#and as the resident Guy who likes the magicians nephew the most out of all the narnia books . i consider myself an expert on jadis lore

[faerieorbitars]

been making more twst ocs. currently constructing a whole academy for twisted oz characters but specifically from the wiz. and just busted out the narnia dvd and thinking about making a twisted jadis oc. i need to make as many anime boy versions of classic characters as i possibly can . for my health

[popculturebuffet]

Mickey and the Roadster Racers: “Mickey’s Perfecto Day” and “Daisy’s Grande Goal” review or “I think i’m going out of my headcold”

Saludos Amigos!  I”ve been sick, and as such have had no energy or state of mind to continue my look at every apperance of the CABs in the us, concluding with a look at every episode of legend of the three caballeros. 

And today’s stop is one i’m only passingly familiar with: Mickey and the Roadster Racers. MATRR.. wait really that’s what it spells?

No Larry the Cable guy on this blog thank you.  Anyways, Roadster Racers is surprisingly complicated for such a simple show. For starters it’s the successor to “Mickey Mouse’s Club House” another CGI Disney Junior show, Disney’s equivalent to Nick Jr because their clever like that. And to continue the theme of ripping off other properties, the show was Disney’s stab at following the big fake interactivity craze started by Dora the Explorer. And it’s annoying as that sounds with a lot of pasues and an annoying recurring hot dog song that’s obnoxiously catchy. It was mostly just slice of life shenanigans with the mickey mouse crew and when retoolling it they decided to drop the now dated fake interactivity, turn up the slice of life and add some of those nitro burning funny cars vroom vroom. IN a sense genral g rated soft boiled mickey shenanigans with a racing theme. 

Not a terrible series but not terribly intresting hence why i’ve never covered it. It’s a bland inoffesnsive cartoon for toddlers. Enough effort is put in for me not to hate it, as even a toddler show can have effort, but not enoguh so that I really care. I’ve seen better, i’ve seen worse. The only intresting things are the racing gimmick and the fact that as said gimmick diminished they switched names to “Mickey’s mixed up adventures” in season 3. Hence the complicated part as it’s not counted as it’s own series but unlike other disney title changes they aren’t just slapping another label under the logo like the marvel shows. This is  a full on retool. But it still has the same cast and prodcution crew and is counted as part of mickey mouse. Point is it’s weird and not relevant since our boys didn’t show up in that season. Oh and as a final note I learned while writing this/ there’s a THIRD Mickey Mouse Disney Junior Series, Mickey Mouse Funhouse, coming next year. 

But with so little to cover I ended up throwing in a freebie. See normally I charge the same for 11 minute and 20+ minute shows. It’s fair as most 11 minute shows these days pack in as much character as the ones that use the full half hour. It’s just a diffrence in tactics is all. But here I felt obligated to do at LEAST two diffrent, but cabs related, 11 minutes here, so if I had nothing to talk about I could pad it out and If I had everyhting to talk about.. eh I still tried to do the right thing. I regret nothing. But yeah i’m sick, this series is eh, let’s gooooo. 

Mickey’s Perfecto Day So Mickey and Friends are preparing to drive to spain.

No i’m not making a joke. Wish I was would be one of my best but no, Mickey and Friends are just.. casually going to drive to Spain. To explain why this hurts my head a map, on which i’ve drawn the route they’d have to take to get to spain from, let’s say Calisota, the fictional state where Mouseton, Duckburg, New Quackmore, and thus probably Hot Dog Hills, the show’s setting, reside. 

This is a crue map, they oculd’ve gone down through mexico or central america.. but the point is THEY DROVE ACROSS THE OCEAN. And I genuinely do not know if their cars can do that but apparently they can. So either the writer didn’t know where Spain was or didn’t care and either way it’s bad. LIke at least give their cars a plane or boat mode. Go full DKR up in this bitch, give em diffrent racing vehicles. But it wouldn’t be as aggrivvating or bizzare if they MENTIONED how they were driving to spain, like maybe Donald’s car that’s also an old boat and goofy’s that’s a tub have aquamodes and can tow the rest. I get 5 year olds don’t care about this.. but still? I guess? Also MIckey is either the sorcerer supreme or jesus at this point. He can cross oceans by car, astral project, cross into other dimensions.. the only thing missing is raising the dead and  he already did that in the 30′s. 

So as for why the sorcerer supreme and his buddies are going all the way to Spain, Donald has a concert with the three caballeros and this time they all remember him as a memmber and Daisy’s a huge fan. Which is sweet. Then we hear donald duck talk and...

Yeah, Daniel Ross is not the best Donald. Now I will cut the guy some slack here: He’s a voice actor more known for doing bit parts who just got the role in 2016, since racers aired in 2017 and animation lead time and all that. He’s not going to be nearly as good as Tony or Clarence out of the gate. Even Tony wasn’t. He also had a valid reason for picking up the role as Tony likely had two series in production at that time, Rise of the Three Cablleros and Ducktales, and thus had to split his time between both. And having Chris Diamaptolus do mickey in the new shorts instead of his usual voice actor Bret Iwane despite Iwane not being in any serious danger of dying soon has worked out super. So having multiple actors isn’t the problem. Hell after the tragic loss of Russi taylor and with how bad the world is, having an understudy in mind for such an important role is a grim but understandable necicisty. While I belivie tony can go on for decades, he’s only human. 

So my issue is not on Donald’s voice being diffrent or new.. it’s that it’s not very good and the second episode featuerd here shows Daniel Ross really hasn’t improved despite now having worked as the character for a while.I can forgive taking some time to grow in but being this sloppy after a full season is just unacceptable. He’s BETTER but he’s still just not very good and doing the bear minimum. I don’t doubt he’s a good va in other rolls, I don’t want to hate on the guy, but I can hate on aperfomance when it’s bad and it’s not good here. It’s just not. Not in either episode not in any way shape or form. It just feels like a lazy donald duck impression. Disney can do better and Ross can hopefully find better work in the future. But for now this just hangs like a wet fart on his resume. 

Moving on, thankfully, we have our three stories split pretty evenly and all stock plots. “Horay”.  Mickey and Minnie: Mickey tries to have a “perfecto” day, hence the title with Minnie, but instead gives her a rose a baby bull likes.. or maybe it’s SUPPOSED to be full grown but while Mickey and Minnie treat him like a grown bull and react to him like one.. the boy dosen’t look at all, even in the series style, like an adult bull. he looks like a calf. Mickey.. is initimdated by a small child whose horns aren’t sharp enough to hurt him. 

It’s just REALLY distracting and takes me out of the plot which itself is as bland as plain toast and twice as dry. They flee him till the end where Minnie figures out the rose thing at the concert and they make an ew friend. NOt TERRIBLE but not great.  Goofy and Cuckoo Loca: Okay first off who and what is a cuckoo loca? Well she’s a wind up bird that lives in Daisy’s Cuckoo Clock and makes sarcastic comments in a brooklyn accent because nikka futtterman voices her. Still makes more sense than driving to spain. She’s not a bad addition to the cast.. not even that weird as most kids based franchises have an adorable animal sidekick to market. Goofy wants to try some “flamingo dancing” while in spain, with Loca going along to make sure he dosen’t die somehow.. which would be unjustifable for anyone but goofy. Also.. Flamingo Dancing...

But yeah Goofy goes up against ... world famous flamingo dancer horace horsecollar?!

Now apparently this is a common thing for him in this series, apparently, but still it feels like if one of those weird variant ninja turtle figures from the 80′s was a plot point in an episode. Like if we actually had an episode based around birthday magician raph. 

It feels just as odd and out of place for down to earth if showy horace to suddenly be the best flaminco dancer in spain, despite being very much white coded, as it does for the angriest ninja turtle to be pulling a rabbit out of kids hats. Now Rise of the TMNT raph I could totally see as a party magician but any other? He’d probably break his wand over some kids head. 

Goofy ends up winning anyway because he’s stupid, though Flamingo dancing should be a real thing even if this joke is bad and it shoudl feel bad. What an ODD subplot Okay one more then i’m free of this prison. 

The Three Cablleros Plus Daisy:  Okay finally we get to what I came here for. The Three Caballeros! And..they look a tad off. Not terrible but clearly the animators weren’t as skilled with non duck beaks as both of them look ready to do this to donald. 

While Panchito’s color varies. Sometime’s it’s a deep brownish crimson, sometimes it’s poop brown and there’s no classy way to put it. When he’s in this cheap cgi, he looks like a shit chicken. This gets to a larger issue though... the animation here is not great. It’s not TERRIBLE.. but it’s pretty freaking sub par for disney. And i’ve SEEN their other cgi shows around the same time due to having a young niece and nephew. Sherieff Callie, Doc McStuffins, MIles from Tommorowland, and after this T.O.T.S. and Rocketeer. I’m not saying these are masterpieces of the genre, but they have more effort in botht he animation and writing put in. Here it just feels like they do the bear minimum which feels really fucking wrong. These chracters deserve better and have thankfully gotten better. YOu can make a show for preschoolers that’s cutsey and harmless and still have it at least be creative god dammit. It’s why I don’t like covering this show. It just feels so.. lifeless. They try a bit here and there but outside of cuckoo, there’s nothing really new or intresting to really make kids love these characters and it bothers me. it bothers me a lot. 

Moving on thank god, the plot is bare bones as is the boys characterization. So far at least their character has been pretty consitent across all mediums. i’ts something I haven’t really touched on but their seen as world traveler’, Panchito being a Gaucho and Jose being such a ladies man this will probably happen to him eventually. 

I swear to god that was the only part of this movie I can remember. I’m  better off that way. But yeah without Panchito’s pep or Jose’s smooth talking ways, there’s just nothing for disney junior to work with so their just.. friends to donald who are nice to daisy. Which is very nice to see, but isn’t very intresting or gives me a lot to talk about. Donald eats a food that’s too hot, continues to talk poorly, and Daisy has to fill in. He gets back in at time and they sing probably the most forgetable cabs song yet. It’s.. not much honestly.  This was worth covering for completions sake but it dosen’t really add much. If nothing else it at least made me realize so far each mile of the ride has added something fresh to the characters: The original was the foundation, rosa gave them depth and made them feel like real people, and house of mouse made them feel like a big deal to other characters and made donald’s history as a cabllero part of his legacy as it should be. Each one so far has felt like it added.. this one just made me realize that and that is all. It builds on nothing adds nothing and there’s really nothing here other than MAYBE the brown/crimson design for panchito that carries over from the looks of it. The next two versions build on what rosa, the movie and to a lesser extent the house of mouse built. This one adds nothing. This plot is just.. inconqueintal. not bad for kids to know about them but even then it feels like a disapointing introduction. I fondly remember hte cabs episodes of house of mouse and even on rewatch they mostly held up despite some weak parts. This .. this will just be forgotten and I only hope legend and ducktales have done a better job keeping my boys alive in kids minds. God i’m depressed. Well at least this is over right.. right? 

Daisy’s Grande Goal

Okay as I said I was doing two, and rather than do this episode’s paired episode I decided on Season 2′s “Supercharged: Daisy’s Grande Goal”.. and cut the supercharged out of the title for the most part because why would you put the sutitle in your actual title. And only in some episodes. But yeah this season had a new gimmick, SUPERCHARGING... which basically means our heroes roadsters can go into super sayian tron super sayian mode and go real fast. They look real nice though and it has it’s own neat theme tune so there’s that. Otherwise the only other change is the animation which improves greatly. Seriously look at that shot above. That’s quality lin line with the ohter disney juinor shows. It’s still not as CREATIVE, but it’s not as slipshod as it started and I have to give them credit on that. 

So our heroes are in Brazil.. and as far as I can tell they drove there again.. but the diffrence is 1) you can actually DRIVE to brazil and 2) they have super fast super cars now, meaning even if the super charge mode has a timer, it can help with the commute. It’s also one of the boys actual home countries this time. I mean the episode isn’t built around the cabs.. but neither was the last one. Seriously I almost missed that: it’s three unrleated plots and really you could’ve just lenethed the bull and goofy plots a bit and left donald and daisy out. If your not going to use the cabs right hten don’t use them at all. Here though their used BETTER.. still not in the lead unforunately but at least them being on the brazilian soccer team makes sense as jose is from brazil and while panchito is it he’s his best friend, sometimes lover and always there when he needs him. So spending some time in brazil to play soccer/football isn’t a stretch. But that’s about it for their involvment: they say a few lines, are part of the brazilian team our heroes face, and we get Not-Donald saying “No Way Jose”.,,,

Sadly I can’t leave but the main plot is about Daisy’s Cousnt Almonda. She was in the previous episode which I did not watch but I do like both there being a valid reason why our heroes are here, and connection between episodes. While this season isn’t MUCH better.. it’s still better by some metric.  The plot is very basic: Almonda always wins at soccer ever since she and Daisy were kids, and it’s your basic “hero gets overcompetitive to finally win plot and learns to just have fun and to use teamwork heart of the cards and all that” It goes how you’d expect with Daisy hogging the ball and causing disasters and then a ten car pileup before cucoo yells at her, she realizes she was bad and also realizes Almonda had to practice hard to beat her, and ends up beating her through teamwork and you get it. IT’s not much But yeah ten car pile up.. that’s where it is intresting and rediculous as their playing soccer with cars. Which given i’ve always been an advocate for card games on motor cycles, seriously it’s not more rediculous than Yugioh was before that: in the anime and manga before 5ds we had table hockey but the puck is ice with nitrocylcrine in it, a battle with an escaped convict involving vodka and only using one finger, a chinese puzzel box that devoured souls, a dueling monkey, a whole hogwarts style school for dueling, duel spirits, our heroes childhood creations coming to life to help him, our hero merging with his androgynous childhood friend to fight the light of all evils, and on top of all of that, kaiba building a giant murder theme park soley to kill yugi and, even with how rich is he is, not even going to prison for the two months he’d get for that. My point is Yugioh is fricking weird and I love it so and card games on mortocyles is awesome.  Soccer with cars is alright. The teams are mickey, minnie, daisy and donald, for the US and Almonda, Jose, Panchito and.. Pancho Pete for the Brazilian team. Pete’s cousin. He apparenlty has a lot of em. Eh as long as we don’t get petkeem the african dream we’re fine. 

Why why did I make this. Why. But yeah it’s fine, not the best action ever adn the supercharge segments as I said look nice but as I also said ther’es just not a lot here. Daisy’s cousin is intresting, but likely more in the other segment. Here she’s more of a plot device to make daisy into an asshole for the episode so the plot can happen. There’s just not a lot to talk about> Hence me doing two of these. I will say it’s a better episode than the other one: it felt like more actually happened, it was more cohesive, had way more enerjgy and it had billy beagle... the series resident overexcited and loveable announcer voiced by the far from loveable jay leno of stealing conan’s job he gave him and last man standing, for some reason, fame.��

Overall these episodes are.. eh. The first one is kind of a mess, the second one is slightly better but these clearly werne’t meant for adults, let alone older kids and it shows. But I found some material here and made a horrifying combination of a terrible racist wwe gimmick and pete so.. I win/ I guess. I dunno, until next time, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. 

[southeastasianists]

Last May, as 79-year-old Men Sorn was warming up fish left over from a neighbour’s wedding in his house in remote central Cambodia, an unknown attacker crept up behind him, pulled the old man’s krama tight around his face and gutted him with a knife. By the time his widow, 70-year-old Sours Kouern, had stumbled down the bent wooden stairs of her house, her husband’s life had leaked into the grey dirt.

“I heard him struggling to breathe and came downstairs asking what had happened,” she told Southeast Asia Globe through twisted teeth at her home in Kampong Speu province’s Kong Pisei district last month. “But he was already dead.”

Standing in the ruins of what used to be her kitchen – torn down to avoid bringing back memories of that night – Kouern pointed to a long, narrow bow strung through the cracked rafters. This, she told us, was all she had left to remind her of her husband’s prized handiwork – brightly coloured khleng ek, traditional Cambodian kites that sang as they flew. Sorn’s creations had drawn reporters to his home from as far away as the US.

But in the minds of many of the residents of Tbong Bei village, the elderly kite-maker also practised a far more lethal trade.

A middle-aged woman in central Kong Pisei said it had long been feared that Sorn was a thmob – a black magician, or sorcerer.

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, she said that four years earlier her father had been gripped by severe stomach pain. When he was taken to the local hospital, an x-ray allegedly revealed a sharp metal object buried in his gut. But when the doctors opened his belly on the operating table, she said, they found nothing. Despairing, she took her father to a group of monks living at the base of a nearby mountain known for trafficking with spirits and practising traditional Khmer healing arts.

The monks’ diagnosis was swift. “They told me it was too late,” the woman said. “Somebody was practising sorcery on him.”

Although Kouern maintained that her husband knew nothing of sorcery, the rumour that Sorn was preying upon the old and vulnerable spread through the village. After four years of the unexplained deaths that are all too common in rural Cambodia, someone decided to take matters into their own hands. There were no witnesses.

“All the lights were on in the whole village, but no one saw anything,” Kouern spat.

With the country’s feeble healthcare system struggling to keep up with the undiagnosed death and disease plaguing rural Cambodians, kru khmer or lou kru – wide-reaching terms describing traditional healers ranging from fortune tellers to spirit mediums – continue to play a central role across the country. Men and women, monks and laity, these healers call spirits into their bodies, ink protection spells onto their patients’ skin and root out black magic within the community – sometimes to devastating effect. In Kong Pisei alone, which has a population of just under 113,000 as of the 2008 census, two other alleged sorcerers have been beheaded in the past two years. Others accused of witchcraft have barely managed to escape with their lives.

On the second day of Khmer New Year in April, Prak Kong and his wife were forced to flee their home in Kong Pisei’s Prey Vihear commune just hours before a mob of villagers tore their house apart with hammers and rocks. As the crowd swelled to more than 600, the most violent attackers splintered the family’s spirit house and splashed petrol around the inside of the house, hoping to set it ablaze. According to Kong’s brother-in-law, who now lives there, the violence was unleashed by a local kru khmer who had accused the man of using sorcery to murder his newborn nephew-in-law.

“The problem started before the water festival [last year],” he said. “[His relative’s] child died after surgery. They wanted to find out why their child died so they went to see a lou kru. The lou kru gave him Kong’s name. They said he was responsible for the child’s death.”

Fabienne Luco, a social anthropologist in Cambodia who has done extensive research on the killing of people accused of being sorcerers, said that kru khmer often used accusations of witchcraft to provide a scapegoat for suffering or chronic disease within the community.

“Some traditional kru khmer, they cannot say: ‘I cannot cure you,’ because it means they are not so good,” she said. “So they say the problem comes from somebody else – a witch’s spell. They might describe the person, saying they’re tall, or dark, or living south or east of your house – and they have very great power. And sometimes they will give the precise name of the person.”

While Kong’s alleged accuser could not be reached for comment, a man at his house who said he was a relative but refused to give his name was adamant that the exiled man was guilty as charged. “If he had been doing good things, he would not have run away,” he said. “He would have died here instead.”

Cambodia’s healers and spirit mediums trace their lineage back to pre-Buddhist Brahmanic and animist practice. But shadowing this faith in the protective powers of kru khmer is a fairly widespread belief in black magic – witches who can conjure up evil spirits, spread disease and magically imbed nails, razor blades and coarse buffalo skin within the bodies of their victims.

And in a belief system in which the material and spirit world intermingle, a single word from a kru khmer blaming natural sickness on human malice can be all the more lethal. Ryun Patterson, the author of Vanishing Act: A Glimpse into Cambodia’s World of Magic, said that kru khmer are trusted implicitly.

“I think it’s a very intimate connection that I think these people have with their communities,” he told Southeast Asia Globe. “They hear people’s problems, they give people the feeling that they’ve got a little bit of agency in their lives – a little bit of power and control over their own destinies. And it’s scary, because if one of these counsellors or healers does make a diagnosis of black magic, then it’s completely trusted.”

Luco, the anthropologist, said that unlike monks or achar – lay priests responsible for rituals and ceremonies – kru khmer were not given any special respect in their communities beyond their relationships with their patients, making them prone to the same human drives and desires as everyone else.

“It’s difficult to know the specific motives behind it – it might be an act of revenge, it might be a long-standing story between the two families, there might be something hidden behind it,” she said. “But… people need to find an answer – and the answer is, we have a scapegoat, and if we kill him we’ll feel better. It’s like a sacrifice.”

In a chamber at Wat Botum pagoda in the heart of Phnom Penh, Chhoung Seaksat is waging war on witches. Two men hold an old woman down by her wrists as Seaksat, plump and cherubic in a crisp orange monk’s robe, thrashes her gaunt wrist with a wooden wand, chanting and cajoling the spirit inside her. The woman writhes and shakes against the rattan mat, a low moan forcing its way from her lips. A bruised purple bulge blooms beneath her skin like a mark of the plague, quivering with each lash of the stick. He prods it, and it distorts, distends. This, he explains, is the evil buried within her flesh.

Although ordained as a monk, Seaksat’s story is a familiar one to those who have studied Cambodia’s spirit healers. As a child, he was ravaged by an illness that left him feeling as though he was drowning in deep water. Another monk managed to cure him with incense and the intercession of the spirits. Since then, Seaksat said, it has been his duty to fight against the forces of darkness.

Seated on his throne in front of an elaborate shrine studded with motley gods and Buddhas, Seaksat talked of how he once compelled evil spirits possessing Phnom Penh’s unfortunates to give up the names of their masters.

“First, I took the incense to beat on them,” he said. “And they told me who did it and where they were living, how many children they had, who hired them, and what their names were. The patient will scream out without knowing what they are doing. When we beat them, they scream: ‘Oh, please! Stop it. I will stop it!’ And when I asked who did it – were they possessed by themselves or did someone hire them? – they told us their names – and why.”

Seaksat said that he stopped forcing confessions six years ago after a woman he cured of sorcery had confronted a person matching the description he had given her of her attacker. Although the altercation did not turn violent, the family of the alleged sorcerer came to see him at his chamber to protest. Since then, Seaksat has ceased revealing the names of the accused for fear of violent reprisal – against himself. Still, he maintained, black magic remains a dire threat to every Cambodian.

“Sometimes there are cases in which mothers hire black magicians against their children,” he said. “Sometimes their children want to get revenge and they hire against their mother, or their family in-laws, their own siblings, too.”

Patterson said that despite Western scepticism, kru khmer mostly acted out of genuine belief in their own powers of divination. “I read about one recently in Kampong Cham where the sorcerer just pointed to a guy and said: ‘That’s the guy.’ I think it’s genuine, for the most part. I don’t think that the majority of these people intend to be charlatans. It comes from a place of genuine belief,” he said.

It was this sincere belief, along with a lack of awareness of the potential consequences of what they were doing, Luco said, that could all too easily make the words of a kru khmer become the spark that ignites an inferno of violence.

“They accept that getting rid of somebody that is toxic will cure the community. And the people even believe it. When it’s a whole village willing to kill somebody, they don’t consider it a murder,” she said.

For many of those with blood on their hands, the justification lay in the status of the victim themselves. Luco said that the accused was invariably someone who stood apart from the community – whether a literal outsider who married into the village or a person who did not fit with conventional Cambodian beliefs about morality or acceptable actions.

“So when you look for the cause of your suffering, an explanation for why people die, OK, he is poor, he is drinking, maybe he has some problems, infirmities, he has strange behaviour or a disability – it’s never rich people,” she said.

But for Kouern, sitting in the ruins of the kitchen where her husband died, the knowledge that his craftsmanship and fame may have heralded his death provides neither relief nor enmity.

“People ask me if I worry, because my husband was killed,” she said. “I say oh, please, come and kill me. I will pray to the angels, to the Lord, that karma will pay you back. Good or evil, the Lord will see it. What you do is what you will get.”