods of mischief, standing above all the world, no matter how much it has changed (as opposed to, say, The Looney Tunes Show where it did overshadow the wackiness). 

The show satirised a lot of modern life and politics, and once more, they did it to the point. i was absolutely flabbergasted at the Pinky and The Brain episode about NSA, and how Brain explained that the government listens to all our phonecalls with the same casual nonchalance as if he was talking about milk being sold in every shop. That hit me hard, and the entire segment is, I think, my favourite of all of them.       

But at the same time, there are some choices the creators - or maybe the studio - did that lessen the experience. 

First and most jarring difference is the absence of almost all of the supporting cast. Long gone is that parade of wacky characters who strolled with their contracts through the intro. We occasionally see Ralph the guard, and in last episode we get doctor Scratchnsniff, but that’s it. There is a segment which kinda-sorta explained what happened to them, but I cannot for the life of me imagine WHY would they abandon almost all the rest of characters. 

The only ones that survived the cut were Pinky and The Brain, and don’t get me wrong, I love them, through and through, but after a while, especially in the binge format, they get repetitive. I’d love to see Rita and Runt parody another musical, like “Hamilton”. Or maybe Slappy and Skippy showing the generational gap that deepened in a literal quarter of century that have passed? Remember, there were episodes of old “Animaniacs” without Warner siblings, and just segments of those supporting characters. Their absence hurt, and I do hope it will be rectified in the second season.      

Speaking of, you know my opinion on calling 13 episodes “a season”. By my standards, it’s a half-season, but despite my strongly-worded shaking fists at the skies, the big studios have done nothing about it. The audacity...

The relatively small sample size works against Animaniacs in one other aspect, which I’m SURE there are already tons of discussions about: the politics. Yes, there is a lot of it, and sadly, when spread to only 13 episodes, it feels like much more. But at the other hand, the times we live nowadays feel like a cartoon, especially with comically villainous politicians, like Trump, so it is only natural to see what actual cartoons think about them. But on the... third hand, political satire is now everywhere, so it feels oversaturated, while on the... fourth hand (I will need more in a minute), i am glad they also did jabs at Putin and alike. And of course, Animaniacs have always made fun of politics, it’s just this time, it feels closer to home.... but maybe because it sadly is. 

I also have to say that some segments felt... unfinished, incomplete, or just weird. I have already voiced how kinda disappointing the suffragette song was, especially given what could have been done with the larger cast, but there were a few more. For example, one segment of Pinky and the Brain parodies “1001 nights”, where Brain tells Scheherazade three tales. And each feels rushed. This should have clearly been an ongoing narrative to the whole episode, and not just one segment. There were also three very weird short segments with completely original characters, and while two of them were so-so, the last one, about a gnome living in a person’s mouth completely befuddled me. I still don’t know what was it about, and frankly, I feel like I need an adult. There was also a Halloween episode, complete with spookified intro... even though all episodes premiered in one day... and AFTER Halloween... Weird.  

As a final complaint, while the animation in most cases was stellar, there were these scenes where background characters were drawn.. well, ugly, with wide, bucked teeth and stretched faces, like from some very nasty satire cartoon. And I don’t mean just the antagonists of segments  - this I understand - I also mean the regular characters, and it kinda felt mean-spirited. I noticed that a bit in the “Jurassic Lark” promo too, and I was worried (correctly) that it might carry on into the show. It’s not too distracting, but it happens every now and then. 

But still, even with all those flaws above, it is a great, great continuation of the beloved original. Will it be as eternal...? I suspect not, some elements that were used to modernise it will inevitably date it faster, but maybe, if anything, this is the sign of how the world affects the media. 

I, for one, welcome our Warner overlords (and overlady), because we need them. And let’s face it, we all missed them.        

[aion-rsa]

Malignant Ending Explained

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This article contains spoilers for Malignant.

In director James Wan’s first horror movie in five years, Malignant, pregnant heroine Madison (Annabelle Wallis) is traumatized early on when her abusive husband (Jake Abel) is slaughtered in their Seattle home by a vicious yet ill-defined killer lurking in the shadows. Madison is further devastated when she learns that she’s lost her baby in the attack—apparently the fourth pregnancy that she has been unable to carry to term, with the earlier ones being three miscarriages.

Her torment continues when she forms a psychic link with the killer, which allows her to watch helplessly as the murderer plows gruesomely through the members of a medical team that we met in the film’s prologue at a Gothic hilltop medical hospital. The killer is named Gabriel—a name that has connections to Madison’s past, her long-repressed memories and those doctors in that long ago chamber of medical horrors.

Who is Gabriel?

Gabriel is a little boy who lives inside my mo…uh, wait a minute, wrong horror movie.

Gabriel is the name of an unseen patient at Simion Medical Hospital, first encountered at the beginning of the movie laying waste to doctors, operating rooms, and electrical systems. Gabriel is also the name of the “imaginary friend” that Madison had when she was a child and living with her adopted parents and sister, Sydney. And of course Gabriel is the killer who murders Madison’s husband and then begins to slaughter the members of the medical team who did something ghastly to him at that horrid hospital. But who or what is Gabriel, and what connection does he have to Madison?

It turns out that Gabriel is Madison’s parasitic twin, born along with her to a teenage girl named Serena May, who gives up her children to the researchers at Simion. At first they thought Gabriel was a massive teratoma—a malignant tumor made up of hair, muscle, tissue, and bone—attached to Madison, then named Emily. But the teratoma was, in fact, a deformed, separate child named Gabriel by his biological mother and attached to Emily via the head and spinal cord, and who could draw energy physically off Emily but could also manipulate her mind since they share a brain.

Horror is a metaphorical genre, so the brilliance of this idea is that Gabriel could be symbolic of something else—in this case, mental illness. While there have been cases of twins forming in the womb but only one making it to term (Stephen King used this idea as the basis for his novel The Dark Half),  Gabriel could also be a manifestation of bipolar disorder or dissociative personality disorder… taken to a horrific extreme.

How Did Gabriel Survive Being Cut Out?

In an act of desperation, the doctors removed as much as they physically could of Gabriel from Emily’s body and left the rest inside her skull, while “suppressing” Emily’s monstrous sibling with powerful drugs. A seemingly recovered Emily, her own memories repressed, was then taken in by her adopted family. But since Gabriel’s consciousness could not be removed completely from Emily—now renamed Madison—and part of his physical body was still inside her, he was therefore ���alive” and could speak to Madison in her head. Her “imaginary friend” living rent free in her mind.

As Madison grew into adulthood and got married, she became pregnant several times—and each time Gabriel fed off the life force of the babies inside her, terminating the pregnancies while building back his own strength. It takes a beating by her abusive spouse, which includes a vicious blow to the head, to cause Gabriel to fully wake up. Emerging from within Madison (his skull-like face pokes out of the back of her head, escaping from the gash left by Madison’s husband), he literally uses her body, which he can strengthen and contort. His first act is to kill her husband, but afterward it becomes about revenge for Gabriel as he goes after the medical team that tried to destroy him. He manipulates Madison’s mind so that she sees the murders as “visions” and doesn’t realize she is committing them herself.

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Why Gabriel Kept That Woman Alive

At one point relatively early in the film, Gabriel—who we only see in a long black coat and features-obscuring hat—kidnaps a tour guide in the Seattle underground and imprisons her in a decrepit lair. The motivations and implications for these actions unclear. Later, the woman escapes her bonds and tries to flee, only to come crashing through the ceiling of Madison’s living room. That’s right, she was being held in Madison’s attic, which convinces at least one detective that Madison is an accomplice in some way to Gabriel’s crimes.

But Madison claims no knowledge of this and doesn’t even know who the woman is. It turns out that she is Serena May, who was said by the doctors at Simion to be dead, but is very much alive and was tracked down by her son/daughter. Left comatose by her fall, Serena wakes up during the climactic confrontation between Madison, Gabriel, and Sydney in her hospital room. She asks her son to forgive her: “I should have never given you away.” But Gabriel isn’t buying it; he kills Sydney (or so he thinks) and tells Serena that he kept her alive because he wanted her to see the “monster” that he’s become.

Ideas are expressed here about abandoned children, absent parents, nurture versus nature… again, all through the metaphoric lens of horror. To see the abomination that her son has become may be the ultimate cruelty directed at Serena, which is why Gabriel wanted her alive.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Why Gabriel Wanted to Kill Sydney

Partially born but trapped inside his sister’s body, Gabriel is insanely jealous when his consciousness is repressed. When Madison is adopted into a normal, loving family, he is further enraged and uses his then-feeble strength to try and turn Madison against her family in deadly ways. And it seems that over the years, he has saved most of his animosity for Sydney.

During the final confrontation in the hospital room, he says as much, telling Sydney (Maddie Hasson) he’s “saved her for last” because Madison “chose you over me.” This is sibling rivalry taken to an extreme, especially since the angry sibling isn’t even a real child in the true sense of the word. But Gabriel’s hatred of Sydney could also be a manifestation of Madison’s own ambivalent feelings about her adopted sibling, who she may feel inferior to because Sydney is their parents’ actual biological child.

In the end, however, whatever ill feelings Madison may have harbored toward Sydney are overcome as she manipulates Gabriel into thinking he’s killed Sydney when he hasn’t and regains control of her body and mind. Madison, whose life has been defined by the feeling that she was never really part of a family,  tells her adopted sister, “All my life I’ve yearned for a blood connection with someone… yet in the end, it was right in front of me all along. Blood or not, you’ll always be my sister,” as they embrace. So maybe that’s what the movie is about?

And that’s a wrap on Malignant!

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Malignant is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now.

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