#and also I watched the first two episodes of the old x-men cartoon and knew in my heart that rowan would absolutely co-opt wolverines speech

[westrastorm]

My silly little traumatized aristocrat (Rowan, in their family-mandated Normal Rich Guy form)

They’re not wearing it out of any acquiescence to their parents wishes, but rather to subvert their expectations.

[signalwatch]

Kevin Conroy Merges With The Infinite

Here at The Signal Watch, we're absolutely heartbroken to hear that actor Kevin Conroy has passed.  

Conroy voiced Bruce Wayne/ Batman across innumerable cartoons, video games and other projects.  For generations of Bat-fans was the definitive portrayal of the character.  

In 1992, when Batman: The Animated Series hit the air, I was a Senior in high school, and - I don't think unreasonably - skeptical of any new Batman cartoons that might appear, believing that they'd be of about GI Joe or Transformer levels in quality of story and art, the same voice actors working from show to show.  I don't think it was snobbery.  I was just now older and stuff aimed at 8 year olds was not in my wheelhouse anymore.

You don't often remember the first time you saw a cartoon, but... boy, do I remember that one.  It was the pilot Man-Bat episode that was an absolute showcase for what they were doing stylistically and technically.  I had not heard of Bruce Timm at the time, but I knew someone had read and understood the comics.  And, look, I am a fan of the Michael Keaton/ Tim Burton Bat-films, but they're their own thing.  They bear almost zero relation to Batman of the comics.  This was the storytelling of the comics, but with a look and feel that borrowed one part from the Anton Furst designs and one part from Dick Tracy and one part from the Fleischer cartoons.  Absolutely gorgeous stuff no one had seen on TV before.

The point is, I don't know what I expected a Batman cartoon to be in 1992, but I remember Batman opening his mouth and a baritone, gravelly voice came out that was somehow exactly how Batman should sound.  Even more incredible, when he removed the cowl and spoke as Bruce Wayne - he had an actual alter-ego.  

And then my girlfriend at the time called and I remember "uh-huh"ing my way through the conversation as I watched this incredible show unspool in front of me.  And given the way shows worked back then, I lost my mind knowing this would be on five days per week.  How?  I do recall trying to explain what was happening on TV to my ladyfriend, and her saying "Ok, cool.  Anyway..."  You will note, that romance was not to last.

This was 1992, so social media didn't exist.  If BBS's covered it, I didn't know because my family hadn't had a computer since the Apple IIe was boosted in the infamous break-in in Spring of 1991.  

So, by myself I watched this show somewhat religiously. I didn't have friends into this stuff, so it took a visit by my brother from college before I could do the "LOOK.  LOOOOOOOOOK!!!" thing I wanted to do so badly.

My first year at the University of Texas, I found myself reunited with JAL (he of the podcast), a pal from my days growing up in Austin (I moved to Houston in 1990) and I think we'd been hanging out for maybe an hour when JAL said "you know the guy who plays Batman looks just like Scott Summers" (that's X-Men's Cyclops to you and me).  It was maybe 2-3 years before I saw a picture of Kevin Conroy, and, wow, was JAL right.

Kevin Conroy brought gravitas and drama to Batman.  While I understood the wild-eyed danger of Michael Keaton (who I think showed his true menace perfectly in the Spider-movies), he was not Batman as I understood him to be from multiple comics per month that I'd read for a few years now.  Nor were two 2-hour movies the same as 30 minutes, 5 days per week.  Timm's design, Dini's story aesthetic - all fantastic.  But it was in making Batman rumble through your TV's tinny speakers that Conroy brought the myth of a Batman to life.  

This was a voice that would send shivers up the spines of criminals, but Conroy also humanized it when it was right to do so.  He was genuinely acting, not reading off lines on a page.  In part, you can thank the always amazing Andrea Romano for working with the showrunners to find that sweet spot that went from that first episode of Batman to the final scenes of JLU.  And in the years to come, when Conroy would step back in front of the mic, he was both a reminder of the greatness of the era and a pointer to what WB could have done better in every project after Romano retired.  

By the early 00's, Conroy was appearing in DVD extras and then online, and at Cons.  His fans got to know who he was, and he did not disappoint.  While a mere mortal of good humor, he very much understood what it meant to be the voice of Batman to multiple generations of fans, and he never took it lightly or seemed to think it was silly or just a job.  He got what people looked for and heard in his performance.  

It was a nuanced performance over the years, including the surprisingly resonant Batman: Mask of the Phantasm to Batman sitting with Ace as she blinked out in that one episode of JLU.  No matter what the edgelords would think a *real* Batman was like - we'd know.  Conroy had brought it to life.

During the CW's daring Crisis on Infinite Earths riff, he actually did play Bruce Wayne, so the role was not limited to animation.

In those interviews, etc...  I genuinely liked the guy.  He seemed like the kind of person you'd want to include in your "you can have dinner with any six people" kind of conversation.  But, mostly, I don't think you can measure how much Conroy helped push Batman and superheroes from a novelty when it wasn't a campy disaster or mediocrity for undiscriminating kids to set the stage for everything that would come after - from video games to the MCU.  I'm not sure you get the recent Batman film without Conroy's Batman carrying Batman for decades and people growing up believing that taking Batman seriously is a normal thing to do.

I'm absolutely stunned at Conroy's passing.  He was only 66.  I'd heard nothing of illness, just what he might be up to next.  Like Chadwick Boseman passing, it's catching me totally by surprise.  

What I can say is that Bat-fans and comic folk are a bit like baseball fans.  Many consider Conroy the ideal version of Batman - myself included - and like a good baseball fan, we'll pass down the names of the greats for a hundred years.  And the good news is, there's so much of a record of that performance.  We'll be able to return to it again and again, and it will guide performers for generations.  

https://ift.tt/DOvEXL7

[innovativestruggles]

Extra thoughts on Daisuke x Suzue (Anime and Novel)

I was prompted to write this when a friend asked me several prodding questions on Daizue’s relationship and feminism several days ago. Obviously my friend knew where to hit the right nerve LOL

So I thought about it and I’d like to share my thoughts. I don’t know whether my DaiSuzu followers are still hanging around, but if you see this, then this is for you. This post is very opinionated of course so you may not agree with what I have to say. 

I took the initiative to go back and watch some of the FKBU episodes, and then top it off with the novel. As I mentioned in numerous older posts, the novel is the original and was written sometime in the 1970s. If you can read Japanese, I strongly recommend you grab a copy and read it for yourself. It goes into a lot more depth with regards to Daizue’s relationship and there is a lot more development between the two.

Novel and anime are different yet there are similarities. What I am going to write here is purely about DaiSuzu and because there are only minute differences in their interactions in both novel and anime, I will combine the two elements together. But before I do that, I want to talk a little about Suzue.

Suzue

I absolutely love Suzue’s character - in almost every single aspect. She is strong, clever, independent and defies all odds. Her personality and interests are definitely more pronounced in the anime in terms of strength and defying the odds. She does the hard yard - a mechanic, an engineer, a creator, a pilot, a spy, an intelligence operator - she is a one stop shop and she is not just a pretty face. Then we have her novel counterpart, who shares similar traits that concerns intelligence and independence. She does intelligence and spy work for Daisuke as well, and the only thing that was absent would be her ‘mechanics and gadget development role.’ Given that the book was written in the 70s by a misogynistic piece of shit, I am surprised the author gave Suzue that level of prominence. 

When I saw the promotional materials and then the second episode of FKBU, I was so excited! Finally, a strong female character who has all the ‘male dominated’ traits! I was looking forward to what the anime had to offer her, considering the creators were talking about giving Suzue an ‘important’ role in the anime.  And throughout the series, her character in that sense did not disappointment. She did a lot of work for Daisuke and she was the backbone of everything. She even had to rescue him at times. What an incredible woman.

In comparison, novel Suzue, although a prominent, intelligent character, still had some level of submissiveness to her that screamed ‘I need a man to save me and do things for me’ kind of way. Unsurprising of course being written by an old fashioned man in the 70s. So the anime in a sense was a breath of fresh air.

Then we see the lack of screen time. Although Suzue was just a supporting character, she was quite prominent in the novel. The anime went through all this trouble to create such an incredibly strong female character, but gave her such little screen time. Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m just frustrated that it is always the bloody male characters that gets a lot of screen time. I don’t give two fucks about your need for a fanservice or to appease fujos, we need more female characters who are strong, clever, independent, does not need a man to save her, is not overly sexualised and gets plenty of screen time. If it’s not one, it’s another. Can’t they just bloody do it all together? Also, have three main characters, Daisuke, Suzue and Haru ffs.

Feminism & Anime

If you trawl through my blog, there are a lot of posts about women, feminism, misogyny, toxic fandoms and a lot of het ships. Although I do absolutely love my M/M and F/F ships, there is a reason for my interest in anime het ships. I am a social worker who specialises in working with victim/survivors of family/domestic violence and sexual assault (DVSA), and complex trauma. Considering the majority of perpetrators are men, and the majority of victim/survivors are women, it is important to emphasise the need for a healthy and respectful relationship. I enjoy bringing my feminist perspective to film and fiction because they are an extension of society. Film and fiction (including anime and manga) are based on societal perceptions, and characters are still, unfortunately, heavily gendered. 

The anime fandom consists of real people and if you look all over social media, people talk about the characters all the time and their thoughts on them. It comes from somewhere. So when I watch anime, and when I see a male and female character get together in a manner that is healthy and respectful, they get a standing ovation from me. In particular, is when a male character treats his female partner in a way that empowers her or if he abstains from using his male entitlement to demean her. Because in society, there is still a large proportion of men who continues to abuse women in every way possible. If fans are constantly viewing content (yes, even ‘cartoons’) where women are objectified and disrespected comparatively to men, that rigid stereotype is reinforced and ingrained. 

I just want to add a note here that the LGBTQIA+ community do experience DVSA as well and this post does not disregard or invalidate them in any way. The focus of this discussion however, pertains to men, who make up the majority of perpetrators and, women, who are the majority of victim/survivors.

Daisuke and Suzue

I answered an ask sometime ago about why I ship DaiSuzu and although that has not changed, I have given a lot more thought to the reasoning behind it. The one thing I dislike about Suzue is her obsession with Daisuke, both in the novel and anime. It does take away her cool, independent like character, and submit her to the idea that she is nothing without first appeasing a man (Daisuke in this case). I don’t want to put too much dislike into her character in the anime, because we never got to see what her history was like with Daisuke. In the novel, I do see elements as to why she can be a bit obsessive, and that was most likely to do with her being ‘adopted’ and given a second chance. It was her way of showing appreciation. Yet she does have romantic feelings for Daisuke, so in essence, her character was emphasised as a typical lovestruck woman 😒

Again, she was incredibly loyal and forgiving towards Daisuke in the anime, despite his shitty attitude towards her at times. You’re probably wondering, after all that I wrote about feminism, why I would still ship DaiSuzu? In the anime, that comes down to Daisuke’s trauma. It added an extra layer of complexity. Daisuke’s standoffish, cold behaviour towards Suzue was not out of a sense of male entitlement and disrespect towards Suzue being a woman, rather, it was a manifestation of his trauma. Of course, it does not excuse his behaviour, but this is the reason why I really enjoyed watching their relationship. There was a lot of mutual trust going on (which I wrote about), covert appreciation of Suzue’s skills and abilities and Daisuke’s own way of making amends with her. 

In the novel, however, Daisuke does not have a history of any traumatic experiences. His personality was a lot more animated and though he does exhibit some weird behaviour towards Suzue, he does not do it out of male privilege or misogyny. He was just dense (and an idiot).  

Regardless, DaiSuzu’s relationship isn’t just as simple as black and white. There are elements of feminism that intertwines the anime and what I love a lot about Daisuke was that he never put Suzue down, felt intimidated, or tried to make her feel inadequate for being more clever and more intelligent than him. He relied on her knowledge, her skills and her expertise to guide him through his missions, because not only did he trust her with his life, he believed in her skills. He quietly allowed her to do her job without questioning her abilities or intervening.

I won’t discuss how shit the anime was and how much they shat on Suzue’s character by making her Daisuke’s relative, but like I said, I was pretty impressed with the way they turned Suzue into a strong character, and Daisuke’s perception of Suzue as a woman.

And yes, Daisuke doesn’t deserve Queen Suzue. And if you were again to ask me about Daisuke’s true feelings for Suzue? I am pretty damn certain that he loves her to death - in both novel AND anime.

[whyqueerbaitingisbad]

movies & shows

cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.

please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.

Supernatural (CW) 2005

This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding  kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r  h e l l.

… w hy.

Sherlock (BBC) 2010

Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.

The 100 (CW) 2014

We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨

Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016

*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”

. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character. 

Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.

Scooby-Doo (2002) 

While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.

Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013

To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018

This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020

This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013

This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.

Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010

It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.

Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016

The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.

Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016

*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*

This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH. 

It was so great to watch.

Love, Simon (2018) 

There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)

All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.

The book is also really good.

Call Me By Your Name (2018)

This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.

But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…

through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.

and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...

[popculturebuffet]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[mycreativereach]

The Birth of Oron

Colossus’ raw power, wolverines’ adamantine claws, Captain America's unbreakable shield, the powers of the Greek gods, and the hierarchy of the archangels. These are but a few to name of the heroes I would watch growing up.

I was always a fanboy for superheroes, especially marvel. I had my time with DC, but I was always more drawn to the stories of the X-men or other superheroes within the realm of the marvel universe. Other means of fantasy such as Lord of The Rings and anime such as one-punch man and Dragonball Z played a part as well, but it was a few that stemmed from my childhood that allowed me to develop Oron the character you read today.

Colossus

To say that fantasy and heroes have had a slight impact on my novel is an understatement. I remember getting up early Saturday mornings, roughly around 8 am, to catch a list of cartoon shows that would appear on Fox. Over a few years, the shows had moved around and switched but I always remember waiting to watch the 90’s nostalgic marvel show x-men. The always progressive stories of wolverine’s trust issues and macho feud with cyclops, gambit’s Casanova chivalrous tendencies towards rogue, and Professor X’s forever dilemma of accepting the very humans who hate him while teaching mutants to be at peace with civilization was what I loved about the show. I couldn’t wait to rush to the carpet in front of my tv and sit for two half-hour episodes. At the time wolverine had been my favorite mutant and marvel character for that matter and still is. But the character that helped shape Oron was colossus. I remember seeing him for the first time, his mutant power of being able to enwrap himself in metal which tremendously increased his raw strength and power reeled me in. His character traits of being a humble Russian farmer with roots of loyalty and fighting for good is also what attached me to him even further. From that point on until this very day, colossus is still one of my top favorite marvel characters and has also helped pave the way for me to creating my character Oron. I knew I wanted Orons characteristics to be someone who came across as hard and cold on the outside because of the lore I had built around him, but I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted him to look. Eventually between coming across colossus combined with my love for bodybuilding and the aesthetics that bodybuilders bring is ultimately the reason why I created Oron to have more of a menacing appeal to my readers. But as for the color of Orons skin, it’s funny that Oron turned to be blue. I have gotten feedback both negative and even some positive saying Dr. Manhattan has played a role in this decision I made. They are similar in some respects but in all honesty, it had nothing to do with that character. The sole reason is that I like the color blue and decided to go with a lighter or sky blue. Navy blue is my favorite to be exact, but I Liked a light shade of blue that looked on Oron and then decided to keep it. I had gone through several other stages of Oron with different colors and patterns and other anatomical appearances, but I felt none of them looked well enough as the color that he ultimately ended up with.

Sarevok

Another character that played a role in the creation of Oron was the main antagonist of the well-known RPG-pc game from the 1990s Sarevok Anchev from Baldur’s Gate. Still one of my favorite villains ever, Sarevok had the menacing appeal of height, increased strength, and malice that caused him to be feared. But it was his assured intelligence and allured determination that made me enjoy his character. Although I like the version of Sarevok from Baldur’s gate, it is the expansion to Shadows of Amn in Throne of Bhaal that was the version that piqued my interest for Oron. Sarevok at this point comes forward to help his brother, the main protagonist in the entire storyline. The evil aura still emanated from Sarevok but as you play out the game, or read the books, you, in turn, find out that even though this once archrival of yours had been your most bitter enemy was nowhere to help you even with the ominous characteristics he still had. This helped give me an idea to develop Orons past as being one of sorrow and negativity while helping Aurelia and although being a stern teacher, Oron meant the best for Aurelia. There were certain differences between the characters but also some similarities as well in the ways of how they displayed their care for the person they trying to help and the determination and confidence they expressed through their cold hard demeanors with Orons being more serious and Sarevoks attitude animating more of a serious but sinister malevolence.

Marvels Cosmic Hierarchy

Getting older I started to really dive into the cosmic hierarchies of Marvel. The vast powers in the universe always intrigued me as to how powerful they could become and how different beings would clash against one another. Being limited to the capabilities we have as humans always made these stronger beings look much more appealing because I knew it was physically impossible to achieve their prominence of power. Characters like Galactus or the In-Betweener from the marvel cosmic hierarchy would always possess jaw-dropping crazy abilities and crash with other beings of good or evil in the universe. I wanted to adapt powers such as this into my storyline, but I wanted to also make sure the readers knew that no matter how powerful one could seem, everything in my universe can be defeated. We might look at Oron and think that he’s a God of some sort, an undefeatable being with extraordinary abilities. But the truth is Oron could be matched by other relevant powers as well. In Marvels Hierarchy, the order of power is laid out for you to see who is the strongest and weakest of that order, although it's subject to change at times since some beings get stronger and others weaker. But what I enjoy is that even though there is an order of strength of power that doesn’t mean someone of weaker status can’t defeat another being of higher ranking. Because there are so many factors that help accumulate the ranking status of powers you are never fully solidified in that position and can be destroyed. As Marvel fans would know, we saw this when master order and lord chaos put aside their differences and joined together to destroy the living tribunal who was considered the second to the one-above-all who is the strongest entity in the marvel universe. Another example was how the Knull, the divine leader of the symbiotes, such as the one called venom from Spider-Man appeared from the multi-verse and decapitated a celestial, who were known to be some of the strongest beings in the multi-verse at the time. As much as there are hierarchies sometimes there are powers that seem to have been forgotten or hidden away to avoid detection. And even though there is a list of hierarchical power such as the one Oron is a part of you maybe never be truly undefeatable with other powerful beings that roam the universe.

 Greek Gods of Old

Another form of lore that helped shaped my character Oron was the tales of the Greek Gods from Mount Olympus. The many stories and fiery battles between themselves and also the titans intrigued me the most out of the many legends they were a part of. Their supremacy and dominance over Earth and its inhabitants were similar to what I wanted to implement in how Oron was perceived. Each Greek god had a role to play in part to help civilization keep structured. They each had an array of followers, some more than others, and had cities dedicated to their names. They were worshipped and in term bestowed their blessings upon the strongest of their followers and warriors. But Out of all the gods I always gravitated towards Poseidon and Hercules the most. Poseidon’s because of the wisdom yet commanding presence the god held and Hercules because of the demi-gods valiant heart and brute strength. So, you can say these didn’t exactly correctly tie with Oron but there are similar traits from these characters and the motions of the Greek Gods that inspired some of the character traits in Oron.  Although Oron is a hard-pressed individual he still flows with wisdom from the amount of experience he has gained from his years of life as Poseidon expressed through his many gatherings with other Gods and mainly Zeus. Oron’s strength seems to be unmatched and comes off as an omnipotent figure, similar to Hercules, to the people of Earth. As you read along in the novel you come to see Orons shortcomings and also weaknesses which were important for me to show. But whatever Greek God it was, even though they were far beyond mortals, they could have weaknesses emotionally and physically. You could be strong-willed and mentally equipped but even the Gods can be shaken just like when they had to battle the titans for their freedom.

Christian Biblical Hierarchy and its Powers

Growing up I was brought into a family with moderate practice of the Catholic Christian religion. Every Sunday for several years we would go to church and celebrate the name of God like a lot of other Christian families and live our lives as close to those religious morals. Needless to say, as I got older I drifted farther away from the specific ideological catholic beliefs when it came to how we were created. I still did and currently have a belief that there is some sort of greater being in the universe, but I have concluded that I have no idea what it is. For all I know it could be some greater intelligence that has no shape or form. It could be some superior alien race that decided to use humans as a test subject for their own means of biological experimentation. Or maybe we collided with other forms of substances and we weren’t the direct creation from any being at all, just a number of substances colliding together which then took billions of years to create our bacterial organisms that finally evolved into what we are today. Personally, I don’t believe in the latter of the possibilities, I think there is some sort of greater being or spirit, intelligence, or energy, whatever you want to call it, but have no idea what it is. But as I started to sway away from Catholicism the stories of the archangels and powers within the bible didn’t leave my mind so easily. Reading upon how God created the Earth and then the archangels and other stories such as Able and Kane piqued my interest. This was the foundation for the background lore of Illithesium and also my wanting to add Oron to a hierarchy of characters that belonged to the Christian religion but with my own twist. God's love with the strength of Michael and Lucifer's fallen grace would play a role in Illithesium and Oron but differently from how the bible displays it. Oron and these characters were beings of great power, yes, but they could be destroyed and were not immortal as we learned growing up in religion class. They had physical forms and could be spoken to although through a language far beyond our capabilities. Their legendary powers displayed in the bible also are showcased but in a way that it could be explained and understood in a more somewhat scientific down-to-earth method. Adding Oron to the lore of characters that I grew up reading about and knowing with adding many different featured twists was creatively fun. And the lore thickens as I’m currently writing the second book which you’ll get to see hopefully sooner rather than later.

 My Love for Bodybuilding

As I mentioned up above, bodybuilding has been a part of my life since I was 18 and has allowed me to view life in a specific way. If you want results, then you need to go out and earn them by taking necessary calculated actions in order to have success. By doing this over years I build a physique I had once admired and still admire, for myself through hard work and dedication. Involving myself in bodybuilding and reading upon bodybuilders and strength lifters is what really caused me to adopt a specific look to my character Oron. Now not all my characters look as big as Oron as I want physiological diversity in my novels, but the results one can get from weightlifting and the many ways you can build your body are shown through all my characters. But the reason why I chose Oron to not only be tall and broad but heavily muscular was to give an idea of what a superior being far beyond human capabilities can look like at physical peak performance. But an even bigger and more lasting impression I wanted to leave on my readers was that even the mightiest and biggest beings have demons they have nestled inside them. The strongest of us also have skeletons in their closet they’d like to forget that always come back to eventually haunt us. It was to show that it's normal to have to face your fears and to overcome them. It was a combination of respecting the hard work and ethic that goes into building a body as bodybuilders do, whether they be natural or not, and the strength that has to be applied to overcome the adversity of everyday life obstacles, injuries, and more. And to know that a being that may be tall and strong with power none the likes have seen before can still be shattered as nothing in the universe was made to be perfect and will eventually break under certain pressure.  

Last Thoughts

Oron became a staple in the Illithesium novel and to find out more you’d of course have to read up on the book to see what happens. I hope you enjoyed the character of Oron as much as I did create him and giving him life while watching him grow throughout the novel.

If you liked what you read here or have any questions, comment below or send me an email and I’d be happy to chat with you!

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Spider-Man 1994 and Me

I have no idea how I first discovered Spider-Man the Animated Series. I know it wasn’t the first Spider-Man THING I ever encountered. That was some other Spidey show but I’ve checked them all and have no idea which one it was. But as a kid I didn’t know there was more than one show. I didn’t even know Spider-Man was more than a cartoon!

 So I conflated the then current 1994 cartoon with whatever show I’d seen and by extension with Spider-Man as a whole.

 To me back then Spider-Man WAS that show. The idea of comics, movies, video games and everything else never occurred to me and when I did discover them in my mind they weren’t the ‘real’ Spider-Man.

The ‘real’ Spider-Man was this show.

 Thing is I never knew when it was on. I just knew it was on Fox Kids the cable channel. And my family didn’t have cable. So I spent a long time hoping and praying every weekend that maybe my folks would take me to one of our family friends or relatives who did, and that they would have Fox Kids in their package and that Spider-Man would be on when I was there.

 Everyone in my family and at school I was hungry to see that show, and so they got me a VHS collecting 3 episodes for my birthday. They also taped one and a half episodes from a Saturday morning show that aired the cartoon before I had to go to Greek school.

 As a result of what I can only describe as playing those tapes on loop I can practically quote ‘Night of the Lizard’, ‘The Sting of the Scorpion’, ‘The Menace of Mysterio’, ‘Make a Wish’ and ‘Attack of the Octobot’.

 Whilst the latter two episodes are not well regarded, and I sympathise as to why (they’re basically a subpar adaptation of ‘The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man’), when I was the target demographic they really spoke to me.

 And not in a ‘kids don’t know taste’ kinda way. The plot concerned Spider-Man visiting the bedroom of a kid who was a huge Spider-Man fan, hanging out with them, confiding his secrets to them, going on an adventure with them and ultimately that kid restoring both Spider-Man’s memory of himself and resolve to BE a hero.

 Can you spell ‘wish fulfilment’?

 During one fateful trip to a family friend’s house (who always had the best stuff) I caught the two episodes which are probably the lasting legacy of the whole show, ‘The Alien Costume’ Parts 1-2.

 For all young and impressionable viewers I think these episodes left an indelible mark on them, along with the follow up episode.

 Try if you will to imagine yourself NOT knowing Spider-Man wears any other kind of costume besides his red and blue one. Then imagine the idea of Spider-Man...as the bad guy. Not just the bad guy...but scary. Then imagine he’s made bad, and made scary because his clothes are literally making him that way and forcing themselves on him, even when he doesn’t want them to. Then imagine seeing an even badder, even scarier Spider-Man, but you don’t get a good look at him. you just know he’s ‘out there’.

 Now imagine you are like 6 years old seeing all that.

 For me and new Spider-Man fans like me, our experience with the black costume and Venom was about as close to what the original readers of the 1980s went through as possible.

 What helped make these episodes so impressionable was the fact that my mind was filling in the blanks for what the ‘evil Spider-Man’ might look like.

 Then a while later, by complete chance at an entirely different friend’s house, she showed me a video that had the fabled third part of the story and so, like every 90s kid, I became entranced by Venom!

 And you know what, he was everything my childhood imagination had dreamed up and more. This wasn’t just a scary looking guy, with a scary attitude; this was a guy who was literally stalking our hero. As a kid you might’ve felt a certain comfort from Spider-Man. He was older than you, he was the hero and he was powerful. You either wanted to be him, or wanted to befriend him. But in this episode, suddenly he was as scared and as vulnerable as you were.

 Following those three episodes I spent a lot of time alternating between fear and fascination for Venom and the black costume, and I longed to see those episodes again somehow, even when I eventually did get to see the show more regularly.

 That happened when my family had to move in with my grandparents for 2 years, although I also caught the debut of Black Cat before that. Since Felicia was in whatever Spidey cartoon I first saw waaaaaaaaaay back I sort of knew the character and liked her.

 Anyway, back to my grandparents, during that time they got cable and eventually Fox Kids. So finally one of my childhood dreams was fulfilled and one day I taped a marathon of Spider-Man episodes beginning with the last half of the second part of the epic Spidey/X-Men crossover and ending during the first half of the first half of the also epic Spidey/Daredevil crossover!

 Again, I rewatched this almost religiously and since I didn’t quite understand the magic of the remote, I wound up sitting through the ads too and thus I’m still compelled to invest in the Chelsea Building Society and the 1997 Christmas catalogue.

 Not long after I rented a VHS from Blockbuster (remember those?) containing the Alien Costume/Venom episodes and soon committed those to memory too.

 Finally in now being able to watch the show regularly almost everyday I wound up seeing every other episode too, and seeing them like 5 times or something.

 The first of these episodes I really remember was the incredibly dumb ‘Partners’ wherein I was happy to see Felicia and Scorpion again, and got introduced to the Vulture for the first time. Also I got introduced to Silvermane but he was less than dignified in the episode. If you’ve seen it you will know what I mean.

 Among the most impressionable were the Carnage centric episodes and Secret Wars stuff. But I still fondly remember one morning seeing Spider Wars part 1.

 Mind = blown.

 Aunt May is dead. Green Goblin and Hobgoblin are together. New York is wrecked. Everyone hates Spider-Man, even Robbie! And this is all because of...Spider-Man!?

Another Spider-Man!

Another Spider-Man combined...with Carnage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It helped that, though I didn’t realize he was a different character, I’d recently gotten a toy featuring the Spider-Ben costume and so when Spider-Carnage in an incredibly similar costume showed up, suddenly what I’d regarded as a dumb alternate costume action figure became startlingly relevant.

And the hits kept coming.

There’re even MORE Spider-Mans?

Spider-Man with Doc Ock’s arms!

Man-Spider!

And who is this blonde Scarlet Spider dude?

Ben Reilly and this whole storyline wound up being more important to me than I realized as around this time the Clone Saga was being reprinted, thus I was picking up my first Spider-Man comics off the back of recognizing both the Scarlet Spider and Spider-Ben costumes.

The next night I saw the final episode.

Of course I didn’t know it was the end. I thought for sure there was more coming and if I obediently watched enough of the reruns someday I’d see the fabled (and totally imaginary) next episode where Spidey finally reunites with Mary Jane.

However else I felt about the episode at the time, the story bears the distinction of introducing me to Stan Lee himself as he made his greatest ever cameo in the episode.

At the time it was confusing and surreal. The idea of anyone actually CREATING Spider-Man, or fiction in general, was a foreign concept to me. It grew more surreal as via osmosis I gradually began seeing this ‘Stanley guy’ in other places...except he was REAL, not a cartoon!

After being frustrated by the lack of follow up, and being bored by having seen the show so many times over, I began to...not exactly grow out of the show but began to sour on it a bit.

And upon entering the comics, realizing the show was actually based on THEM and regarding every deviation from them as ‘wrong’, I began to actually hate the show.

For the next 10 years or so I longed for another Spider-Man show, a better and more accurate one.

I went back and forth between disliking and lightly enjoying the show until about 2012.

I might not have many kind things to say about the Marc Webb Spidey movies. But after several years of distancing myself from Spider-Man and pretty much comics in general, the hype for the movie got me back in the mood and slowly but surely I disappeared back into the rabbit hole and this time got in deeper than ever before. Part of that was rewatching the show in it’s entirety from start to finish.

Initially I noticed the flaws, but then that last episode hit me. And over time, I fell in love with the show and see the worth it had beyond it’s flaws.

Quite apart from introducing Spider-Man and his world to me, it ‘educated’ me on the character in ways that actively helped me navigate the comics when I eventually did start to read them.

And looking back, there’d never been a more spiritually faithful take on Spider-Man ever before that show. It wasn’t a cartoon show using a comic book character, it was a comic book cartoon show!

So on this day, I thank you Spider-Man 1994. I wouldn’t have loved this character without you!

[promise-tingzz]

I’m back with another collage but this time I’m doing something different…I am going to be talking about……ANIMES TO WATCH DURING LITTLE SPACE/REGRESSION…whatever you want to call you headspace is a-okay with me. I will being listing the names of the anime and descriptions below, I personally don’t usually watch cartoons in little space, and if I do I’m sorta in baby space. Continuing though I love to watch anime in general, in and out of my headspace, but sometimes little me can’t follow the plot of certain anime’s I watch when I’m big, so I usually stick to slice of life and light romance sort of anime’s. But getting on to the topic at hand, I will be listing the names of anime going down row to row. These anime’s are so good, I promise.

Top 9 anime’s I recommend to watch in little space

•the first one we have up there is blend S, I know you heard of the intro before. Smile, sweet, sister, sadistic, surprise, service. Yup it’s that anime. The anime is basically about a High school girl, named Maika Sakuranomiya, who has a lot of trouble finding a part-time job because of how scary she looks when smiling. Which is what you usually need to do when doing any part-time job. You have to show enthusiasm, moving on though. Even though she has trouble with her smile, she is scouted one day by an Italian man who is also the manager of Stile, a café where its waitresses are given unique traits such as tsundere and younger sister. It’s a comedy/ slice of life type anime. I give this anime a 10/10 and it’s perfect when I watch it when I regress.

• the second anime going down is power puff girl z, the plot doesn’t differ from the regular power puff girls cartoon except in the anime. Professor Utonium was, infact, experimenting while his son Ken Kitazawa/Utonium created Chemical Z (a variant of his father's Chemical X) when a local restaurant specialty fell into the Chemical X. Ken uses the chemical to destroy an ice glacier and avoid an ecological disaster. The impact causes white and black Z-Rays to fly across the skies of New Townsville. The white lights hit Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup transforming them into the Powerpuff Girls. Those hit with the black light became the series' villains. After defeating Mojo Jojo, Mr. Mayor assigned them to be the heroines of the city. They are called to action using the cry of Ken Kitazawa's robot pet puppy, Poochi. Yes I know the anime sounds very similar to the cartoon, I just find PPGZ more appealing to my taste. Again 10/10 I would total recommend.

• the third anime is POKÉMON, oml I love this so much, any gen will do. Ranging from the old Pokémon getting aired in 1997 to Pokémon the series: sun and moon. The old Pokémon is about our main protagonist, a young Ash Ketchum, just began his Pokémon training as he finally turns 10. But things don't go as expected for the him, when he gets a Pikachu instead of a standard first Pokémon. Winning gym badges is also tougher than Ash thought it would be. He's not alone in his quest for the badges, though, as former gym leaders Brock and Misty are by his side, along with some new friends. I love it all. 10/10.

• the fourth anime, starting from the second column is bananya it’s basically a cutesy anime basically about a white cat who lives inside a banana. That’s it. My regressed self can follow the easy plot and my regressed two year old-ish self can laugh at it. 10/10 totally recommend.

• the fifth anime we have is miraculous ladybug. Yes I know, don’t come for me alright, I know it’s sort of a cartoon but the creators had the thought of anime still in mind so I’ll call it even. It’s basically about a girl named marinette. She seems to be a normal teenage girl, she dreams of becoming a famous fashion designer, is a bit awkward/shy and has a crush on one of her classmate. But she has a secret other teenagers don't have, she lives a double life as a crime-fighting superhero known as Ladybug. She uses her superpowers to help protect her native Paris from supervillain Hawk Moth. She is assisted, much to her dislike, by fellow hero Cat Noir. even though she insists she doesn't need him -- a stance she might not take if she knew his alter ego is her crush, Adrien. Together, Ladybug and Cat Noir help keep Paris safe from Hawk Moth and other villains. The plot is kind of a bit to much for me when I’m tiny, but overall I rate it 9/10.

• the six anime is called miss kuboyashis dragon maid it’s about an average office worker Named Miss Kobayashi and she lives a boring/ not exciting life, alone in her small apartment–until she saves a female dragon in distress. The dragon, named Tohru, has the ability to magically transform into an adorable human girl (albeit with horns and a long tail!), who will do anything to pay off her debt of gratitude, whether Miss Kobayashi likes it or not. With a very persistent and amorous dragon as a roommate, nothing comes easy, and Miss Kobayashi’s normal life is about to go off the deep end. It’s a very cutesy and slice of life anime, I give it a 9/10. The only reason why is the short/small service scenes.

• the seventh anime, starting from the last column we have ouran highschool host club. it’s a romance/comedy type of anime which I love, in and out of littlespace. Following the plot, it is about an elite upper school catering to the ultra-rich, which is called ouran academy. Haruhi Fujioka, one of our main protagonists, is a working-class scholarship student, which is rare at the school. While searching for a quiet place to study, Haruhi stumbles on an unused music room which turns out to be the club room for the school's "Host Club" — a group of idle rich boys possessing exceptional good-looks who entertain female clients. After accidentally knocking over a priceless Renaissance vase that's worth far more than Harhui can possibly repay, she is forced to join the Host Club as an "errand boy" to work off the debt. Soon after, however, Haruhi proves to be a 'natural' Host (no training needed) and is promoted to full membership of the Host Club. It then becomes clear that something isn't quite as it seems. I love this anime so much. It also slightly grazes the topics of gender identity and sexuality. Covering the sexuality, lesbian, in one of the episodes. And covers the gender identity, non-binary, in episode one. Our little haruhi is non-binary. THEIR REPRESENTING SO HARD. I literally cried when I figured out haruhi was non-binary in the anime. Enough of that. I give the anime a 9/10. Only because it’s has a short/small amount of service scenes that I don’t like in little space.

• the eighth anime, the second in the last column, is called kiss him, not me. It’s appropriate I promise. The plot is basically about a girl named Kae Serinuma being a fujoshi, a female manga and anime geek who loves reading yaoi (boys love) material and imagining men together in romantic relationships, both fictional and real. But while she was watching her favorite anime one of her favourite characters is killed off, Kae is so shocked that she locks herself in her room for a whole week, missing school. Not spoiling the anime, she comes out different goes to school, and at first, nobody recognizes her. When they do they are shocked and overwhelm her making her cry and run off. Later on a group of boys gain crushes on her and fight to see who will win all of her love, slightly forgetting that she devotes her life to anime. I’ll let y’all decide if you wanna see what happens or not. I give the anime a 10/10.

• the last, and ninth anime we have today is…the old, classic, and one of my very favorites…SAILOR MOON. We all know sailor moon right?? It’s about a middle-school student named Usagi Tsukino, who lives in Juban, Tokyo. She befriends Luna, a talking black cat who gives her a magical brooch enabling her to become Sailor Moon: a soldier destined to save Earth from the forces of evil. It has kitty’s and a female protag who kicks butt to the max, what more do you want?? 10/10.

[medea10]

My Review of Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S3 Ep22: Mokuba Gets Murdered

So today’s is...a long update, I may half it, but I’m gonna be away from my computer a whole bunch for a few weeks so like...if I half it you’re gonna be waiting on that other half for...kind of a while and by then I may have sort of forgotten what was happening in the first half. So I dunno, maybe I’ll just make this a huge ass...59 cap post.

honestly it’s mostly 59 caps because, surprisingly, no one dueled this episode.

I KNOW.

When I saw that “To be continued” last episode I really thought I’d have to deal with more paper-form BS but Noah finally plopped over at the beginning of this episode so I guess he’s just officially done playing cards now. Everyone has been turned back from being stoneware with absolutely no consequential brain damage. Probably because you could not do any more damage than what has been previously done.

But don’t worry he’ll get some more brain damage in by the end of this episode.

Remember the plot point that Tristan was slowly becoming a real monkey? I think he forgot about that because he’s been a monkey for...a realllllly long time and he kinda like...continues to just be Tristan. Maybe Tristan was nearly a monkey to begin with?

We also get a rare sighting of an actual real deal hug on this show and it was from the last person you’d ever expect.

Surprisingly heartwarming for this show.

If that duel disk goes off, both of them are super dead. Hugging in a duel disk might be the most dangerous sport either of these boys have ever done.

Anyway, because Seto and Mokuba were the first ones to go, they have no idea that any time has passed at all.

He seems pretty OK for Yugi just nonchalantly taking his dragons but this is VR and...the cards aren’t...actually here. So like...Yugi didn’t actually steal anything? No proof, no crime.

To be honest, no one should have any cards in any of their decks right now, but the show kind of forgets that these digital cards need to be drafted each round. It’s fine.

Anyway, in the wake of losing a card game, Noah just remembered that he’s a freakin god of this universe so he decides to just go for plan B, which you would think would be most people’s plan A.

(more under the cut)

Ya Noah could have peaced out at any point in this show, but because he was trying to impress Daddy he just...didn’t?

Not like it mattered because the integral plot device was like “oh yeah guys, I’m in this show, too, completely forgot. Oops, is it too late? It’s already episode 22? Eh, better late than never.”

and don’t be deceived by the cap, it showed like...every millennium item for some reason. You’d think it wouldn't show the rod because Yugi doesn’t have that, but apparently Marik up there on the ship was like “the hell is this going off for?” and then just shrugged it off.

Noah gets...mostly this image of a well waxed Pharaoh while Yugi gets images of Noah’s memories, where he finds out each of Yugi’s friends and Yugi himself were stuffed in little sci fi VR pods. You’d think that they wouldn’t need to access Noah’s memories to realize that. Should’ve been the first thing they realized when they got here. In VR.

Like, think about it, the only other person that got kicked out of here was Pegasus. And to kick out Pegasus it took all of Yugi’s friends except Bakura. Apparently this time all Yugi needs is for Pharaoh to focus (and Bakura to be just...youknow...present, I guess. Assuming the writers haven’t forgotten that Bakura’s still in there)

I think they mostly did this memory exchange as an excuse to give us a review--thing is there’s so much weird stuff to review it feels a lot like exposition. Like I don’t remember seeing these big boys before:

There is just...a lot of design put into this robot you only see like a couple of times. Some concept artist when all ham so I wonder...was this his OC? I’m so glad his weird OC sleepytime bot got into Yugioh. Good for him.

So at this point I kinda turned to my bro and was like “this feels a lot like the Matrix, doesn’t it?” and then in rolls in the bright purple cloud of “you don’t even know.”

I’ll just leave this here.

back to Yugioh.

Yo I kinda forgot in the mayhem that Kaiba’s Dad was clearly here this whole time. I figured we’d run into him, I didn’t really think he’d Castlevania it up in the sky in order to do it.

So this show presents these two brain orb AI monsters as being pretty well...alive...in that Orb because we’ve only heard this explanation from two AI beings who are pretty sure they never died. But, are they alive, really? Did they really transcend to a higher plane like Noah thinks? Or was this a thinly veiled murder/suicide? Did Gozaburo Kaiba kill his son because he could not allow him to be crippled, seeing an opportunity test out this crazy orb AI that needed a human brain in order to function--knowing full well what he was doing? And then later kill himself after losing everything to Seto?

Like, I’ve heard that in the Japanese version, Gozaburo commits suicide and in the English version he does not. But, at least from where I’m sitting...I think he commits suicide in both versions. Like, maybe it’s because I’m an adult watching this and not a child, but it feels like Gozaburo did this in order to set a trap for Seto as his last screw you before he left this mortal plane.

Either way, Noah’s kind of an idiot and so he still has not caught on. What followed was the three very worst Kaiba boys just kind of shouting at eachother for 5-10 minutes but, like, on completely different wavelengths, every single one. The lack of communication between these dumbasses right after Gozaburo drops this horrifying bomb of “and then I killed myself to kill all of you” was actually pretty low key hilarious.

The dub then got very confused as to when Noah died. Really confused, I’m not going to analyze that too much, it’s dub problems. Dubs do that sometimes.

Also, this is a new Noah outfit. Huh. shame we never got to know it.

Anyway, as the truth comes out, suddenly this accidental Kaiba family therapy

sesh everyone else in this High School class is privy to just starts escalating.

OH OK, KID’S SHOW.

Yo, remember how many jokes I made that Kaiba was raised in Outer Heaven? Apparently I was WAY closer than I realized.

And speaking of Metal Gear:

Anyway, remember that random idea that Noah dropped on us to consume the world with VR tech? I knew it would come back, just not quite like this. Not with a nice Power Point slide show via the sky from the Most Evil Mufasa.

And that was how Kaiba’s Dad decided “I was once scorned by a rude 12 year old, lets destroy every human on Earth and extinguish all civilization.”

So basically the entire freakin ocean is just filled with these robots? Just completely polluted with nighty-night bots?

Yo.

So like this whole time we’ve been following Marik, who’s trying to destroy the world, and keeping babysitting tabs on Bakura, who’s trying to destroy the world, but Kaiba just wants to be the best and show everyone else up so he just decided to set in motion the entirety of humanity’s destruction BEFORE THIS SERIES EVER STARTED.

*coughs* I can’t believe Yugioh just did the Matrix better than the Matrix.

Now listen, I know what I said--and I have to tell you, the Matrix was one of my favorite movies when it came out when I was wee middle schooler and watched it secretly at my friend’s house. It was rated R for absolutely no reason, and so I wasn’t supposed to watch it--but I did anyway and it was very thrilling to break the law like that. Keanu Reeves did a middle finger--yes, that was the cuss that put it into R territory--and I was like “wow, he is crazy!”

But, while it’ll always hold a place in my little tween heart, that one did not age well. Mostly because, once it stepped away from the cave allegory you have to start asking questions like “so...how did everyone get trapped in the Matrix?” and it was like “because the robots needed batteries. So like...humans...became batteries...rather than..........actual batteries.” which makes a lot of sense when you’re like a child and you don’t know how batteries work, but as an adult it’s like “...so they’re not very smart robots, then?”

But, Matrix came out about 1999, and because it was super cool, it influenced everything. This show was about 2001, and Kaiba’s wearing a floor length coat--I really think there may have been a bit of an influence?

And I think they may have explained how all humanity would get placed in the Matrix better than that movie series that was like 3 movies and a bunch of video games and a very violent cartoon. And like, the Yugioh explanation is still balls insane, but hey, at least this motive makes sense.

And then, at this point, Mokuba’s Stockholm Syndrome came back, but this time it’s just plain old fashioned Stockholm Syndrome, no weird brainwashing on the part of Noah was necessary to make any of this happen.

Like I really think Moki’s finally snapped. It’s finally snapped. He doesn’t know have any idea what is going on anymore and desperately needs a nap. A nap that will last like 5 days. Moki needs to go to the beach and just...not move for about a straight week to recover from the mess of this tournament.

Most people at this point would be like “yeah I think maybe Noah isn’t trustworthy” but this group of kids--this is the only group of kids that sees a cackling undead digital ghost dude hunched over like this who has already tried to kill them on multiple occasions--straight up just 10 minutes ago--and says “he’s probably much better now.”

Just 10 feet away from them, Marik is desperately trying to finish the arc he started, but keeps running into filler problems. Which is this door.

This X-men door, the most powerful filler villain in the Yugioh universe.

I can’t believe they explained away Marik--super powerful evil villain that bested Bakura--by using one singular door that kept him occupied for like 20 episodes.

Apparently the bedtime bots are equiped with Huge Lasers.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of keeping everyone alive to send them to the VR realm?

But whatever, they have huge lasers, but little do they know, Marik can shoot lasers out of that necklace he stole off Bakura, and he didn’t actually do that and it’s kind of a bummer. Instead he reflects the lasers with the rod. Which then makes you wonder--is that why Bakura didn’t use his laser attack then? Because of the reflection issue?

Sorry I can’t believe I even entertained that idea. Clearly they completely forgot about S1 at this point. It feels like it’s been so many years since things were simple and you could shoot lasers out of your eyeball/necklace.

And then, canonically, Marik gave up on this door. This normal ass door. The only foe he has ever stepped down to.

This door has faced the ultimate evil, it has stared down an actual fallen god born of anger and violence, who, after thousands of years steeped in an abusive tomb, has risen to consume the entire world, but, this door, using all of it’s bolts and joints you can buy at your local Home Depot, sent that fallen god back whence he came. Which was a blimp. Marik came from a blimp.

This door should be the 4th God Card.

(I want y’all to know that I originally wrote “5th” god card and bro corrected me because I literally thought there were 4 this entire time.)

The amount of time that Mokuba was not kidnapped after Yugi and co just saved him? I want to say maybe 10 minutes. He got one hug from Seto, and then went back to the kidnap zone.

Apparently, Noah decided to trap everyone else in their old memories--which is an interesting way to recap what happened in S2. The trap doesn’t trick them very well because these guys are missing a fair amount of memory at this point, so they basically got served a bunch of weird nonsense.

So while those guys are going to go down their very, very short memory lanes, Noah takes Mokuba to the same exact Dave & Busters that Tea and Yugi went on a date to back in like S2. Like this is the same exact one. And what’s nuts is I think they even redid the backgrounds, but definitely used S2 as reference. It’s quite the devotion to detail.

Noah tried to invent some sort of weird mystery doorway but then Mokuba was like “yeah it’s in the game right? Don’t say no, because I am hankering for some arcade time--don’t touch the other stick though, I want to play solo.″ and then Mokuba just proceeded to play this 2 person arcade game by himself while Noah just...watches.

In Dukes memories, Tristan looks the same as Duke’s always perceived him.

There’s just a lot to take in here.

But don’t worry, it gets weirder than three cultists on one small toy monkey, because here comes some romantic development that had absolutely no basis in reality. This is just so freakin weird, get ready for it.

They definitely almost run over Duke and Serenity--Joey’s sister--and Joey does not not seem to have any reaction to nearly running over his little sister on the road, because one second later, this is happening.

And that was how Noah managed to insert his JoeyxMai fanfiction into Joey’s head and tried his damnedest to make it canon. It’s wild. I can’t believe Noah was a shipper this whole time. Like, who else has he been secretly shipping???

Noah had a split second to use his fabulous orb brain to deal with Joey, and while he used actual memories from the other kids, when it came to Joey, he sort of stopped and went “oh yes, my OTP!”

So then, in this split second Noah kinda turned to his pile of Joey fanfic he keeps stashed in the corner of his Orb Brain Consciousness and was like “well I have this really good one I wrote where Mai wasn’t in the coma yet, and there clearly aren’t enough romantic sunsets, and like...what if they were getting married? Oh man I love this AU! This is so good, can’t wait to upload it to his brain, OMG, he’ll love it. What if they were in Hawaii or something!? OMG they’re so freakin cute.”

Like everyone else on this show who has a canon relationship had to go through some type of sweet hell terror memory but Joey--just Joey--got to go on a date or something and then seal his love with a ring. Like we’ve seen many indicators that Noah is a small child but this was probably the biggest indicator we’ve seen of Noah’s maturity level when he was like “this is how relationships work.”

Again, Yugioh just writing your fanfiction for you--did you want an AU where Mai and Joey’s age wasn’t an issue and she also wasn’t in a coma yet and was uncharacteristically like “lets run off and get married?” because usually you’d have to search Google for that content, but now it’s just here and given to you on a silver platter.

At about the same time they were fully convinced none of this was a real memory, they all ended up back here, minus Kaibas. Joey apparently took the longest amount of time although he had the most bizarre set of memories. He probably just wanted to see where that fic would pan out, but like most fic’s, it kinda stopped updating at about chapter 3 so he gave up on it.

Just a few blocks away, Mokuba and Noah’s playdate from Hell is going according to plan, and Noah is just biding his time before snatching a body. But, before he does, I guess Noah did want to see what happens in this arcade game Moki’s playing because he’s just been standing here admiring Mokuba’s work.

Even Noah at this point is surprised at how deeply Mokuba has Stockholm Syndrome. Noah was just not prepared for how low Mokuba’s expectations are regarding his evil and pathological brothers.

Actual line of the show through this whole ironic experience, Noah just saying “wow...I almost feel bad”

Anyway remember that DDR game--that huge screened DDR game where Tea had a dance fight with Johnny Steps during her date with Yugi?

Did you ever think it would, one and half seasons later, become the scene of a horrific crime?

Did you ever think that the crime that would occur on the inane DDR machine that Tea once had a dance fight on against a guy wearing fringe moccasins would later be the scene of a family betrayal where Mokuba got murdered by his own dead secret older brother?

Because I sure didn’t.

Anyway, now equipped with his ultimate form--a very small kid with hair that weighs more than the kid itself, Noah rises from his grave.

I kind of love evil Moki, not going to lie.

Apparently Moki’s evil in Season 0 so I’ll probs have to go back to that season eventually to get more of that evil Moki fix.

I hope this is the type of scene that will end this entire show, TBH, just a crazy ass Moki cackling over the bodies of every other card player. That would be such a good way to end this series.

Anyway, I don't know whennnn the next update will be. I may update on that later--maybe not, but until we meet again, we’ll just leave evil Moki here in this nearly abandoned SeaQuest, laughing his face off over the sweet tunes of some Plantasia.

[forest-of-stories]

The “Evolution” of a Problematic Shipper

[I’ve been working on this lengthy post, which is about my early adventures in X-Men: Evolution fanfiction, for a very long time.  So, here it is, friends.  Please note a content warning for some discussion of abuse, mostly in fiction.  Also, my individual recollections are my own, and extremely subjective; others might remember the fandom differently than I do.]

Quite a few years ago, I wrote about how X-Men: Evolution was “the first fandom in which I participated heavily: watching the show as it aired, obsessing with other fans about the stories and relationships within, and writing reams and reams of (mostly very bad) fic.”  I still think that this is somewhat true; XME certainly inspired me to do all of those things more publicly and enthusiastically than I ever had before, especially where my One True Pairing was concerned.

For those who don’t know, X-Men: Evolution, which ran from 2000 to 2003, was essentially an animated High School AU of the X-Men comics in which our heroes lived and trained at the Xavier Institute but attended classes at their local high school.  For the first couple of seasons, mutants weren’t public knowledge as they are in the comics or movies, so a few characters used their powers for the first time without understanding what was going on.

The second episode, “The X-Impulse,” introduced viewers to (this world’s version of) Kitty Pryde, a lonely, sheltered fifteen-year-old who was terrified of her newly awakened ability to walk through walls, and to Lance Alvers, a juvenile delinquent whose own powers caused him to make awkward faces and terrible puns (and also earthquakes, I guess).  When they met, Lance seemed happy and excited to meet someone else with super-powers, but he quickly developed a plan to manipulate Kitty into helping him in his criminal shenanigans.  He presented himself as helpful and supportive, gained her trust, and, when she refused him help him, became aggressive and violent toward her and her family.  The episode ended with Kitty recruited by the X-Men and Lance joining the bad guys, and the two of them spent the rest of the season as enemies.

Watching this episode for the first time as a teenager, I knew that Lance’s behavior toward Kitty was wrong and abusive.  And yet, there was something about their early interactions that captured my imagination.  Maybe it was the fact that, whatever else might have happened, he was the first person to show her how to find confidence and joy in her powers.  Maybe it was the hug that they shared, or his line, “Once you own it, nothing can own you,” or the possibility, thwarted though it might have been, that they could have formed an understanding despite very different backgrounds and attitudes.  I liked forbidden romances, and I liked flipping the script to make unquestioned heroes seem villainous and villains seem sympathetic, and I liked when characters rebelled against controlling authority figures and communities, which is how I reimagined the X-Men when I first started writing about them.  I’m not saying that I explored any of those ideas well, but they were what started me writing: at first in collaboration with a friend from summer camp, who still deserves a lot of the credit, and then on my own.  I posted my solo stories on Fanfiction.net, where this fandom would enjoy some remarkable popularity that I’m not sure has ever transferred to any other platform.

I wrote about Lance infiltrating the X-Men (with psychic shields in place), and having to choose between his original mission and his romance with Kitty, whose own commitment to her team and its mission was starting to waver.  I wrote about her trying to figure out her identity beyond her friends’ expectations of her, even as Lance tried to be a better and less destructive person.  I wrote about Charles Xavier mind-controlling Kitty into dismissing Lance and falling back into unquestioning loyalty, giving way to several well-received sequels in which some of the characters tried to free themselves and each other from Xavier’s telepathic chokehold.  I wrote without much direction or concern for established continuity and characterization, and assumed the whole time that the show would never explore what I saw as the unrecognized potential of my OTP.  When canon actually went there, I was as surprised as anybody.

--

After Lance had spent the entire premiere of Season 2, “Growing Pains,” acting like a complete jerk to Kitty and her friends, his destructiveness endangered her life, and he saved her.  They became romantically involved soon afterward, and he became noticeably less of a jerk toward her and slightly less of a jerk toward others.  The series of fics that I was working on had decisively departed from continuity by this point, but I still incorporated elements of the season premiere into the installment that I was posting at the time.  And my fellow Lance/Kitty shippers, believing that canon had vindicated us, were transported with joy.  

If XME were popular today, I believe that there would be a lot more pushback against Lance/Kitty, in both good and bad ways.  Even at the time, the pairing was not universally beloved.  There were probably those who thought that its dysfunctional beginnings outweighed any potential for functionality or sweetness, and there were definitely those who thought that both characters would be better off with someone else.  It’s tempting to rewrite history with claims that “in my day, we shipped and let ship,” and it’s true that yesterday’s shipping conflicts didn’t use all of the same weapons that today’s do, but the fandom was still full of snarky, self-important brats who, no matter which side of any given argument we were on, believed that only we understood these characters and this world.

I say “we,” because I was not exempt from these behaviors.  I’ve sometimes thought that participation in this fandom brought out some of my worst habits.  But a lot of positive things came out of it as well.  It gave me the inspiration and confidence to write more prolifically than I ever had before (or maybe even since), and a chance to explore ideas that became deeply important to me: perhaps most importantly, I don’t think I’d written so extensively or publicly about the horrors of mind control.  Mutual devotion to our show and its fandom, and mutual conviction that Lance and Kitty were meant to be, connected me with a number of friends with whom I started exchanging emails and IMs and LiveJournal comments, and I’ve kept in touch with a couple of them to this day.  And even though I didn’t always respond constructively to attention and validation, XME fandom gave me what I think fandom has given a lot of creative young people: a wider audience for my writing, and a community who cared about the lives and feelings of cartoon characters as much as I did, and in many of the same ways.  My experience in this fandom was as uneven and as flawed (dare one say… problematic?), and often as delightful, as the show that inspired it.

And, for me, it had all started with Lance and Kitty.   As the show progressed, and for years after it ended, I continued to write more canon-compliant one-shot stories about them: missing scenes or predictions for the future. Their relationship was a given in more or less everything I wrote, whether or not they were the focus, and even when I’d fallen deeply into other fandoms, I still regarded it with nostalgic fondness.

--

I think that a lot of us have faced an uncomfortable tension between our social consciences and our nostalgia for the uncomplicated adoration with which we viewed our “problematic faves” as children.  I can’t provide a one-size-fits-all solution for that conflict.  I don’t know if one exists.

“Although I'm not going to say that I never thought that I'd be engaging with XME again in any way,” I blogged in late 2013, as my local cartoon-watching group began the first season, “I was somewhat surprised that I had any feelings about this show left, or anything else to say.”  But I did, and I said a lot of it in short ficlets of less than 500 words, which - since I was in graduate school at the time - were usually all that my energy levels would allow.

At around the same time, I started reading fandom-related posts on Tumblr, including the ones that stated or implied that redemption arcs in fiction, and/or shipping characters with people who had mistreated them, were universally bad because they would increase the likelihood of real-life abuse.  It’s not like I had never thought about that aspect of Lance and Kitty’s relationship (I’d addressed it more than once in the intervening time), but something about phrasing of those posts - or maybe something about my own mental state when I saw them - sent me into a spiral of self-doubt.  I wondered I would have to publicly apologize for and cast aside my affection for a pairing and a narrative that had been so deeply formative for me.  I wondered if my friends would consider me an abuse apologist if I didn’t, or even whether I might secretly be one.  

One of the reasons why it took me a long time to write this retrospective is that I wanted to avoid too many lengthy tangents or blanket statements about critical consumption of media, the toxic elements of “anti-shipping,” and the relationship between fiction and reality.  I do believe that such a relationship exists, but it’s much more complicated than “impure fiction is dangerous, especially if people might be enjoying it in ways that are not politically conscious or wholesome enough.”  Anybody who reads my blog knows that I am intensely critical of purity culture, and I do not believe in being unkind to real people on behalf of fictional characters (and I say this as someone who used to do exactly that).  Also, if you were going to ask, “So you’re saying you support [taboo and/or illegal act]?” please don’t.  I am not saying that, and we are not having that conversation.  Not all “problematic” stories are interchangeable or should be talked about in the same way, and all of the issues that surround them are bigger and more complex than any individual character or romantic arc.

So I am not suggesting that Lance and Kitty’s own romantic arc should not have happened, or that people shouldn’t enjoy it, when I point out that was built on some incredibly inappropriate behavior that reflects toxic cultural attitudes  even if it doesn’t “normalize” or “promote” them, and I can understand why some people (including at least one of my Cartoon Night buddies) would see it as irresponsible storytelling.   In “Growing Pains,” Lance harassed Kitty despite her trying to tell him off, used his powers in publicly destructive ways in order to hold her attention, and tried to keep her from leaving school with her friends.  Even when his protective leap caused her to regard him as something besides an enemy, it seemed to be setting up an arc in which her love - or the possibility of her love - would make him a better person. 

In reality, of course, it’s unrealistic at best for anyone to expect that they can “change” or “improve” the morality of a partner who has treated them (or others) badly.  But it’s an enjoyable and compelling fantasy, as are the “opposites attract” and “forbidden love” aspects of the pairing, all of which we shippers ate up with a spoon.  It’s vital for shippers to recognize the difference between reality and fiction, but it is not my place to assume - based solely upon the nature of the fantasy - that they’re unable to do so.

And, in-universe, I can absolutely understand why sheltered, idealistic Kitty might have given in to this fantasy.  But it doesn’t play out in the way that she - or I - initially expected.

I’ve seen the Season 2 episode “Joyride” so many times that I didn’t have to rewatch it in order to write this essay.  That’s the one in which Lance briefly joined the X-Men, in order to be close to Kitty and, hopefully, to become the kind of person that she might admire.  The story was full of cute moments in which they flirted, bantered, and ultimately worked together to solve a crisis.  It also spotlighted one of the biggest obstacles to their relationship, and despite what a lot of fanfic - including my own - suggested, that did not come from their respective teams’ objections.  Professor Xavier even encouraged Lance’s potential for redemption (which didn’t stop me from reading, writing, and endorsing fic in which he regularly meddled in his students’ love lives), and the other characters reacted to the situation in a variety of understandable, if not always admirable, ways.  No, the telling moment occurred when the team was running through aquatic rescue scenarios, and Lance cheerfully broke rank and “drowned” two other people in order to pull Kitty out of the water.  Here was his entire approach to redemption and to their relationship, summed up in one gesture: he wanted to ensure her safety and well-being, but didn’t always care what or whom he knocked down in the process.  This became even clearer toward the end of the season, when he tried unsuccessfully to chase her (and only her) away from a fight between their two teams, although her friends would still be in danger. This tension exploded in the third episode of Season 3, when Lance and his friends once again attacked the X-Men on school grounds, and Kitty shouted, “This is the real you, isn’t it?” Lance responded, “That’s right! I’m never going to be good enough for you!” (I typed that out from memory, too.)

Naturally, my fellow shippers and I were devastated by this development, and I, for one, wrote lots of angsty fic (often interspersed with the lyrics to late 1990s/early 2000s pop music)  in which the former couple pined for each other despite having been Torn Apart By Circumstances.  Years later, however, I’m proud of Kitty, and of the writers, for drawing that line in the sand, and for realizing that - although, as Charles pointed out, it would have been a good start - it wasn’t enough for Lance to be good for her.  Whether or not this was an intentional writing choice, the later seasons reflected an awareness that he was primarily the one responsible for making himself a better person.  

Yes, after Lance and his comrades joined the climactic battle even though he’d insisted at first that he didn’t care, he and Kitty got back together in the series finale. There were probably viewers who thought their reconciliation hadn’t been earned, as well as those who thought it had been.  Obviously, eighteen-year-old Nevanna (by then in her first semester of college) was one of the latter.  But I appreciate the time that they spent apart, and the fact that it came at least as much from from internal motivations as from external pressure, far more as an adult than I did as a teenager.

To be clear: you don’t have to like Lance/Kitty or pairings like it.  When I say that I regard it differently now, I am not trying to assert that “my ship is Unproblematic after all, so there!” because it isn’t.  Nor am I trying to suggest, “It’s okay that I had a Bad Ship, because I regret it now, and the rest of you are filthy sinners who should do the same.” I don’t, and you’re not, and you shouldn’t.  Or, rather, how you feel about your past shipping, and what kind of person it makes you, is not for me to decide.

I loved and built upon this pairing both despite and because of its problems, and that is one of the reasons why I try not to condemn other people - as long as they maintain that all-important boundary between fantasy and reality - for loving and building upon stories that have similar problems, or different ones altogether.

--

I was sixteen when I first started writing XME fanfic.  I’m thirty-three now.  I can easily imagine some of you asking, “When are you going to get over these imaginary fake not-real cartoon characters and get a life, Nevanna?” That is, I hope that my friends, whom I love and who love me, aren’t thinking along those lines, but it’s certainly a question that I have asked myself more than once.

Even when I was cheerfully participating in fandom in my youth, I still feared that my obsessions with fictional characters were bad for me, a sign that I wasn’t equipped to deal with or care about “real life.” In one diary entry, I wrote with certainty that I would have to abandon my fannish interests entirely when I started college.  If a large contingent of fans had loudly insisted that my interests were not only bad for me but bad for the world, that I was actively hurting others simply by writing about my chosen subject matter, that I was likely to enable or engage in actual criminal activity… I’m not sure what I would have done, but it probably wouldn’t have been what they wanted me to do, and it likely would have made me an even more unpleasant person to be around.

I tried my best to balance academic obligations with fandom and creativity when I did enter college, and sometimes failed spectacularly, but that owed as much to anxiety and poor time management skills, both of which are still everyday challenges for me, as it did to caring “too much” about stories.  I eventually earned a master’s degree, and found a series of jobs, in a field that is just a bit concerned with making sure people get to read whatever they want.  If I’m still “getting a life,” which I believe is an ongoing process, then my fandoms are just one part of it.  And after all this time, X-Men: Evolution is still one of those fandoms.  I find it easy and comforting and fun to write about these characters, and the only person who gets to decide whether I’m “over” them is myself.  

The last time I wrote anything that focused specifically on Lance and Kitty was a little more than two years ago, and the fic didn’t shy away from the troubled history of their relationship.  I have a preference for stories that at least acknowledge that history and the tension that comes with it, but I would never barge in and assume that because a content creator doesn’t check those boxes, they support real-life abusive relationships.

Would I still ship Lance and Kitty if I encountered them for the first time today? It’s difficult to say. Many aspects of their relationship are still things that I enjoy in fiction.  But my early interest in them was based on a specific set of assumptions about the characters, their world, and even the purpose of fanfiction, as well as, yes, some amount of ignorance about how romance and attraction worked.  I don’t want to enjoy their story, or others, solely in the way that I did when I was younger.  Most of the time, I prefer the all the ways that I enjoy stories now.

As I said earlier, I’m not proud of some of my actions in the XME fandom.  I regret sneering at the fanbase for another popular pairing that had dysfunctional beginnings, as if my OTP didn’t.  (The two pairings didn’t even have any common characters, so it’s not as if they challenged each other as far as I know, not that my attitude would have been okay even if they had.  I think I partly just enjoyed hating what so many people liked.)  I regret participating in an LJ community that publicly mocked specific people’s writing.  I regret sticking my nose into people’s reviews just to beg them to read my latest chapter, but not as much as I regret leaving at least one hostile review, with a very thin veneer of playfulness, when half of my OTP hooked up with another character in the middle of a multi-chapter fic.   And, all of that aside, there is a much longer list of regrettable choices that I made as a writer.  But I don’t regret looking at Lance and Kitty in their introductory episode and thinking, “There’s a story there, and I want to find out where it might go.”

[duhragonball]

Babbling about Comics

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to get back in gear with my plan to read my entire collection of X-Men comics.   I had this big plan to do it in 2015, but I only made it about halfway, which put me around Uncanny X-Men #280 (September 1991).   That’s about 29 years’ worth of comics, though, so my plan was probably unrealistic.

Ever since I reblogged this, I’ve been thinking about how I used to be big into American comic books, but not so much anymore.  One person in that thread jokes about how complicated it is to start reading X-Men and Wolverine, and the thing is, I actually know how to do that, because I spent maybe a week in 2014 obsessively studying the Marvel Chronology Project website to come up with a good reading order.  Honestly, it’s kind of fun, but only because I’m a maniac.  I can’t see how any normal person would even want to bother untangling that mess.  The system was designed for only two kinds of immersion.

1) You bought the comics when they were published, and read them in more or less their intended reading order, because you had no other choice.

2) You’re a maniac like myself, who accumulated all this stuff after the fact and you’re determined to go back and figure out what happened.

Nowadays, it’s a lot easier for a new fan to dig into the past, because so much of Marvel’s back catalog is available in digital format, but it’s still a pretty big paywall when you think about how many X-Men comics they’ve made.   And even if you download torrents, you still have to read the whole thing, and who has time for that?  Generally, Marvel’s marketing strategy has been to try to make the new stories accessible enough for new readers to follow, while only reprinting the older material that’s important or popular.   As a collector and a completist, this always frustrated me, but I think I’ve finally begun to see the wisdom of that approach.

See, the real gateway to a franchise like this is to stick to the greatest hits.  For me, that’s Uncanny X-Men #94-167, which spans 1975-1983.  Then you jump all the way to Wolverine’s solo book, which started in 1988.  The first thirty issues of that are really, really good.   I like the stuff that Larry Hama did with Wolverine later, but it’s not for everyone.  If you want to read a crossover, I’d recommend “X-Tinction Agenda”, since it provides a decent snapshot of where the X-Books were at in 1990.  Now, I’m skipping over a lot of other material from the period, but a lot of it was pretty awful, and the good issues of X-Factor and New Mutants  were kind of inessential.   The point is that you have to sample the best stuff first, then decide if you care enough about the characters to go dumpster diving through the rest of it.   You’ll find some gems, but you have to be willing to put up with some real crap to get at it. 

For example, right now, I’m in the middle of 1992, which was sort of a defining period for the X-Men franchise.   Chris Claremont had ended a 17-year run as the writer, and they were trying to build everything around superstar penciller Jim Lee.  I don’t know what went wrong exactly, but by the end of the year Lee had left to start his own company, and a lot of the X-Men comics from that year have a long list of co-plotters, co-scripters, and guest artists.  The flagship title, X-Men v.2, held up reasonably well, but it’s sister Uncanny X-Men suffered from neglect.  UXM #281 was supposed to herald this bold new era, but instead it just looks like a tire fire, one that continued to burn until #293 at least.   But, those issues are notable because they introduce Lucas Bishop to the franchise. 

I never cared much about Bishop, except that he looks pretty cool, and he had a cool voice in the X-Men cartoon.  Otherwise, I only knew he was a guy from the future with a gun, just like the dozen other future-guys-with-guns in 90′s comics.    But when Bishop was introduced, he hailed from the year 2062, where he’s part of a Judge Dredd-style security force.  Bishop revered the X-Men as legends, but once he meets the real deal he quickly finds out they’re not what he expected.  Bishop sees himself as a peacekeeper, and he’s honored to join the X-Men, but he keeps finding his violent, hair trigger methods at odds with the X-Men’s rigid protocol. 

The thing is, I identify with the guy.   I used to write him off as a knock off of Cable, or one of the other loose-cannon hardcases the X-Men keep recruiting, but they actually found a way to make Bishop stand out from the crowd.   He loves the X-Men in theory,  but he really doesn’t understand what makes them work.  Which is sort of like me trying to read all these comics I only know by reputation.    A lot of of the things fans praise the X-Men for are vastly overrated or completely misrepresented.  The conventional wisdom I always got from the fans was that the X-Men were only great when Claremont wrote them, and then Scott Lobdell took over and Ruined Everything(tm).    The reality (from my perspective) is that Claremont ran out of mojo around Year Eight of his 17-year run, and he was running on fumes from ‘83 to ‘91.  I’ve seen fans carry a torch over what happened to Madelyne Pryor, but as far as I’m concerned Madelyne Pryor’s introduction was when the Claremont run jumped the shark.  Her whole character arc was a no-win scenario and their biggest mistake was in not ending it sooner.  I used to think the X-Men comics of the early 90′s were a creative train-wreck, but somehow it managed to generate Bishop, and that gives me hope. 

Also, there is something oddly comforting about reading these old comics.   Nothing ever really changes with the X-Men.   If a character gets killed, they just come back a few years later.   If a character quits or turns evil, it’ll get reversed later.  The X-Men never really win or lose any battles.  They just sort of show up and fight, and then something else happens and they get distracted by that for several issues.  Last night I read the issue where Forge gets upset because he’s in love with Storm and he hasn’t even gotten five minutes alone with her to rekindle their feelings from 1988.   He awkwardly proposes to her, and she punts, telling him she’ll think about it.   In the very next scene they have together, he leave the mansion before she can even give her answer.  Forge is convinced that Storm doesn’t really love him, and that she’ll never set aside her X-Men career long enough to make time for a serious relationship.   As he slams the door, she mutters “I would have said... yes.”    That’s classic X-Men for you.   All angst, all turmoil, no resolution.   We don’t know if Storm is sincere or not, and Forge won’t even stick around to find out.   Is he right about her, or is he just too afraid of rejection?   Maybe we’ll see in a later issue, but I bet we don’t.   It’s Schrödinger’s ship.   Everything sort of hangs in midair. 

Now, I might have said that this is why I’ve come to prefer anime lately, because the stories are more decisive.   Goku married Chi-Chi and that’s it.    Done.   There’s no hotshot editor trying to split that up or retcon it to clear the way for a fresh pairing.   The real tragedy of Storm is that she’s trapped in Comic Book Time, so she couldn’t have a long term relationship even if she wanted to.    If she had married Forge in 1992 they would have inevitably been divorced a short time later, because Marvel likes to rotate romantic partners around every few years.   Storm actually married the Black Panther later on, but I’m pretty sure that’s over now.   But Goku’s marriage to Chi-Chi is absolute.   I like certainty.   It helps make the characters feel more genuine, and less like imaginary dolls driven by editorial whims and sales charts.

But, having recently finished Revolutionary Girl Utena, I find the X-Men’s open-endedness kind of soothing.   I didn’t get what I wanted from the ending of the Utena TV series.  I’m not sure what I wanted, exactly, but what I got wasn’t completely satisfying.  I may warm up to it later on, or I’ll watch the movie version and see if that’s more to my liking, but that’s pretty much all I’m going to get.   With the X-Men, I’m not particularly invested in the characters, and I have a general knowledge of what happens to them, and that anything that happens to them is mutable and transient.  It takes a lot of the punch out of Forge walking out on Storm, but it’s still decent theatre, and I’m not in the mood for dramatic punch right now.   Utena was like getting dramatically punched by Star Platinum for five pages.   I’d watch one episode and then I’d have to take a break before moving to the next one.    Not everything needs to be like that.  Sometimes it can be Bishop possibly getting Storm on the rebound, only to discover that she’s not as good in bed as the history books said she was.

Nevertheless, I think this is something the comics industry needs to address.  I got fed up with following comics because the new ones are expensive and inconsistently produced, and nothing worthwhile ever happens in them either.  They keep relaunching series with new #1′s, or renumbering them every time they get close to a Big Round Number, so it’s probably even harder to keep the reading order straight than it was twenty or thirty years ago.   So it’s a lot of the same hassles you get from back issues, except my back issues are already bought and paid for, so I might as well waste my time reading them instead of paying for overpriced new stuff.   Their best bet is to introduce new characters, especially female, POC, and LBGT+ characters that are tough to find in the back issue rack, because that’s something novel they can use to draw modern audiences.   Because Thor’s dealt with Ragnarok about a dozen times already, and the X-Men haven’t accomplished anything tangible in 30 years, so eventually no one’s going to fall for the same corny “Nothing Will Ever Be the Same!” gimmick.

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: Transformers 2

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart Apr 24, 2015. It has not been changed from how I originally wrote it.)

Before I go into Transformers 2 I want to talk about the X-Men and Spider-man movie that came out in the early 2000`s.

Spider-man and X-Men are in my opinion a good start. Not just to the whole "let`s try to make a serious comicbook superhero movie and not turn it into a big, campy, live-action saturday morning cartoon joke" genre, but to their own, respective movie franchises as well.

"What about The Crow and Blade?"

Yes, those were good, serious comicbook movies but they didnt start a big, new wave of good comicbook superhero movies, they were more of a prologue.As I was saying: X-men and Spider-man were a good start for their movie franchises. They weren`t perfect. The filmmakers were a little new to the universe and how to translate it into something more cinematic, but it worked well enough. In the sequels things worked a little better. The directors, writers and actors had gotten more familiar with the characters, the world they lived in and things seemed to work smoother. Not just in how close it was to the material they were adapting but in general. Then they screwed it up in the third movie.This is kinda how I feel about the first Transformers movie. The first one was a good start. It made sense how we in the beginning spent more time with the humans and didn`t get to the Autobots until a little later, and I liked most of the humor.

Though I think it would have been better without the scene where Bumblebee urinates on Agent Simmons. Just saying.

And in hindsight they could have dialed down the male gazing too. But unlike Spider-man and X-men, Transformers decided not to take what it had learned from it`s first experience and see if it could do better. No, instead Michael Bay and friends said: "Why wait for the third movie? Let`s screw it up now!" And so they did, and people still paid money to see it, myself included. Yes, I am ashamed. And yes, I know, the script was written during the writer`s strike and it`s possible that Michael Bay was involved in writing it but, come on! Even if you haven`t read books on script writing you can still see that the dumb decisions that they made were really dumb decisions!

Though in defense of Michael Bay, from what I`ve heard, he wanted to do a personal pet project after Tranformers, but was contractually obligated to do a sequel if it did well enough at the box office. Maybe he knew it was bad and screwed it up on purpose so he wouldn`t have to do more Transformers? That`s just wild speculations from me though. Let us, in my very subjective editorial, see where it went wrong and how it could have been fixed.

SPOILERS in disguise The Male gazing

They could have dialed it down or removed it completely.

Bumblebee

I get why he was mute and talked through soundclips in the first movie, because his voice thingy was damaged  and also so he could be a sympathetic character for the audience. But why didn`t he talk in this movie? His voice came back in the end of the first one. Heaven forbid he actually has any character developement. He could have talked, he just doesn`t have to talk that much. And he could still use soundclips sometimes when he feels it suits the situation. Like: when they`re about to enter a dangerous place he could use the "I´ve got a bad feeling about this" line from Starwars. And then there`s the scene where he cries like a sprinkler when Sam tells him he can`t follow him to college. Yes, I get it, they wanted to have some comedy, but they could have done that better. They could have done it like this: When Sam says to Bumblebee that he can`t come, his reaction could be "Oh... OK, I... I understand." But by the tone of his voice and body language we can tell that this saddens him. And when Sam goes away Bumblebee could play "All by myself" on his radio.

Giving Bumblebee such exaggerated, emotional reactions just makes me feel that Bay only thinks of the Transformers as silly, one dimensional, cartoon characters. Disney characters (in good Disney movies at least), The Transformers in the cartoon and the ponies in My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic have a little bit more depth than Bay`s Transformers.

Covering up the events that happened in the first movie

I can believe that such a thing could happen in the Men In Black universe where they can erase memories and stuff, but in this movie? Instead: the army`s official story to the public could be: "Yes, this battle did happen but now all the giant robots (both the good and the evil ones) have disappeared. We don`t know where yet, but we`re working on it."

Mikaela detailing the motorcycle

Yes, Megan Fox is a physically attractive woman, but that is pretty much it, and this scene is, besides pandering to horny teenage boys, also a big research failure from the filmmakers. That`s not how you detail a motorcycle, it is usually done with more protective clothing. So either:

A: have her detail a motorcycle the correct way, or

B: have her change the oil or look at the engine of a car.

Skids and Mudflap

Sigh... these guys. One stupid, racist caricature wasn`t enough, there had to be TWO. They already had Bumblebee with them on their journey so they only needed one of these guys, it would be less work for the animators and should also make it cheaper. Instead of being a stupid idiot he (since there is only one of them now in this hypothetical example) could be a competent warrior and the comedy could come from that he has gotten a few expressions and a few facts about earth wrong. For instance: when they get to the pyramids he could say: "So this is where Lenin is buried" (Lenin was mummified after his death after all). And here`s a funny exchange of words they could have in one scene:

Skids/Mudflap: Let`s kick some Donkey!

Sam or Mikaela: I think you mean "Ass".

Skids/Mudflap: Meh, Tomayto, Potahto. And instead of being illiterate: he couldn`t read the text because it was ancient cybertronian.

Arcee

There are female autobots in this movie. Not many though and they don`t have much screen time (About 39 seconds, less than a minute, out of the movie`s 2½ hours runningtime. And that includes scenes where they are in their motorbike forms doing nothing.) and one dies near the end. (If I`m not mistaken there were more than one in the beginning of the movie, but I don`t remember seeing the other female autobots in the rest of the movie and I don`t remember if

anything was mentioned about what happened to them.) Arcee appeared in eight episodes in the cartoon  BTW.Arcee should have had more screentime, and she didn`t have to die in the end. Personally I wouldn`t mind if it was she that joined Sam, Mikaela, Bumblebee and Leo on their journey to the pyramids instead of Skids/Mudflap.

Inconsistent laws of physics

A while ago I watched a video where some guy listed things he hated about this movie. One of them was a scene where a helicopter carries Optimus Prime`s lifeless body and drops it on the ground like a giant pile of scrapmetal. He felt that this was Bay being completely disrespectful to the character. Personally I thought Bay just wanted to bring in in a little realism. Prime was heavy and those wires couldn`t keep him up forever. However, earlier in the movie Sam is being thrown around by Decepticons and falls from heights that would have killed an ordinary human. If you`re gonna have realistic (or at least believable) laws of physics in your movie, keep them consistent.

The Big giant fight near the end between the humans and the Decepticons

It went on a bit too long. It could have been shorter and some of that time could have been given to Prime`s battle with the fallen, which was a little too short.

The immature humor

There are a bunch of things that I`d like to collect in one common category.

Sam`s mom running around high on campus: While I`m OK with the scene where she mentions that someone offered her brownies, the scene that comes after where she attacks/tries to get a piggyback ride from someone on the school`s lawn just felt like an unnecessary stretch of that gag. Lose it.

The dogs humping each other: Was not necessary in a 2½ hours long film that cost 200 million $ to make. Lose it.

Wheelie humping Mikaela`s leg: Instead he could have rubbed his head against her leg like a cat, and her reaction could have been flattered, yet weirded out. Or: she could be just weirded out. Or: just lose this joke completely.

Leo running out from the bathroom with his pants down: Instead he could run out (with his pants on) and shout:"I need your help! My friend just fainted in the bathroom!" (Yes, I know, the museum was closed so he`d very likely still get arrested, but still.)

Jetfire: I`m OK with him being old, but does he have to be a caricature? And I`d lose the parachute fart joke.

Devastator`s "balls": Lose it!

Robot heaven

The Autobots are not biological beings but they are sentient so I could buy this, but it was introduced very late in the movie. Instead: Sam doesn`t have a near death experience and the matrix doesn`t have to crumble to dust in his hands earlier in the movie. (Thus shortening the long running time by at least a few minutes.)

-Transformers Dark of the Moon-

My brother rented it on DVD and I gave it a watch. Slightly better than Revenge of the fallen but still not that good. Giant robots was not enough to distract me from the movie`s Bay-isms. Can`t really come up with ideas of how I would have changed it except two things:

Bumblebee`s voice

Like I said, his voice was fixed so why keep the soundclip thing? In the scene where he says Goodbye to Sam he could have done it in his original voice since it was an important moment for at least one of them.

Sam clearly acting suspicious when the watch-decepticon takes over his body

Like when he summersaults over a table for comedic effect. Was that really necessary? He could have acted normally and, at most, only have a few facial tics.

And that`s my list.

[cryptoriawebb]

I want to talk about something. Something very personal and dear to my heart. Before I do, however, I’m going to ask right now that anyone stumbling onto this either takes the time to stop and read this in full, or carries on with their business, leaving this post untouched. I’m not here to talk about shipping. I’m not here to talk about which characters “are” better and what is and is not “canon.” I know the Sonic fandom is a toxic place filled largely with a young and/or aggressive audience. That’s fine. I was part of it once--on the younger end and adamant about who belonged with who.

I’m not, anymore. Nor do I have patience for any silly comments regarding these points. This is not about the fandom. It’s not about shipping and it’s not about blanket character statements.

This is about me, and how important the Archie Sonic comics were to me. 

I don’t remember how old I was when I first stumbled upon the world of Sonic, but I do remember what it was. The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehow used to air on one of Disney’s many channels, and one day my brother saw it for the first time. He described it to me, and for a while I hadn’t a clue what he meant. I remember trying to picture the series and my gosh, I was off the mark, design-wise. Regardless, I eventually did see the show and we used to watch it together in the morning. It was strange and silly and I didn’t think much of it, but I loved Sonic’s catchphrases, the theme song and Tails. 

Sometime after that, we found the OVA at a video rental store (remember those?) I know a lot of people out there don’t think very highly of it, but I was young, and at the time didn’t have any Sonic reference beyond the cartoon. Honestly, I preferred the OVA after watching it. It was darker than the show, with a different type of humor I must have found more appealing. It was also one of the first anime-type-things I’d ever seen. I loved the design, this interpretation of Tails and Robotnik and I also quite liked Knuckles, having never seen him before. 

I suppose I should state right now I was not allowed to play video games growing up, and the first computer I remember entering my home was in the very late nineties. Even then, we didn’t play a lot of PC games, mostly Disney and things like Clue Finders and Freddie Fish.  At some point I know we discovered a sega collection of old Sonic games, and Sonic R, I just can’t remember when. 

Anyway, after that, my next “Sonic medium” came in the form of advertisements for Sonic Sega Dreamcast. I don’t remember what I found so appealing about it, but I very much wanted to play this game. At this point I was pretty obsessed with the OVA and had acquired a lot of old toys relating to the Dreamcast game. Alas, twas not to be, and that was it for me and Sonic..

...until my brother picked up issue #110 for me at a store. I’d never seen a Sonic comic before--had no idea such a thing existed, and believe me, I carried that thing everywhere. The art and story I found incredibly confusing, as did I the side story about Sally and the Sword of Acorn. Who was Sally? How did she know Sonic and Tails? I hadn’t a clue, but I loved the art. A lot. If I were to go back and try reading that comic now I’m pretty sure it would fall apart...the cover’s already been detached from the pages ^^;

Sometime later, I was in a comic book shop--my brother and I loved super heroes and we were starting to get into manga--and I found #114. In it, I discovered a sort of continuation to #110, as well as another beautifully illustrated story by J.Axer. Imagine my surprise to discover not only more characters I’d never seen (Bunnie, Antoine and Rotor) but Amy Rose! Whom I knew, vaguely, from my toys and what I knew of Dreamcast. Like my previous comic, I loved this one so much it also fell apart. J.Axer’s art really fascinated me, I would trace and try to mimic it all the time. Artists today look down on such things, but through the course of doing what I did I broadened my horizons and grew to be a better artist. 

It wasn’t long after that I discovered Sonic SatAM. I was thrilled. Sally, Bunnie and everyone else in a TV show of their own? Why was I not aware of this? I must have rented those videos a thousand times. There were only two or three available, with a handful of episodes each, but I didn’t care. I admit I was a bit saddened to see Tails as a mere side character, but that was the only drawback. I knew this story, or part of it--Sally’s father, King Acorn, I’d seen him before. I knew Knothole, Snively--I knew all of it. It was...amazing, quite frankly, and I’m sure I talked about it a lot...to such a point I started annoying my brother. But again, did not care. I had all this insight and I couldn’t get enough of it. So when I stumbled into another comic shop one day and found several back issues (#100, #103, #104, #105 and a few others) I knew there was no going back. 

I admit, I can’t remember if I found those back issues before or after I realized it was a monthly series, but either way, once I did, I became a steady collector for the next ten years. I ordered back issues, specials, drew art and comics regularly...even when I got older and my interests tapered, I still collected. This world was so in depth, the art--at least most of it--detailed and rich--and I loved all of the characters. All of them. To me, these comics were the meat enhancing the bare bones that was the video game universe. I preferred them to any other incarnation I’d seen prior, and to be quite honest, I still do.

 I can’t speak for the video games now--I know they’ve grown and added characters and I’m sure there’s a lot to be said for that world--but the last video games I played were Shadow and Sonic Heroes. I did watch Sonic X for a while, I just...didn’t care much for it. Shadow was the only one I felt matched the same thought, tone and creative care the comics had, and that’s because they adapted his history pretty well, at least I think so. 

The comics had their ups and downs; I’m not the biggest fans of the #130s, but before the reboot, I really felt things were on a strong track forward. That said, I desperately feared the end of the Freedom Fighters...especially Sally Acorn. I remember actually crying about it to one friend. Since discovering her, Sally has been and remains my favorite Sonic character. 

Please note again, my thoughts are my own and I’m allowed to have them.

Now then...Sally Acorn. Her and Bunnie, fluctuating occasionally because Bunnie reminded me of my favorite X-men growing up (Rogue) but I’d always come back to Sally. I know some people don’t like her. That’s fine, not everyone is going to like every character. For me, though, Sally was one of few tomboy characters I knew of as a child. Yes she was feminine, but her femininity never overwhelmed her. She never felt over-romanticized, at least to me, and I really appreciated her modest design. It always bothered me female animal-type-characters were heavily dressed while the boys rarely wore full clothes. I liked that she broke that norm, it fit her personality.

Her relationship with Sonic felt very buddy-buddy, too, as much as romantic. Like they were really equals, despite differing status and power. Sally’s sacrifice remains stapled to my memory; it is, I think, the defining nature of her character. Her “true” character, I think: what comes out when it’s down to the wire. I’m really impressed with how she’s grown over the years. Not only how she chose to “end” her life but how strong she became after breaking up with Sonic. I don’t at all believe he held her down--and unlike some people I wasn’t bothered by the slap. I just wasn’t. I am, however, so happy she was able to become the Sally I grew up reading, the one I was first introduced to, once again before her final moments. Above all else, she and the Freedom Fighters proved to me you don’t need special powers to be a hero. 

Sonic may have been the ace in the hole, but every one of the Freedom Fighters brought something unique to the table. Watching them evolve over the years--from one universe to the next, powers, kids and otherwise--has been such a wonderful experience. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve invested for so long...I only wish I were able to see how the original story intended to progress.  I tried describing the comics to a friend recently, particularly where it left off before the reboot. He was incredibly surprised by how vast and dark it was. 

I’m going to confess I stopped reading shortly before Sonic rebooted the universes. I have read scans of that initial first issue, but once I discovered the story wasn’t going to continue, I lost a lot of my drive to collect. I’m not going to talk about Penders here--I think we all share mutual feelings in that regard--but in my opinion it was absolutely the defining nail on the coffin for this twenty+ year run. He remains one of few people I find incredibly difficult to forgive. I’m a firm believer in forgiveness, but I grew up reading Sonic. I wanted very much to continue reading it, to see the characters I love continue growing. I can’t do that, anymore. None of us can. 

I don’t expect to see Sally and the others carried over to IDW. The Sonic gaming side of things has evolved so much from where it started out: most readers today know of the Freedom Fighting crew through the comics only. If it’s true Sega sees a different creative vision for their franchise, I think this is finally goodbye...I said goodbye years ago, but it’s final now. The comics as I knew them are over. Another staple of my childhood, already reinvented and reimagined, gone for good. The chances a new generation will find the comics, reboot or otherwise, and meet and connect with the characters I loved the way I loved them, rather than through internet fodder they don’t understand are fewer now and far between. That hurts me, it does. As a creative individual who held this so close to them, one thing I’ve always wanted is for people to discover something and experience what I did. Understand in their own way why myself and I’m sure so many others held onto the comics as long as we did. It’s not about shipping, it’s not about what’s canon or who’s better than the other. It’s about something else entirely. For me, it was an expansive, inclusive and ever-changing world. It was following a show that made something equally impressive from so very little and nurturing it until it took on a life of its own.

Maybe I’m a little dramatic, a little theatrical, but if you've stayed with me through this entire confession I hope you can forgive me. I loved these comics. They were a part of my life for a very long time, and I’m going to miss them, indefinitely.

Thank you, Archie Team, for creating something wonderful. Thank you SatAM and yes, even thank you, Sega, allowing them the chance to give us these memories.

[wbwest]

New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/05/26/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-52617/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 5/26/17

Here we are, on the verge of a 3-day weekend, which means nobody’s gonna read this thing. Still, “the show must go on”…

Well, the week was filled with spider news, as last Friday Sony announced that Tom Hardy will star in a Venom film. If you’re not “in the know”, Venom is a Spider-Man villain comprised of an alien symbiote suit and Peter Parker’s professional rival, Eddie Brock. Sadly, the film’s not meant to cross over with Spider-Man: Homecoming or any bit of Tom Holland’s portrayal. I’m starting to think Sony’s deal with Marvel Studios is actually a bad thing, as it seems like Spidey’s addition to the MCU is to the detriment of his expanded universe to which Sony still owns the rights. I don’t really care about a Venom without a Spider-Man. To add to that, yesterday, Sony announced a film starring Spider-Man supporting cast members Silver Sable and Black Cat, to be directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball). I really don’t think there’s much to say about these characters without the possibility of a Spider-Man cameo. I get where Sony’s coming from; they have all these characters, so they might as well do something with them. That said, earlier talks made it sound like they were building their own Spider-Man-centric film universe, but since the MCU deal went through, Spider-Man no longer seems to be part of the equation.

Meanwhile, the Licensing Expo was this week, and we got our first look at the poster for the animated Spider-Man movie, starring Miles Morales. Apparently it was created by a child. Maybe a Make-A-Wish kid? Seriously, that thing is terrible.

It wasn’t all bad Spider News, however, as we got the third trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming. They’re basically giving away the movie at this point, but I’m still a guaranteed butt in a seat. A lot of people are having issues with it, but I kinda like that this is basically Iron Man 4. I really didn’t need a new Spider-Man, so throwing Tony Stark in there is a good way to get me interested. I mean, I liked Tobey Maguire. I liked Andrew Garfield. I’m sure I’ll like Holland, but I’m kinda tired of the Spider-Man revolving door. Now that he’s tied into the MCU, I hope the Holland casting sticks. Then again, we’ve had three Hulks already, so…

This poster, however, is horrendous, but endearingly so. I mean, it’s really bad Photoshop, but I still kinda like it. It’s busier than Times Square at rush hour, but I love it in all its ugliness. It looks like it should be airbrushed on a denim jacket at the mall.

Across the aisle, things aren’t going so well for the DC movie slate, either. First up, Doug Liman has dropped out of directing the Justice League Dark film due to his commitment to Lionsgate’s adaptation of the young adult series Chaos Walking. In case you didn’t know, Justice League Dark would focus on the more mystical DC Comics characters, like John Constantine, Zatanna, Deadman and others, battling supernatural threats – ya know, like the kind the Suicide Squad had no business fighting. I’ve got no interest in this, but that’s ’cause I don’t really like magic. If they manage to get Swamp Thing into the movie, though, I think it’ll increase its appeal. Right now, though, they’re just a bunch of magical nobodies coasting on the Justice League name which might not even hold any power if that movie fails this Fall.

In sadder news, Zack Snyder bowed out of Justice League post-production work to spend time with his family as they grieve the loss of his daughter, Autumn, to suicide. It was revealed that Joss Whedon was brought in to finish the film, which now has fans cautiously optimistic. Just last week, there were reports that there had been so many reshoots that the film was basically a different movie from what was originally shot. It’s possible, however, that these reshoots were part of Whedon’s plan. It’s really unfortunate what the Snyder family is going through, and it’s deplorable that some folks are making jokes about the situation.

In other movie news, it was revealed that Tom Cruise’s upcoming film, The Mummy, will kick off a Universal Monsters cinematic universe called Dark Universe. I bet they stayed up real late to think of that one! Anyway, Russell Crowe will portray Dr. Jekyll (who also appears in The Mummy), Javier Bardem will play Frankenstein’s monster, and Johnny Depp will play The Invisible Man. The next film in the franchise will be The Bride of Frankenstein, to be released on Valentine’s Day of 2019. Ya know what’s funny? DC’s Justice League Dark film was also going to be called Dark Universe. Somebody’s gonna have to lawyer up!

In TV news, it was reported that Hamilton scribe and star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, will voice Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera AKA Gizmoduck in the upcoming DuckTales reboot. Cabrera? Really? He’s even brown now to go along with the name change. I know some folks are gonna have an issue with this. Hell, I even kinda have an issue with it. But if they’re gonna inject some diversity into Duckburg, I guess I’d rather them do this than, say, Launchpad McQuack-Jenkins.

While we knew that Bobby Moynihan was leaving Saturday Night Live, just hours before the season finale it was revealed that Vanessa Bayer would also be leaving. Then, Monday morning, it was reported that Sasheer Zamata would also be leaving the show. I’m really gonna miss Vanessa, as she definitely grew on me. Her characters have this adorable aloofness to them that I’ve come to enjoy. She’s got a big future playing the best friend in romantic comedies ahead of her. Sasheer was simply underutilized. She was always in the background of sketches, or only had a line or two. I hear that she really shined in the writers room, coming up with sketches like Black Jeopardy. I feel like SNL will merely be a footnote on her resume, as she goes on to bigger things, like Noël Wells and Jenny Slate.

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining some of my favorite people on the Nerd Lunch podcast, where discussed some of the greatest pop culture deaths. Nobody was safe, from Santa Claus to Michael Knight! And I finally got to join my pal Vincent (@RobotsPJs) on a podcast, which has been years in the making. We had a great time, and I think you’ll have a great time listening to it, so check it out!

Song of the Week

This week, I’ve got “It Ain’t My Fault”, by Brothers Osborne. Not only are they local boys, but I love the fact that this song/video has layers. Read the title and then watch the video. They’re trying to tell us something – the same kind of thing that sank the Dixie Chicks all those years ago. My how times have changed!

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Fresh off playing nurse Claire Temple in the Marvel Netflix shows, Rosario Dawson is in talks to play Dr. Cecilia Reyes in the X-Men spinoff film New Mutants. Just go to medical school already, Rosario!

Twin Peaks made its triumphant return for those of you who are fans. Based on the ratings, that’s not many of you…

The Get Down was canceled by Netflix after one season.

Chicago Justice was canceled by NBC after one season.

The Ben 10 reboot was renewed for a second season at Cartoon Network.

SpongeBob SquarePants was renewed for season 12 at Nickelodeon, taking it through its 20th anniversary.

Trial & Error was renewed for a second season at NBC.

The Black-ish spinoff, College-ish, received a 13-episode order on Freeform.

TruTV’s Impractical Jokers will enter national weekday strip syndication this Fall.

The bodies haven’t even gone cold and they’re already announcing a reboot of the Resident Evil franchise, this time produced by James Wan (Saw).

Tom Holland has been cast as young Nathan Drake in the film adaptation of the Uncharted video game.

In the realm of musical sequels that no one asked for, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! will be released July 20th, 2018.

Elizabeth Banks is producing a Charlie’s Angels reboot, scheduled to be released June 7th, 2019.

Tom Cruise announced that a Top Gun sequel is planned to begin filming next year. Fat Val Kilmer is waiting by the phone.

TJ Miller is leaving HBO’s Silicon Valley at the end of the season.

Surprising no one who’s been paying attention, Power Rangers continues the trend of just adding “Super” to the title of its latest incarnation’s second season with Power Rangers Super Ninja Steel

The Boss Baby 2 is a-coming, March 26th, 2021.

Sophia Bush is leaving Chicago P.D. after last night’s season finale

In the UK, there’s an annual event called Red Nose Day, where they’ve been raising money to end child poverty for nearly 30 years. Launched by the nonprofit Comic Relief, the event has since raised over $1 billion globally. The event came to the US in 2015, where you can buy a red nose at Walgreens for a dollar, with the proceeds going to the charity. One of the co-founders of Comic Relief happens to be Richard Curtis – writer and director of one of my favorite movies, Love Actually. Now, a lot of people hate the film because it gave way to Garry Marshall imitations like Valentine’s Day and New Years Eve. You know, those schlocky romantic comedies with an ensemble cast where all the storylines converge at some point. I don’t care, ’cause I happened to like those movies, too, but I especially like Love Actually.

Well, to celebrate this year’s Red Nose Day, Curtis reunited most of the cast of Love Actually to give us a 15-minute sequel to the film, called Red Nose Day Actually. We get to catch up on the characters 13 years later, and I have to say that I was smiling the entire time. It was great seeing those characters again, from Bill Nighy’s Billy Mack to Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister. I could’ve done without Rowan Atkinson’s meticulous shopkeeper, but it was even sorta nice seeing him again, too. You feel old as shit, though, when you see little Sam, who’s now 26 years old. I think his segment made me the happiest of all. Or maybe it was seeing Jamie and Aurelia and their kids. Or maybe it was seeing Martine McCutcheon again (why doesn’t she get more work stateside?!). I don’t know. I loved the whole damn thing.

The special originally aired in the UK in March for their Red Nose Day, but they’ve gone to great pains to keep it off the internet. Yesterday was the US’s Red Nose Day, and a new version of the short aired last night on NBC. Ya know, they should really have everyone celebrate on the same day worldwide, but what do I know? Anyway, I actually missed the NBC version because of things, but I was intrepid enough to find the UK version online. This morning, however, NBC posted it on their website so I was able to compare and contrast. The only real difference is that the UK version cut out the Laura Linney update, with Patrick Dempsey as her husband. It was a nice aside, but I guess British audiences don’t know who Dempsey is, so they didn’t miss out on much. Anyway, I wish more movies would give us short reunion updates, maybe on anniversary edition Blu Rays or something. It was nice to get just a taste of what everyone’s been up to, without them being burdened by a full film that would be more than likely fall short of the original. If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go watch this thing a few more times, but it’s safe to say that Red Nose Day Actually had the West Week Ever.

[wbwest]

New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/03/10/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-31017/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 3/10/17

  In movie news, a lot is going on with the Deadpool sequel. At the beginning of the week, it was reported that David Harbour of Netflix’s Stranger Things was being sought after for the role of Cable. While fans have wanted a bigger name, like Ron Perlman, Harbour is definitely gonna be cheaper, fitting right in with the movie’s budget. Meanwhile, it was reported that actress/singer Janelle Monae was the studio’s frontrunner for the role of Domino. Yesterday, however, Ryan Reynolds tweeted the above image, confirming that Atlanta‘s Zazie Beetz had gotten the role. I swear, with Donald Glover off Lando-ing in the Han Solo movie, and Zazie in Deadpool 2, Atlanta ain’t ever coming back. It’s already “on hiatus”, and I fear that it’s gonna be like Curb Your Enthusiasm – something Glover comes back to when he gets bored and has the time to do it. So, look for Atlanta season 2 in 2025.

In other movie news, the Valiant comic universe is getting closer to the big screen, as Dave Wilson has been tapped to direct the Bloodshot movie. Wilson comes from Blur Studio, known mainly for video game trailers, and co-founded by Deadpool director Tim Miller. If you don’t know anything about Bloodshot, you’re not alone. He looks like some kind of albino madman. From what I’ve read, he’s basically a zombie soldier who’s animated by nanites. I’ve never read a Bloodshot comic, though, so what do I know? Here’s where it gets interesting: there’s currently a webseries being made by Bat in the Sun called Ninjak vs The Valiant Universe. Starring Michael Rowe (Deadshot from the Arrowverse), the webseries pits the character of Ninjak against other characters in the Valiant Universe – where Bloodshot just happens to be portrayed by original Green Ranger, Jason David Frank. Now, JDF used to go to all of his convention appearances promoting the Power Rangers brand, but lately has been doing it dressed as Bloodshot. This project isn’t big enough to warrant that kind of dedication. No, I’m convinced he’s lobbying for the role in the big screen film. This is like when Sean Young used to go out in public dressed as Catwoman just so she’d get the role in Batman Returns. I don’t know whether to be impressed or saddened. I mean, he’s lobbying hard, but there’s no way he gets that role.

Though the news got sort of lost in the cycle last week, Nickelodeon announced that the new season of the 3D Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, premiering March 19th, would be its last. After five years, the show is ditching its serialized approach and is rebranding into an anthology format with the new title Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Once the series ends, a new 2D cartoon, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is slated to premiere in 2018.

In other TV news, folks are wondering if Glenn Howerton is leaving It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. The show aired its 12th season finale this week, where we learned that Dennis had a son from a layover in North Dakota. At the end of the episode, he decides that he can’t carry on as he’d been doing the past 12 years, and that he needed to leave and go be with his son. This episode aired the same day it was reported that Howerton and Patton Oswalt had been cast as leads in an NBC pilot where Howerton plays an Ivy League professor who loses out on his dream job, and ends up teaching high school science. Currently known as AP Bio, the series is produced by Seth Meyers and Lorne Michaels, so I think it’s likely it’ll be picked up. Now, Kaitlin Olson currently juggles working on Sunny and The Mick, but Howerton has a bigger role on Sunny, as he also writes and produces. In an interview with Uproxx, though, Howerton said that he wasn’t sure if he was coming back. He said the decision doesn’t have anything to do with his relationships with the other cast members. Sunny still has two seasons ahead of it, but even Danny DeVito recently mentioned that he might be done soon, too. The show really matured this season, as a lot of plotlines came full circle. I don’t even know what they’ll do with 20 more episodes (their seasons tend to be 10 episodes long), but I definitely don’t know how they’d do it without the character of Dennis.

In comic news, Marvel announced that Astonishing X-Men would be returning in July, written by Charles Soule, with art by…unknown at the moment. If you remember, Astonishing X-Men debuted as a miniseries during the “Age of Apocalypse” story in the mid 90s, but its claim to fame was the ongoing series written by Joss Whedon in the early ’00s. This incarnation of the team stars Old Man Logan, Archangel, Rogue, Gambit, Mystique, Psylocke, Bishop, and Fantomex. This, combined with the previously announced X-Men Gold, just proves that Marvel is trying to initiate a 1991-style refresh of the X-Men franchise, and I am here for it! This Astonishing team is basically a refresh of the 90s Blue Team from “adjectiveless” X-Men, while the team in X-Men Gold is pretty much a refresh of the 90s Gold Team from Uncanny X-Men. I love the Old Man Logan character, though I fear he’s approaching typical Wolverine levels of overexposure. Meanwhile, it’ll be interesting to see how Bishop redeems himself considering he spent the bulk of the last Cable series trying to kill a little girl. And it’ll be an interesting dynamic between mother and daughter Mystique and Rogue, as well as starcrossed lovers Rogue and Gambit. I still hate Fantomex, though, and I wish Marvel would stop trying to make him “happen”. Anyway,  I don’t get excited for much, comic-wise, but I’m really looking forward to this book.

In sports news, Jay Cutler was cut from the Chicago Bears after 8 seasons. Now, if you know anything about me, you know I don’t give a shit about sports. Still, there’s a funny anecdote here. You see, when Lindsay and I first started dating, Cutler was the starting quarterback of her beloved Denver Broncos. She bought me my first NFL jersey, which happened to be a Cutler jersey. After all, there was no way he was going anywhere, right? Well, he got cut after that season, and I couldn’t really wear the jersey anymore. He ended up going to the Bears, who had the same color scheme. I thought that meant I could still wear the jersey, but apparently that doesn’t fly with sports fans. Anyway, he’s also married to Kristin Cavallari of Laguna Beach/The Hills fame, so I guess there’s your pop culture connection to justify my mention of him.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

Director Joe Carnahan has exited the third Bad Boys film, Bad Boys For Life. Maybe I’ll get around to finally watching the first two before this thing gets made.

Jason Isaacs was cast as Captain Lorca in Star Trek: Discovery. I…don’t know who that is, so it’s done nothing to get me excited about this show.

It was a week packed with renewals, as One Day At A Time was renewed by Netflix, Riverdale was renewed by The CW, and Baskets was renewed by FX. I pretty much only have interest in one of those shows. Can you guess which one?

Emma Dumont was cast as Polaris in Fox’s untitled mutant series, which will be interesting since she’s Magneto’s daughter and all…

The embargo for reviews of Netflix’s Iron Fist was lifted, and they weren’t pretty. It seems the problems are with the structure and not necessarily the casting, so it looks like the folks lobbying for an Asian American lead dodged a bullet there.

Who knew Josh Radnor had been working since How I Met Your Mother ended? Well, he’s not anymore, as his PBS series Mercy Street was canceled yesterday.

Now, I know Logan had a great week. It came out to rave reviews, and it opened to $238 million worldwide. Still, I kinda got things off schedule. You see, it got the West Week Ever last week before it had even performed. I don’t really want to start this trend of the same thing getting the WWE two weeks in a row just because I just had to see it opening night, hours before pushing “Publish” on the next post. So, yeah, Logan had a great week, but it was the best thing I experienced last week. Now, I’m gonna talk about the best thing I experienced this week.

Since its debut in 2015, I’ve been a big fan of the FXX series Man Seeking Woman. Starring Jay Baruchel (you know who he is, even if you don’t know his name), it follows Josh Greenberg, a down on his luck Millennial who tries to navigate the waters of modern day dating. Like a less contrived version of How I Met Your Mother, the first two seasons saw Josh go on date after date, trying to find The One, but always coming up short. That all changed this season, however, as he met Lucy. He meets Lucy in the season premiere, marries her in the season finale, and their courtship fills out the middle. Lucy’s not only perfect for him, but she also helped the show take on a new direction. We started seeing things from a female perspective, as the show became as much about her as it was about Josh. We got to see her deal with having to give up her fun party life to settle down. We see her deal with the temptation of another possible suitor. But in the end, she chose Josh. This season, it was as much Man Seeking Woman as it was Woman Seeking Man.

This week saw the season finale of the show and, as I mentioned, it focused on Josh and Lucy’s wedding. The show hasn’t been picked up for a fourth season yet, and I’m hoping it doesn’t. As much as I’ve loved it, it has served its purpose. Over the course of 30 episodes, it set forth a goal and it achieved it. Sure, there are a lot of shows that evolved past their initial concept (looking at you, Cougar Town), and I’m sure the show could keep going as we see Josh and Lucy navigate married life, have a kid, etc. But I think I like it where things ended up. We don’t have to see all of that to know it happens, and I don’t think the show as a whole would be any stronger if we did see all that. Instead of overstaying its welcome, I’d prefer it take the British approach of “less is more”. Three seasons is a good run, and it did what it set out to do. It found Josh a woman. Now, if they did want to continue the show in some capacity, I would love if they flipped it to Woman Seeking Man. You see, every season, there’s one episode that stars Josh’s sister, Liz, as we get to see her life in contrast to Josh’s. While Josh is an unlucky in love office manager who lacks ambition, Liz is a driven workaholic attorney – who also happens to be unlucky in love. The Liz episodes tend to be the strongest of an already strong season, and it’d be great to see more focus on her. Josh and Lucy could still pop up as supporting characters, but the focus would now be on Liz.

With all of this gushing, I haven’t really explained what’s so great about the show. After all, it probably sounds like a run of the mill sitcom, but it’s far, far from that. There’s a streak of absurdity to the show that really lends to its tone. For example, in the pilot, Josh’s girlfriend, Maggie, leaves him to date Adolf Hitler. Last season, Liz had an affair with Santa Claus, while Josh dates a girl whose ex-boyfriend was Jesus Christ. Yeah, it’s not your run of the mill comedy. You’ve got to see it to fully experience it, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

The season finale ends with a scene that brings the show full circle to the pilot. If there is another season, I hope they don’t fuck it up. If there isn’t, though, I love what they did, and how they did it. Everything was wrapped up with a nice bow, and it’s a strong series from beginning to end. That’s why Man Seeking Woman had the West Week Ever.