#i didn't see anything from like fairly recent years – this video was posted three months ago

[incorrectoverthehedge]

Why I got back into Over the Hedge.

So I can't sleep, why not write.

Over the Hedge was for a while a movie that, up until a few months ago, has been relatively unimportant to me. I remember seeing it once when I was a kid, and I do remember playing the hell out of the video game (I even beat it once in an entire day one summer), and that's about it.

It was always a movie that I found good as a kid, and for a while I never went back to it because I didn't want my childhood ruined. Granted I usually grew up with a lot of Disney and Pixar movies, so bad childhood movies were going to be hard to come by. I guess the closest was I think Snow Buddies, but even then it's more generic than anything.

Okay, getting off topic, Over the Hedge I didn't go back to for a long time because I didn't want to think the movie was lame nowadays. Granted I thought about it a few times, mainly because I liked the names RJ and Ozzie, and I used them whenever I wanted to make a neat OC that I would inevitably forget about in less than two weeks, but aside from that, nothing really prompted me to go back, which eventually resulted in me pretty much forgetting about it.

That was until a few months ago...and it involved a certain fan-favorite Opossum.

You see, on Left 4 Dead, there's a workshop where you can play as other characters. They can range from meme characters, to anime characters, to video game characters, and of course, animated movie characters. That of course is where this starts.

I had to find a model that would replace either Francis or Louis since my friends were sick of the model I was using. In case you were wondering, I was using this model:

Terrifying, I know.

It was funny to me at the same time. However, the biggest problem with it was that it was way too big and pretty much took up half their screens whenever they looked at me. So I had to find another model that would fit…I decided to use Louis this time, and then I found…this.

I decided why not, got it, realized that it had the exact same issue with Thumper the Monster Bunny, yet ignored it for some reason, and with the model, we beat the challenge, and everything was fine. That was until I really started thinking about it.

Why did Heather of all characters get a model in this game? In fact, while doing research for this video, it turns out she's the SECOND DreamWorks character to have a Left 4 Dead 2 character model, and the first was Shrek. Speaking of which, she now has TWO character models for survivors, and she's only second to Shrek who has only three.

LET ME REPEAT, SHE IS SECOND TO SHREK.

Anyways, this really got me thinking about what was the whole appeal of her, because I recently rewatched the movie and let me tell you, she probably has the least amount of screen-time in the film. Yet, she's the only one of the cast to have a model in Left 4 Dead 2 (at least until Ozzie was also ported), that was also ported to GMod?

That's when I started to look at the fandom more, and I realized that last year the subreddit had a bit of a resurgence when it came what I like to call "Heather-posting".

Posts about Heather were all over the subreddit, and not only that, they were some of the highest upvoted there. The image I'm providing is only the second highest, with 265. Granted that doesn't seem like much compared to others, but it's still noticeable. In fact, Heather is the main focus of nearly half of the highest upvoted posts.

Not only that, she's also fairly popular on DeviantArt, and even more surprisingly (and also thankfully), there's no...weird stuff involved there I've seen.

Have you ever heard the term "Ensemble Darkhorse" in TV Tropes? It's when a character who is rather minor or unimportant to the main plot get a massive following. Heather pretty much ticks all those boxes, and it's probably one of the most surprising ones I've seen.

How powerful is it overall? Well, I actually decided to make a character based on Heather and put her in a Hell's Kitchen roleplay. I didn't exactly expect to get far, or even really be that noticed.

Heather actually won.

She won.

Not only that, she actually had two people have a crush on her, one male, one female. That's actually wild.

In the midst of all that however, it resulted in me taking another look at the movie itself, finally looking to see if it lived up to the vindication it had been receiving recently.

Turns out that yeah, it's still a great movie. It's not going to be better than something like The Last Wish or Shrek 2, but it's a film that, in my opinion, has no real flaws. Maybe the cast could be a bit smaller, like remove the porcupine family so there could be some more screentime for Heather and Ozzie, since they're the two more popular characters compared to them. Despite this, the cast itself is likable, the story is easy to follow, the satire and visual humor is really funny, and man for Dreamworks film the movie looks absolutely GORGEOUS.

Of course, there's also the banger music, with Heist and Family of Me being my two favorite songs in the film, and it always inspires me to write about the gang and their wacky hijinks.

Oh yeah, the writing stuff. Yeah, I never actually wrote a lot of Fanfiction in my life, I usually kept it original for the most part. I think the only thing Fanfiction-y I've ever wrote was some absolutely hot dog water, dumpster fire trash about...

Sonic OCS.

I'm shivering just thinking about it.

Regardless, my writing has improved a ton, so at the very least I could do the gang justice by not looking like I just half-assed my writing whilst working on writing comedy, which is a style I've never tried before.

And let me tell you, it is really fun to do.

So yeah, what started as a simple dive into a character that I didn't expect to be popular, soon turned into a genuine appreciation for a movie that had at one point been treated as merely an afterthought, as well as a new love for writing comedy detailing the wacky misadventures of some fun characters.

That is why I got back into Over the Hedge.

Speaking of which, I've also been collecting some old merchandise from Over The Hedge, and let me tell you, some of that is real interesting...

[loatheta]

is it just me??? like, I don’t really like the way tina and lola are portrayed.

warning: unexpanded thing™ bc ik if i put this in my drafts and i don’t finish it now, i’ll never come back to it. so yeah, please enjoy this very poorly written thing, or don’t.

tl;dr: looney tunes’ portrayal of tina and lola is subtly stereotypical/bordering on misogynistic maybe. i’m no expert and this isn’t like a full in-depth analysis of the show/video bc i’m ignoring my hw for this lol so take my words with a grain of salt.

firstly: physically.

body: tina and lola have the same unrealistic body type – relatively large boobs supported by tiny, tiny waists and faces that are the same as the guys (except, of course, for the styled hair (and ears in lola’s case...? she even curls her ears specifically for a date with bugs, which is not only unrealistic bc they’re her ears lmao but it also encourages the notion that women dress up for men) and long, obvious eyelashes (presumably just to make sure you know that they’re women).

and while it’s of course okay to portray a woman with eyelashes (many women do lengthen their eyelashes or something bc it makes them feel good), if you portray all the women in something with eyelashes, it promotes having a certain type of eyelashes. this is further supported by tina’s sister’s baby son, of who(m?) daffy mistakes for a girl. the only defining trait of the baby that could differentiate the sex of the baby is his eyelashes.

the girls are more humanised in their portrayal; their skin is closer to more human skin tones in comparison to daffy and bugs. daffy is completely black except for a white band around his neck, which is a pretty plausible duck colour scheme for the general audience (I’m assuming the audience, like me, is duck-ignorant lmao). bugs is grey. very rabbit-like.

lola’s a caramel colour – plausible for rabbits, but it’s specifically chosen to be more human-like. tina is yellow, kind of like a rubber duck i guess? still more human-like than daffy. this could be a bit of a stretch, but this could have been a conscious choice so as to make a more adult audience subconsciously less guilty for possibly lusting after them.

clothing: well, firstly, they’re actually clothed lmao. it’s perfectly okay to portray anthropomorphised animals in clothing, but if only female animals have clothes... there’s something wrong here. throughout the video, daffy and bugs almost never have clothes on (bugs dons a suit for his wedding and daffy wears a towel once). they’re animals, it’s natural. so why bother always portraying the women with clothes? well, it’s a simple logical path: if it’s sexual, children shouldn’t see it. this means the producers don’t have to worry about any genitals showing, so the bottom halves are fine. so logically, the reason characters wear clothes at all is to cover their top halves. men being topless is socially acceptable; if it’s hot out, you’ll likely see men outside – chests exposed to the world – to cool off. women’s chests, however, are seen as sexual organs, and therefore should be censored via clothes. i won’t get into that issue here as it’s probably been discussed a lot.

voices: daffy and bugs both have slightly annoying nasally voices which I see as conventionally unattractive. both of the girls have obviously feminine “human” voices. ngl i don’t know how to expand this further so i won’t. someone else can if they see this

and secondly: personality.

tina: judging from what i’ve seen, tina is kind of portrayed as a tame-ish bitch/jerk type. she’s not very good at her job in a printing 

lola: lola’s depicted as an airheaded ditz. (she also appears to be blonde-ish, so that also contributes to the dumb blonde stereotype). lola also plays the role of a crazy girl at times – namely the part where she was possessive of daffy and trespassed into his room/house (that’s not acceptable behaviour, kids).

on a date with bugs near the start of the video, she’s shown as someone who can’t make up her mind about the most mundane things, like if she wants soup or not.

i’m tired, so i’ll just post this now. i might add to it later when i have more time. thanks for reading this sentence folks