#hence wacky bullshit (fun)

[supercantaloupe]

playing new music from the composition students in orchestra/wind ensemble is always an Experience cause you'll usually either find Wacky Bullshit (fun and cool) or you'll find Wacky Bullshit (derogatory)

[pvtjoker22]

So I was thinking, this being the final season of Unsolved and all, would do you suppose the Ghoul Boys are gonna do post-Unsolved? Like buy back the rights to it like The Try Guys did? I think Ryan and Shane understand that they’re more of the brand than Unsolved itself and hence why Watcher is working out pretty well so far, but I figured it’d be fun to brainstorm some legally distinct but still spooky investigation based shows for them:

-Steven tries to cook in a haunted abode while Ryan gives an overview of the history of said homestead and Shane provides dry quips

-Puppet History but its new puppet characters operated by Ryan about historical hauntings (more of a spinoff of both shows really)

-Ryan and Shane commentate or observe other folks doing their own haunted investigations (I can already picture Shane providing pithy remarks about how amateur-ish their ghost hunting is)

-a show where the Boys investigate user-submitted claims of hauntings exclusively instead of famous/infamous locations (so like that one episode where they went to that friend’s apartment)

-The Wonderful World of Ghost Hunting (again, another spinoff) where Ryan and Shane explore the wacky bullshit around ghost hunting like having them go to SpooktoberCon 2021 or somethin’ I dunno

[veryvincible]

The Shitstorm That Is TS:IM and IM2020: The Tony Critique

Part 1 / 4!

Because this sucks, and we need to acknowledge that this sucks.

2 3 4

First of all, a nod to the stunning art that these issues feature. I’m sorry, artists, that you had to work with plotlines so damning. Now that that’s over with, let’s start from the first issue of Tony Stark: Iron Man.

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the result of 616 canon being negatively affected by the characterization of the MCU. Now, the MCU is an entirely different universe. Tony Stark acts differently here because, well... MCU Tony Stark is a different person than 616 Tony Stark. Ultimates Tony Stark is also a different person than 616 Tony Stark. Iron Man Noir is also-- You get the point. These Tonys act differently because they have different natures branching off of the same core. They have different experiences. They have different environments and resources.

So, to understand why it’s totally mega-fucked for 616 Tony’s personality to undergo such a dramatic change, you have to understand what 616 Tony originally was and how he acted.

I have a lot to say about 616 Tony, but we don’t have time for that, so here’s a breakdown from @sineala​ that does an excellent job of giving you the rundown. In essence, 616 Tony is mellow. He’s calmer. He’s charismatic, but in an adult scholarly way. He’s what you’d picture if someone said “respectable businessman” out loud. The closest to 616 Tony the MCU has ever gotten is mid-CW, where Tony’s somber with undertones of guilt and exhaustion. This is him.

616 Tony also has a lot of respect for people. There’s always the odd comic that characterizes him as bigoted in some way, shape, or form, but he consistently puts minorities in positions of power, and for literal decades has appreciated and funded certain charities and organizations that aim to do the same thing. Tony treats people with respect even after they’ve severely wronged him.

So, when the first issue makes our low-key, melancholy Tony Stark who treats people with a professional baseline of respect say wacky shit like this:

We get kind of frustrated.

Not to mention the fact that Tony’s past has also been adjusted to fit the desires of the writers, who seem to have forgotten that Tony was canonically a quiet and sensitive kid (hence why Howard wanted him to “man up” so hard).

"Quiet and sensitive.”

Anyway, here’s further evidence that this run is MCU-ifying Tony Stark in order to make him more friendly to the MCU-to-Comic demographics:

Sitting down onstage to talk to the press is such a Tony thing to do, right?

Well, sure, if you watched Iron Man 1 (and even then, that was one speech! Just one!) If you read any comic featuring Tony at his 616-est, however, you’d figure out pretty quickly that this man likes a podium. His tone is professional, as opposed to conversational. He doesn’t center his whole personality around the fact that he’s an authority figure, but he also doesn’t go out of his way to make himself seem like he’s not. He’s in a position of power. He knows it.

For reference, here’s what “knowing it” looks like. Obviously, this is a more formal occasion than a regular ol’ press conference would be, but... you get the point. This is pretty much his vibe.

And then there’s this bullshit, which is obviously a nod to the MCU in the most shocking and upsetting of ways. Note the trademark pose, the “We are Iron Man,” most likely pointing to both the “I am Iron Man” bit that the MCU had (which 616 Tony didn’t do the second the superhero was popularized, because he was spending all of his time living his life identity-porn style), and maybe the “We are Groot” bit from GOTG.

The thing is, this “We are Iron Man!” mentality fits... no Tony. MCU Tony sees Iron Man as a part of himself. 616 Tony often refers to Iron Man as a separate entity (not concept, but entity) from himself, better and more desirable than him, when he’s having his shittiest days.

And then there’s shit like this, which is objectively shitty. But because Tony’s funky new playboy attitude is comedic and all, he’s going to ignore the fact that Rhodey’s having a post-traumatic episode just piloting the suit (which he’s doing because Tony asked him to, when he could have asked... I don’t know, anyone else?) in favor of being a dick to him.

“You’re all over the place,” says the character who’s canonically diagnosed with MDD and experiences severe PTSD of his own to the other character who has severe PTSD and is being hardcore triggered by something he’s previously referred to as a metal coffin or casket or something.

That’s not even beginning to mention the fact that he’s calling Sunset Bain, a canonically manipulative and shitty ex (who, fun fact, was 5 years older than “undergrad Tony Stark” at MIT, and convinced Tony to keep her a secret from Howard and Maria) “the pretty-but-evil lady.”

So... she’s abusive, but at least she’s hot! And Tony still feels this way about her despite the fact that she, uh... stole some of his ideas, split up with him soon after, and then founded her entire company off of these ideas.

Very cool, Marvel. Thanks for that.

And hey, remember Tony’s fucking awesome quote from Avengers Vol 4?

“I can create a world without war. I can make a world without alcohol or drugs. Without hate or jealousy. But then it wouldn't be the world we live in. Nothing would be learned, nothing would be gained. We wouldn't advance as species.”

Well, here’s a fun fact. He doesn’t give a shit about any of that anymore, because fuck depth, right? Now he wants to ctrl+alt+delete the shit that makes him sad. And obviously, obviously alcoholism is something that’s understandably hated. Of course he’d want to get rid of it ASAP. But this is a guy who practically lives in guilt, a guy who thinks he deserves all the shit he gets and only ever crawls out of it for the sake of his loved ones.

That’s not this Tony. 

And then there’s this. Honestly, I have no words for this. If it were some joke intended for an audience around him, then sure, it could work. It’s not like Tony never makes these kinds of jokes.

But this is just him. Him and a recording of himself in a room. Him, saying “I love the sound of my own voice” to himself despite the fact that we have decades of 616 canon proving the opposite.

There are many, many other issues with these issues (pun intended, but please read it with a cynical, if not completely hostile, tone) and how Tony acts within them, but I’m going to go more in-depth with those in some separate posts.

Because this is Hell. For my sins, I’ve become a torturer. For yours, you have to be subjected to even more of TS:IM than anyone should be exposed to.

[vimesbootstheory]

z nation s4&5: clean your plate

I said that once I’d watched 5x08 that I’d post that rant about the writing on zn s4&5 and I watched it so here it is.

ZN 5x08 is about to start airing but I don't have a television so I have to fill the time some way, what better means than a bitter fan essay?

First off, just to get this out of the way, this comes from a place of love. I love Z Nation, and in fact I've enjoyed season 5 quite a bit. It does, however, frustrate me IMMENSELY, possibly to a comparable level to my frustration with season 4, just with more genuine entertainment value. Because these days, ZN frustrates me a LOT. but, again, it couldn't do that if I didn't care about the show. which I do. lots of love from erin, ok? this is not hate. even though it's going to come across as very grumpy and bitter.

when I try to trace my frustration back to its roots, it actually comes back to a positive point about the show, which is its tendency to reinvent with each passing season. this show has the capacity to recover from a relatively under-par season (quality-wise) because it rolls with the punches. every season, new shit. s1 to s2, probably the softest of reinventions, we got blue murphy and blend cassandra and la reina's whole deal after a wacky but still pretty within-the-box season 1. s2 to s3, suddenly the whole transport-murphy-across-america-because-immunity is no longer the mission and its all about tracking murphy down and getting him to stop enslaving a town, meanwhile zombie baby is super-aging. s3 to s4, murphy is no longer biochemically interesting and we follow warren's brainwashing in zig zags all over the country. s4 to s5, now it's a clumsy pro-immigration metaphor with not!zombies (who attack people, for brains). idk why I'm summarizing, y'all have watched it, but it's fun, for me, to lay it out like this. 

reinvention, is my point. it worked for s1 to s2, kept it fresh and absolutely bonkers, love that crazy blue shit, love the mind control, love it. worked again for s2 to s3, for a very specific reason: they'd finally reached their explicit goal at the end of s2, they got to the cdc, and it turned out to be absolute bullshit. murphy is understandably very annoyed about this, very disillusioned, so he turns existing plotlines from s2 on their heads, hence: murphytown. and that's the most charitable you'll ever hear me be about murphy's behaviour in s3.

s3 to s4. this reinvention didn't work. on the face of it, that's puzzling. it's reinvention, why shouldn't it work? they shook it up twice already, they're definitely doing that thing with the shaking up of it again, but it didn't work. why not? this why not: s1 to s2, s2 to s3, both reinventions took the consequences of the previous season's climax, and EMBRACED them, and carried them forward, while at the same time up-ending all your expectations and turning skin funny colours. both elements are important. you gotta deal with what you've already put on the table.

season 3 was my favourite season, and one of the reasons it was my favourite is that it was the peak of taking existing plotlines from previous seasons to their illogical extremes. murphy had a baby post-immunity? she's fucking super-aging now and a hairless goon is fighting addy in a very violent custody battle. murphy's feeling used by humanity? now he's sworn off humanity and is making his own breed of human-zombie hybrids. add in the red hand stuff with vasquez & hector, and murphy continuing to take his mind control powers too far by enslaving yet another member of operation bitemark -- all of these are examples of how s3 DEALT WITH previous plotlines in... I'm not gonna tell you they were the most logical and level-headed ways to deal with them, but they dealt with them. in ways that simultaneously reinvented.

another thing that s3 did (often as a continuation of groundwork previously lain in s2 and/or s1) was establish distinct, explicit viewpoints for a lot of the most important characters on a number of key zompocalypse topics. perhaps the most narratively consistent of these were those of murphy and 10k. it's well-established over s1-3 that murphy is among the most willing to humanize the mortally-challenged, to relatively de-prioritize humans, and obviously to be a-ok with blending. in s3 in particular, he's got the pro-safety, anti-freedom (of others) stance. similarly it is established over s1-2 that 10k is gung-ho about killing all the zombies, ever, just a metric shit ton of them, and isn't interested in their humanity; he is very very anti-blending. s3 also established some important views for warren, whose s3 arc came to an alarming head when she was shown to be willing to hurt and kill blends just for being blends. she had the pro-freedom, anti-safety stance of the freedom vs safety thing. also addy's viewpoint starts to be swayed by lucy, who is very pro-zombie-humanity.

a lot of words just to say that season 3 was very definite and very extreme on a lot of points, and brought up some really crazy plotlines. they had a god-like blue child runninng around, they had a main group fractured by a history of war and abuse and aborted assassination attempts and diametrically opposed fundamental beliefs.

and then along came season 4. I knew it, I fucking KNEW some shady writing shit was going on when I heard there was going to be a time jump. I thought, they're really gonna do it. they're going to ignore all my favourite crazy s3 plotlines. and they did, possibly even worse than I anticipated. they ignored SO MUCH, SO HARD.

god-like blue child? she's just like... around. trying to humanize murphy, because he's only formerly blue and actually doesn't have all that much to do anymore. and then they didn't really know what to do with lucy, so they killed her, for the feels. plotline dropped.

warren and murphy being at war over murphytown? as of the s4 premiere, they've literally never been closer, they're pretty much dating. I guess 'cause warren got what she wanted (murphy to peace out of spokane and follow her again, I guess), she just kind of... doesn't care? apparently? even though she cared enough about the issue to randomly stab an innocent woman with a machete and steal her brain back in s3. even though it was important enough before to rough up 10k over the issue. murphy also drops his own investment (which included wanting to keep control of murphytown so bad that he sent 10k on a conditional hit on warren) in favour of chasing after lucy, but I consider that more of a sin of s3. anyway, plotline dropped.

murphy taking blending too far re: operation bitemark? murphy abused and enslaved and imprisoned and terrorized 10k off-and-on for... what was it, a year? I don't know the timeline. anyway, a long-ass time. a time that is long in the ass. and throughout s4 and 5 10k is allowed to be mad at murphy maybeeee 2.5 times? and not even expicitly ABOUT what murphy did to him, no, just like being kinda bitchy like murphy snatched the last copy of whatever at a black friday sale. plotline dropped.

addy and red and sun existing and having their own shit going on? dropped, possibly for bts reasons. but ofc you don't have to explain WHY they were dropped, according to the half-assed plot reason, because you're ~leaving the audience wanting more. except lmao that doesn't work if you fucking tell us we're not getting that thing we want more of. you're just pulling a dick move because you don't want to write yourself out of the corner you consciously wrote yourself into. you put it on your plate, and now you're refusing to eat it.

s5 doubles down on all these dropped plotlines, and then also makes it super glaring that, yeah, remember all those viewpoints on mortality and blending and freedom and safety that were established in s1-3 (and especially 3)? they just kinda. don't exist anymore. d r o p p e d. warren gives moving speeches to people with less hold on mortality than the woman whose brain she stole back in s3. she hangs out in a club that is essentially a more-fun, miniature version of murphytown. it's not that she SHOULDN'T, at all. it's just that the writers didn't want to deal with what they'd already put on their plates, so they're just ignoring it in favour of her being generically good-hearted. 10k is not shown to wrestle with what all this pro-talker stuff means for his relatively no-tolerance-for-zombie views. they don't even try to present murphy's views on the whole talker thing even though??? I feel like he'd have a position on it??? maybe not a particularly brave position but he could have been allowed to react before running off.

in short, seasons 4 and 5 have shown to me that the z nation writers want to keep a good thing going with this fun capacity to reinvent every season, but they've lost the will to deal with what they've already written. they just don't want to deal with it. all their characters have histories and baggage and established views that just get shoved under the rug 'cause they don't gel well with this fun newmerica, clumsy-immigration-analogy, building-a-new-country thing that they dreamt up. and that's just really intensely frustrating I mean wow.

to tie it up in a handy little season-appropriate (for americans) metaphor, they've shoveled a whole bunch of food onto their plates, but they don't feel like eating some of the stuff they chose -- cranberries and brussel sprouts seemed exciting and dangerous at the time, but not if it means not having pumpkin pie later. so now the cranberries and the brussel sprouts are just kinda sitting on the plate and rotting while they eat that pie. but you let food go rotten on your plate, it gets progressively harder to ignore in order to enjoy dessert. 

that metaphor wasn't very tidy, and now I'm hungry. anyway z nation writers please deal with what you've already written.

[naamahdarling]

my-imaginary-boyfriends

  I am fighting really hard tonight but everything...

Wacky animal encounters? Like the go-to funny animal stories they tell?

Okay but like SLIGHT SUBJECT CHANGE Kell LIES FLORIDLY about animals from his homeland and will bullshit you for hours.

“The snow cobra, or snowbra is a reclusive creature native to the foothills of the mountains near my home town. It’s very rare. They have velvety soft fur that doesn’t form ice crystals, so their pelts are prized by trappers. They are very hard to catch, though. They burrow into snow very quickly so they are hard to see.  They also climb. If you’re in the forest and snow falls on you, watch out.”

“Icebergs are actually ice bulls, giant white bulls that swim around in the sea and the ice is the only part you can see, sitting on their shoulders, keeping them afloat. There are no females as they divide by calving, which is when a chunk of ice splits off and falls into the water and grows into its own independent ice bull. They sometimes stray south into warmer water, when it is time for them to die.  Majestic.”

“The mountain snifket looks just like a rabbit, but it’s a scavenger and eater of carrion. It uses its powers to mimic human speech and lure people into crevasses, off unseen cliffs, or into the clutches of cloud-cats. The humans die and they feast on the remains.  The only way to tell a snifket from a rabbit is to look at its paws. A snifket has pawpads like a cat, and rabbits don’t.”

“The flightless running owl is found on the plains around the mountains. It is dead silent, as big as a big wolf, and fast enough to run down a man.  It just doesn’t, because it’s very shy and doesn’t want to pick fights.  If it sees a person, it digs a hole and jumps in, and it does this so fast it’s only possible to see them for a second or two before they vanish.”

“Tinder cats.  Ten times the size of a cloud cat and with massive curly horns like a ram, these terrible creatures stake out the deepwoods, where they live their fierce lives unobserved by humans. To attract mates, they mark the tallest trees with their razor claws, pulling down whole sheets of bark. And to practice fighting, they fling themselves into trees to toughen their skulls. This usually kills the tree, or knocks it down flat.  When you see long scars down the trunk of a tree, a tinder cat did that.  And when you find a dead tree, just one, with all the others around it healthy and tall, a tinder cat did that, too.  Those trees burn well and are often surrounded by sticks that make good tinder.  Hence, tinder cat.  They use their fluffy tails to smooth their tracks as they walk, so you never know where one might have passed in the night.”

I mean, just, like, on and on with this shit that hopefully everyone knows is completely made-up.

I might give you animal stories for the others but I thought you might like to know this about my buff marshmallow because TBH it’s really fun.