#i had to divide this in two because there's an iteration of this trope

[aaronwarner]

popular girls + the hallway strut (1/2)

THE CRAFT (1996) dir. Andrew Fleming JAWBREAKER (1999) dir. Darren Stein SUGAR & SPICE (2001) dir. Francine McDougall NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE (2001) dir. Joel Gallen 13 GOING ON 30 (2004) dir. Gary Winick MEAN GIRLS (2004) dir. Mark Waters A CINDERELLA STORY (2004) dir. Mark Rosman JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE (2006) dir. Betty Thomas

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

Five years ago, the women on this site who treated me like trash over loving Labyrinth and shipping Jareth/Sarah were almost always obliviously consuming Radfem propaganda, or were out and out Radfems/Terfs themselves.

They were the types of people who casually threw the word “pedophile” around against grown women who shipped an adult Sarah with Jareth, aka literally one of the most popular ships for women in fandom for 30 years.

Pretty much invariably, these women had serious sex-negative anxieties, which included a severe paranoia about any and all kink and fetish, and porn in general. I saw a lot of shocking, fear-mongering propaganda surrounding sexual expression. Pretty much invariably, their method of approach involved immediate personal shock-value attacks on anyone they perceived to be “bad.”

Today, you can look at the way some people react to other popular so-called “problematic” ships and recognize the same toxic, fear-mongering rhetoric coming from women who consider themselves regular, trans-inclusive feminists. Sometimes it even manifests in the words of very well-meaning people (including myself here), who feel the need to talk about specific issues that pertain to their own experiences of trauma and oppression.

The people who shit on Labyrinth often seem to not really be able to comprehend that the Goblin King, like the film itself, is canonically a representation of a teen girl’s psyche, a soup of fears and anxieties and desires and dreams. He’s not a literal human adult preying on a literal child, and to read the film that way seriously undermines the entire point of the film. 

When I (and people of many fandoms) say “This is fiction, calm down,” I’m not just saying it’s not real so it cant hurt you and you can’t criticize me. I’m trying to call attention to what fiction actually is - artistic representations of feelings and experiences. The Goblin King is Sarah’s fiction. Therefore, he can be anything she or any woman who identifies with her wants him to be, including her lover when she’s grown and ready for such a thing.

I once took an alarming dive into Beetlejuice fandom to see what content was there (the cartoon was a favorite when I was little). Chillingly, what you’ll find is an extremely wounded fanbase, with a sharp divide between the older women who had long been shipping BJ/Lydia because of their love for the cartoon series (and whom were previously the vast majority of the Beetlejuice fandom), and a massive amount of young people riding the wave of the musical fad who had decided that the entire old school Beetlejuice fandom was populated by literal pedophiles. 

I saw death threats. Suicide baiting. Constant, constant toxic discourse. It did not matter how the BJ/Lydia fandom dealt with any particular issues that would exist in their ship, in fact I’m certain that the people abusing them cared very little to even consider if they were trying to handle it at all. The only thing that mattered was that they were disgusting subhuman scum asking for abuse. If you have at any time reblogged recent Beetlejuice fan art or content from fans of the musical, you have more than likely been engaging positively with the content of someone participating in toxic fandom behavior.

Nobody is really sticking up for them, either, as far as I saw. It’s really hard to imagine how painful it must be to have such a large group of people explode into into your relatively private fandom space to tell you that you are evil, vile, and deserve constant abuse, and also you are no longer allowed into the fandom space to engage in it’s content. But I think there’s something very alarming indeed about this happening specifically to the BJ fandom, and I’ll explain why. 

The pop-culture characterization of Beetlejuice, which is heavily influenced by the cartoon series to be clear, has always in my mind been a vaguely ageless being who matches with the psychological maturity of whatever age Lydia is supposed to be. He’s more or less like an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Lydia’s psyche. In fact, I would argue that i think most of us who grew up with the cartoon or it’s subsequent merchandizing before the musical ever existed probably internalized the idea as BJ and Lydia as this ageless, salt-and-pepper-shaker couple beloved by the goth community, similar to Gomez and Morticia. In each version of canon he may be a creepy ghost in the literal sense, but any adult who is capable of identifying literary tropes (even just subconciously) would read cartoon!BJ as an artistic representation of a socially awkward outcast girl’s inner world. Lydia’s darker dispositions and interests, which alienate her from most others, are freely accepted and embraced by her spooky magical friend. BJ/Lydia in the cartoon were depicted as best friends, but to my memory there was always an underlying sense that they had secret feelings for each other, which I identified easily even as a small child. In fact, their dynamic and behavior perfectly reflected the psychological development of the show’s target demographic. They are best friends who get into adventures and learning experiences together, who have delicate feelings for each other but lack any true adult romantic/sexual understanding to acknowledge those feelings, let alone pursue them.

Though I haven’t seen the Musical yet, I’ve read the wiki and I would argue that it embodies this exact same concept even more so for it’s own version of the characters, in that Beetlejuice specifically exists to help Lydia process her mother’s death.

This is not a complicated thing to recognize and comprehend whatsoever. In fact, it looks downright blatant. It’s also a clear indicator of what BJ/Lydia means to the women who have long loved it. It was a story about a spooky wierd girl being loved and accepted and understood for who she was, and it gave them a sense of solidarity. It makes perfect sense why those women would stick with those characters, and create a safe little space for themselves to and imagine their beloved characters growing and having adult lives and experiencing adult drama, in just the same ways that the women of the Labyrinth fandom do. That’s all these women were doing. And now, they can’t do it without facing intense verbal violence. That safe space is poisoned now.

Having grown up with the cartoon as one of my favorites and been around goth subculture stuff for decades, I was actually shocked and squicked at the original Beetlejuice film’s narrative once I actually saw it, because it was extremely divorced from what these two characters had evolved into for goth subculture and what they meant to me. It’s not telling the same story, and is in fact about the Maitland's specifically. In pretty much exactly the same way two different versions of Little Red Riding Hood can be extremely different from each other, the film is a different animal. While I imagine that the film version has been at the heart of a lot of this confused fear-mongering around all other versions of the characters, I would no more judge different adaptations of these characters any more than I would condemn a version of Little Red in which Red and the Wolf are best friends or lovers just because the very first iteration of LRRH was about protecting yourself from predators.

I would even argue that the people who have engaged in Anti-shipper behavior over BJ/Lydia are in intense denial over the fact that BJ being interested in Lydia, either as blatant predatory behavior a la the film or on a peer level as in the cartoon (and musical?) is an inextricable part of canon. Beetlejuice was always attracted to Lydia, and it was not always cute or amusing. Beetlejuice was not always a beloved buddy character, an in fact was originally written as a gross scumbag. That’s just what he was. Even people engaging with him now by writing OC girlfriends for him (as stand-ins for the salt-and-pepper-shaker space Lydia used to take up, because obviously that was part of the core fun of the characters), or just loving him as a character, are erasing parts of his character’s history in order to do so. They are actively refusing to be held responsible for being fans of new version of him despite the fact that he engaged in overt predatory behavior in the original film. In fact, I would venture to say that they are actively erasing the fact that Musical Beetliejuice tried to marry a teenager and as far as I’m aware, seemed to like the idea (because he’s probably a fucking figment of her imagination but go off I guess). The only reason they can have a version of this character who could be perceived as “buddy” material is because...the cartoon had an impact on our pop cultural perception of what the character and his dynamic with Lydia is. 

We can have a version of the Big Bad Wolf who’s a creepy monster. We can have a version who’s sweet and lovable. We can have a version that lives in the middle. We can have a version who’s a hybrid between Red and the Wolf (a la Ruby in OUAT). All of these things can exist in the same world, and can even be loved for different reasons by the same people.

I’ve been using Beetlejuice as an example here because it’s kind of perfect for my overall point regarding the toxic ideologies in fandom right now across many different spaces, including ones for progressive and queer media, and how much so many people don’t recognize how deeply they’ve been radicalized into literalist and sex-negative radfem rhetoric, to the point where we aren’t allowed to have difficult, messy explorations of imperfect, flawed humans, and that art is never going to be 100% pure and without flaw in it’s ability to convey what it wants to convey.

This includes the rhetoric I’ve seen across the board, from She-Ra to A:TLA to Star Wars to Lovecraft Country. We don’t talk about the inherent malleable, subjective, or charmingly imperfect nature of fiction any more. Transformation and reclamation are myths in this space. Everything is in rigid categories. It is seemingly very difficult for some of these people to engage with anything that is not able to be clearly labeled as one thing or another (see the inherent transphobic and biphobic elements of the most intense rhetoric). They destroy anything they cannot filter through their ideology. When women act in a way that breaks from their narrative of womanhood (like...not having a vagina), then those women must be condemned instead of understood. Anything that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable is a mortal sin. There is an extraordinary level of both hypocrisy and repressive denial that is underlying the behavior I’m seeing now. Much like toxic Christian conservatism, these people often are discovered engaging in the same behaviors and interests that they condemn behind closed doors (or just out of sheer cognitive dissonance). As an example, one of the people who talked shit to me about Labyrinth was a huge fan of Kill La Kill, which to my knowledge was an anime about a teenage girl in like, superpowered lingere (hence why I stayed the fuck away from that shit myself). Indeed, they even allow themselves plenty of leeway for behavior far worse than they condemn others for, and create support systems for the worst of their own abusers. 

Quite frankly, I’m tired. Instead of talking about theoretical problematic shit, we need to start talking about quantifiable harm. Because as far as I can tell, the most real, immediate, and quantifiable harm done because of anybody’s favorite ships or pieces of media seems to consistently be the kind that’s done to the people who experience verbal violence and abuse and manipulation and suicide baiting and death threats from the people who have a problem.

[tyrantisterror]

I did a four part series of trivia posts when ATOM Volume 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us! came out, and that was pretty fun!  You can see that set of trivia posts here if you’d like.  I thought it’d be fun to do another now that ATOM Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! is out - just one this time, because a lot of the trivia I talked about with Volume 1 still applies.

I’m gonna divide this into two sections: non-spoiler trivia, for things that really don’t give a lot of plot points away, and spoiler trivia, for things that DO give away major plot points.  I recommend not reading the spoiler trivia until after you’ve read Tyrantis Roams the Earth!, for obvious reasons, and will put the spoiler trivia under a cut.

Ok, let’s go!

- So if you read ATOM Volume 1, you probably noticed that the book is split not only into chapters, but “episodes,” which consist of four chapters a piece.  It’s kind of a nod to how the series owes a great deal of its DNA to various monster of the week shows, with Godzilla: the Series and The Godzilla Power Hour being obvious influences.  It also allowed me to pepper in some illustrations and cheesy b-movie style titles into each volume.

- The first “episode” of Volume 2, Tyrantis in Tokyo, pays explicit homage to the giant monster movies of Japan, perhaps even moreso than the chapters that came before it.  Given how much Japanese media influenced ATOM - from tokusatsu like the Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman franchises to anime like Digimon and Evangelion (hell, the title of this episode itself is a tip of the hat to Tenchi Muyo by way of one of its spinoffs) - it kind of felt obligatory that Tyrantis visit Japan and pay his respects.

- Tyrantis in Tokyo also fits in a tribute to another staple of Atomic Age pop culture: Rock and Roll.

- Kutulusca, the giant cephalopod that appears in Tyrantis in Tokyo, is one of the oldest kaiju in this series, dating back to the first iteration of Tyrantis’s story that I put to paper back in 2001 or so.  It’s changed a lot since then, but its fight with Tyrantis goes more or less the way it originally did.

- Old Meg, the giant placoderm/shark, and Nastadyne, the bipedal beetle, both owe their existence directly to Deviantart’s Godzilla fandom.  Old Meg originated as a dunkleosteus monster I submitted to a “create a Godzilla kaiju” contest held by Matt Frank, while Nastadyne is based on a Megalon redesign I made during the “redesign all the Godzilla kaiju” phase of DA’s kaiju fandom.

- The second episode, Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace, gets dark as we visit the USSR, which had enough REAL horror with atomic power in its history to make creature features seem a bit defanged by comparison.  It’s probably the episode with the strongest horror elements - ATOM’s always been influenced by Resident Evil, and this is probably where that influence shows the most strongly.

- It also features the first fully robotic mecha in the series, the mighty Herakoschei!  Its name is a combination of “Heracles” and “Koschei the Deathless,” with the former part being added by its Russian creators to make it seem a bit more international as they offer it to the U.N. in hopes of gaining aid for a very extreme kaiju problem they’ve developed.

- Most of Tyrantis vs. the Red Menace takes place in the Siberian Monster Zone.  Its name is a reference to the Lawless Monster Zone in Ultraman, which is such a cool fucking name I wish that I wish I could go back in time and steal it.

- The next episode, Tyrantis’s Revenge, is... full of spoilers, so we’ll move on for now.

- The penultimate episode, Tyrantis vs. the Martian Monsters, is a love letter to MANY different sci-fi stories that involve life on Mars, though the most prominent of them is of course The War of The Worlds (one of my top 3 favorite books) and its various adaptations.  From its tentacles sapient martians, the tripodal leader of the titular monsters whose name includes the word “ulla” which is uttered by said sapient martians, the plant monster made of red vines, the cylinder-shaped spacecraft the Martian monsters are sent to earth on, the copper-skinned stingray-esque flying martian who shoots lasers from its tail, and the fact that every chapter title in this episode is a quote from the book, the H.G. Wells influence is STRONG.

- The final episode, Invasion from Beyond!, is shamelessly inspired by Destroy All Monsters, although there’s a dash of “To Serve Men,” Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, and The Day the Earth Stood Still mixed in as well.  It’s also sort of a tribute to my first “published” bit of a kaiju fiction - a rewrite of Destroy All Monsters that included EVERY Godzilla monster that had appeared at the time, which my middle school self wrote back in 2002 or so for Kaiju Headquarters, a kaiju fansite I’m not sure exists anymore.  Invasion from Beyond! is just as ambitious (but hopefully better executed) as my DAM Remake, with dozens upon dozens of different kaiju duking it out, earthlings vs. aliens.

- There were three different documents I made to outline the final battle of Invasion from Beyond!  It’s the largest episode of the series so far and more than half of it is that fucking fight.  My inner child is pleased, though, so hopefully you will be too.

Ok, that’s all I can share without spoilers.  READER BEWARE WHAT FOLLOWS BELOW THE CUT!

JUST MAKING SURE you know that SPOILERS will follow from here on out.  Read at your own peril!  YOU WERE WARNED!

(I’m gonna start with lighter ones just in case you scrolled too far and want to turn back)

- There’s a number of explicit Spielberg homages in ATOM Volume 2, from a “we need a bigger boat” joke during a chase with a giant shark to the fact that Invasion from Beyond! opens with a group of people flying to an island of monsters to review whether or not it should get more funding.

- When Tyrantis appears in the first chapter, I snuck in modified lyrics of The Godzilla Power Hour’s theme song.  “Up from the depths”... “several stories high”... “breathing fire”... “its head in the sky”... Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!  Tyrantis!

- The two rock bands in Tyrantis in Tokyo have real life inspirations ala Gwen Valentine, albeit a bit more muddled than hers.  The Cashews are inspired by The Peanuts (see what I did there), while The Thunder Lizards are a mix of The Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Big Bopper.  I wanted The Thunder Lizards to be more akin to the myth of a famous rock and roll band than the reality - less the real Beatles and more the Yellow Submarine cartoon version of them.

- The song The Thunder Lizards write for Tyrantis was written to fit the tune of “The Godzilla March” from Godzilla vs. Gigan, though ideally if someone made an actual song of it it would be its own song.  I got the idea from Over the Garden Wall, which used the Christmas song “O Holy Night” as a a starting point for “Come Wayward Souls.”

- Perry Martin, UNNO reporter and peer of Henry Robertson, is a nod to Raymond Burr, with his name being a combination of two of Burr’s most famous roles: Perry Mason, and Steve Martin from Godzilla King of the Monsters (1956).

- Dr. Rinko Tsuburaya is a few homages in one.  Her name comes from Rinko Kikuchi (who played Mako Mori in Pacific Rim), while her last name is obviously in homage of Eiji Tsuburaya.  Her being the daughter of an esteemed scientist is inspired by Emiko Yamane from the original Gojira.

- Nastadyne’s Burning Justice mode is named after a similar super mode from various Transformers cartoons, though it’s more directly inspired by the Shining/Burning Finger super move from G Gundam.

- Martians sending kaiju to different planets via shooting them out of cannons (with or without cylinder spaceships around them) is another War of the Worlds shoutout.  So is martians living on Venus after their homeworld was made uninhabitable, actually.

- Kurokame’s vocalizations are described as wails in explicit homage to Gamera.  His name can be translated as either “black tortoise” (a reference to the mythical guardian beast Genbu, which can also be construed as a Gamera reference thanks to Gamera: Advent of Irys implying Gamera and Genbu are one and the same) or a portmanteau of the Japanese words for crocodile and turtle - “crocturtle.”

- Burodon’s name is just a mangling of “burrow down.”  It also sounds vaguely like Baragon, who Burodon is loosely inspired by.  AND, since Burodon is sort of a knockoff/modified Baragon, that kinda makes him a reference to various monsters in Ultraman!

- The final battle of Tyrantis in Tokyo is sort of a hybrid of the finales of Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters.  

- The Japanese kaiju teaching Tyrantis the art of throwing rocks at your enemies is both a joke on the prominence of rock throwing in Japanese kaiju fights AND the tired trope of an American hero learning secret martial arts from a Japanese mentor ala Batman, Iron Fist, etc.  In this case, the secret martial art is throwing rocks at people.

- When introduced to Herakoschei and its pilot, we are told that the strain of piloting this early mecha is so intense that many pilots have died in the process, with the current one passing out on more than few occasions.  This is of course a Pacific Rim homage - sadly, no one invents drifting.

- Herakoschei’s design is a loose homage to Robby the Robot and Cherno Alpha, because big boxy robots are cool.

- The Writhing Flesh and ESPECIALLY Pathogen are both hugely influenced by Resident Evil and The Thing.  Giant body horror piles of raw flesh, tendrils, mismatched mouths and limbs may be a bit outside the main era of monster design ATOM homages, but they fit the themes and bring a nice contrast.

- I came up with Pathogen long before Corona but MAN it definitely feels different in 2021 to have a giant monster whose name is a synonym for disease driving other creatures crazy in a quarantine zone than it did when I plotted out the story in 2016.

- The chapter title “Hello, Old Foes” is a riff on “Goodbye, Old Friend”

- Minerva, the kaiju-fied clone of Dr. Lerna, is meant to be an homage to Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is a genuinely good giant monster flick.  I am sure many of you will also believe I included her because I’m a pervert whose into tall women, but you’d be wrong!  I included the seven foot tall Russian mecha pilot Ludmilla Portnova because I’m a pervert whose into tall women.  Minerva’s inclusion was just coincidental, I swear!

- Since Promythigor is a play on the archetypal ape kaiju to contrast Tyrantis as a play on the archetypal fire-breathing reptile kaiju, their fight has a lot of nods to King Kong movies.  Promythigor attempts the famous jaw-snap maneuver of Kong (with less success), J.C. Clark paraphrases the “brute force vs. a thinking animal” line from the King Kong vs. Godzilla American cut, and Tyrantis slides down a mountain to knock Promythigor off his feet in a reversal of Kong doing the same in King Kong vs. Godzilla.

- Tyrantis sliding down a mountain on his tail doubles as a Godzilla vs. Megalon homage.

- Though Promythigor is the archetypal Ape and Tyrantis the archetypal Fire-Breathing Reptile, I think it’s fun to note that in some ways, Promythigor is the Godzilla equivalent in their matchup, and Tyrantis the Kong.  Promythigor has a slight size advantage, was scarred by humans performing unethical weapons technology, and is associated with violent explosions.  Tyrantis is a good-at-heart prehistoric beast who humanized in part by his unlikely friendship with a human woman.

- Of course, in the context of the famous quote from the American cut of King Kong vs. Godzilla, they remain in their archetypal lanes.  Promythigor is the more intelligent of the two (though not necessarily wiser), and Tyrantis is in many ways a brute reptile.  Their battle is a rebuttal of sorts to the assertion that Kong is the “better” animal because he is closer to human.  Promythigor’s near human creativity and emotions don’t make him the kinder/more benevolent monster, but instead fuel a very self-centered and destructive attitude that makes him the far more dangerous threat.  On the other hand, Tyrantis, who is less intelligent, limited in communication with others by his reptilian mindset and instincts, and simple in his thoughts and desires, is nonetheless a sweet creature that is easily dealt with when others consider his animal needs and mindset.  There’s a quote from Hellboy I love that probably sums up all of my writing thus far: “To be other than human does not mean the same as being less,” and that’s what the matchup between these two in particular tries to illustrate: the “less” human Tyrantis is nonetheless more benign than the “more” human Promythigor.

- Kraydi the psychic lizard began life as a soft sculpture I made of the Canyon Krayt Dragon from The Wildlife of Star Wars.  The sculpture didn’t look much like the illustration, but I liked how it came out, and so I made it an original monster named Kraydi (see what I did there).  Figuring out an explanation for that name in ATOM’s world was possibly the most difficult kaiju naming task in the series, but it worked out in the end.

- Kraydi and Promythigor having psychic powers is a result of my time on Godzilla fan forums in my middle school years.  Most of the forums had OC kaiju battle tournaments, and SO many of those kaiju had a wide array of beam weapons and psychic powers just to win the tournaments by beam-spamming and mind controlling their foes into oblivion.  There’s a special kind of rage you get when your original creation is beaten by “Fire Godzilla” because he has a genius level intellect and the power of unstoppable telekinesis.  Kraydi began as (and still is I suppose) my attempt to do a psychic kaiju well, while Promythigor’s villainy being tied to psychic powers being forced on him is sort of my passive aggressive commentary on people foisting powers on a monster without any real thematic reason for them.

- Henry Robertson and Dr. Praetorius chewing out the laziness of people giving kaiju completely unaltered names of mythic beasts will probably be seen as a jab at the Monsterverse and/or the numerous writers in the kaiju OC scene who do the same, but it’s ACTUALLY a jab at my past self, who had DOZENS of kaiju whose names were just Greek mythological figures verbatim.  There are dozens of kaiju named Hydra, Scylla, Charybdis, Chimera, etc., past me, try to make the names stand out!  Oh wait you did.  I mean, don’t pat yourself on the back too much, you still went with “Mothmanud” as a canon name and never came up with something better, but, like, good on ya for trying I guess.

- Dr. Praetorius takes his name from the evil mad scientis in Bride of Frankenstein, who basically has all the wicked traits that Universal’s Frankenstein downplayed in their take on Dr. Frankenstein.  Ironically, ATOM’s Dr. Praetorius is a bit less evil than his fellow mad scientists in ATOM.  I really like how his character turned out, he surprised me.

- Isaac Rossum, the pilot of the USA mecha Atomoton, is named for Isaac Aasimov, whose robot stories are to robot fiction what Lord of the Rings is to high fantasy.  His last name is a reference to Rossum’s Universal Robots, which is where the word “robot” came from.

- The unfortunate pilots of MechaTyrantis in ATOM Volumes 1 and 2 are all nods to Jurassic Park.  John Ludlow = John Hammond and Peter Ludlow, Ian Grant = Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, Dennis Dodgson = Dennis Nedry and Lewis Dodgson.

- A good way to pitch Invasion from Beyond! would be “what if the staff and monsters were able to fight back when the Kilaaks tried to take over Monsterland?”

- Ok, here’s a fun joke that no one will get but me because it requires a very specific chain of logic based on some obscure and loosely connected nerd bullshit.  There’s a rocker in ATOM’s universe named Sebastian Haff, right?  One of his songs, “Darling Let’s Shimmy,” is referenced right before a mothmanud larva emerges from the ground in both ATOM Vol. 1 and 2.  Ok, so, in the Bubba Hotep, an aging Elvis impersonator named Sebastian Haff claims he is actually the real Elvis Presley, having changed places with the real Sebastian Haff as a sort of Prince and the Pauper deal that went wrong.  Got that?  Ok, so, in UFO folklore, a common joke is the theory that Elvis didn’t die, but was rather abducted by aliens (or he actually WAS an alien the whole time - the whole “Elvis didn’t die, he just went home” joke in Men in Black is a good example of this).  Ok?  Ok.  So, in ATOM’s universe, we can surmise that their equivalent of Elvis, whose name is Sebastian Haff, WAS abducted by aliens, and that his song “Darling Let’s Shimmy” is subconsciously influenced by his repressed memories from his time aboard the Beyonder spaceships, which is why it accidentally awoke a Mothmanud larva in Volume 1.  There’s a lot of bullshit jokes I put into ATOM, but this is perhaps the bullshittiest of them all.

- One of the most common bits of feedback on ATOM Volume 1 I got was “I kept waiting for something to eat Brick Rockwell, he’s such an asshole.”  And I had to smile and go, “Oh, yeah, guess he never got his, huh?” the whole time without letting on that he was going to die here all along!

- Dr. Lerna and Brick Rockwell’s nature as foils to each other is probably most apparent in Invasion from Beyond!, where both are given fairly similar situations - a nonhuman approaches them with a solution to a global crisis - and react to it very differently.  I worry that some people may think they both made the same choice and got different results, and that that’s hypocrisy on my part, but I hope I wrote it so you can see how their choices and situations actually differ in key ways, and why their decisions, while similar on the surface, are ultimately very different, and thus result in almost opposite outcomes.

- So, when I planned out this book in 2016, I swear I didn’t know about the Orca from 2019′s Godzilla King of the Monsters.  Having the plot hang around Dr. Lerna deciding whether or not to use a sonic device to rouse all the kaiju to save the earth was not INTENDED to be a Monsterverse reference - it came about from me looking at Pathfinder’s take on kaiju, who are all explicitly influenceable by music, and thinking, “Oh, wow, music and songs DO have a major connection with kaiju in a lot of media, I should do something with that.”  Whem KOTM came out a few days after Volume 1 came out I realized I was kinda fucked here, because the comparison was definitely going to be made, but I’d also set this all up already and you can’t just change suddenly to avoid looking like a copy cat and make a good story, so... I dunno, I leaned into it a bit, but it is what it is.

- While most people will probably think they’re a reference to the Reptoids of UFO folklore, the Reptodites are more inspired by the Dinosapien of speculative evolution fame and, even morso, by the Reptites from Chrono Trigger.  Me wanting to avoid the “lizard people control the government” conspiracy theory trope is one of the main reasons why Reptodites have this non-interference clause with humanity.

- Lieutenant Gray is a bunch of different humanoid aliens rolled into one - a little Hopskinville goblin, a little classic gray, a little this one weird alien with five-fingered zygodactyl hands, etc.

- There’s some Beyonder Mecha in this volume that are basically kaiju-fied versions of the Flatwoods Monster.  The species that built them ALSO engineered the Mothmanuds, because connecting Mothman and the Flatwoods Monster is fun!

- Pleprah is, obviously, a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

- Tyrantis’s brush with death, in addition to being so very anime, was inspired by my dad outlining how mythic heroes often have to travel to the underworld/land of the dead before they can finish their journey.  It’s one of the plot points that I’ve had planned for this series since middle school.

- I’m sure some will view it as hackneyed and corny, but as a person who’s battled with depression for decades, having Tyrantis’s choice to live be the big heroic turn of the finale was very important to me.  Tyrantis incorporates elements of a lot of imaginary friends I made as a kid, and in many ways he’s kind of the face of my more positive side in my head.  He’s been telling me to choose to live for a while, and while maybe to an outsider it may seem hackneyed, it’s just... very Tyrantis.  He chooses life and kindness in the face of pain and struggle.  That’s Tyrantis.

- Tyrantis’s powered up form is called “Hyper Mode,” which is another Gundam reference.  Originally it was a lot gaudier and involved him turning gold like a fuckin’ Super Saiyan.  I opted for something a little more toned down here.  

- Also, speaking of KOTM references, I decided to make Hyper Mode Tyrantis’s final duel with Pathogen be a sort of foil to Burning Godzilla’s final bout with Ghidorah in KOTM.  Instead of ravaging the city, Hyper Tyrantis’s pulse of energy rejuvenates his fallen allies, and as a result he is “crowned” not out of fear for his supremacy in the wake of killing a powerful enemy, but in gratitude for his kindness.  See?  Leaning into it!

- And now I can finally reveal that Yamaneon is ATOM’s equivalent of The Monolith Monsters - that is, a kaiju that is also a mineral.  I took the “strange continuously growing rock” thing in a very different direction, though, as unlike The Monolith Monsters, Yamaneon is actually alive.

- At various points in the pre-writing process, either Promythigor, MechaTyrantis, or both were going to die fighting Pathogen.  I ultimately decided to let them both live, with MechaTyrantis even getting his flesh and blood body back, because I think it’s more interesting and thematically consistent that way.  They get a chance to heal their wounds by changing their ways.

- The Great Beyonder and Dorazor both almost didn’t make the cut, as I felt they didn’t have the same pull as villains that Pathogen, Promythigor, and MechaTyrantis did.  But then I thought that could actually be the gag - build them up as the final boss, only to have Pathogen take their crown.  I want to explore post-face turn Dorazor a bit more, though.  We’ll have to see about that in a later volume.

- Volumes 1 and 2 make up what I call “The Ballad of Tyrantis Arc” for ATOM.  I call it that because Tyrantis’s storyline in these two volumes was patterend after Chivalric ballads like Yvain the Knight of the Lion.  Tyrantis, a heroic warrior who is kind but dumb of ass, learns of strange goings on outside his home and investigates.  During his journey into the unknown he falls in love with a powerful woman, whose favor he tries to win.  Through happenstance he is separated from his love and, distraught, wanders around fighting various foes to prove his worth, before finally returning to his love a better hero.  Invasion from Beyond! could even be seen as a sort of Morte d’Artur, with Tyrantis and a bunch of other kaiju heroes (including Nastadyne and Kemlasulla, who are built up as Hero Kaiju of Another Story) take part in a huge battle that threatens their idealic kingdom (of monsters).

- Volume 2 isn’t the end of ATOM, but it’s designed to work as an ending if you want to tap out here.  As a reader I feel a definitive ending is important, but as a writer I’m always tempted to revisit my beloved characters, so I feel giving closure while leaving a few doors open for possible future adventures is a good compromise between these positions.  There will be more ATOM stories, some (but not all!) following Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna, but if you want to know that Tyrantis and Dr. Lerna get an ending and the resolution to their arcs such a thing promises, here you go.  An ending, if not THE END.

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale Reviews: Animaniacs 2020

(CREDIT TO @knightsweeties​ for this rendition of Gentlepenguin support her work and webcomic)

This review will be a bit different then my other reviews, where I just gush about what I saw and give the highlights.

Im going to be dividing it into several sections.

1. Overview.

2. The Good

3. The Bad

4. The Zany (How does each character compare to the original, Yakko, Wakko, Dot, Pinky and Brain.

5. Final Thoughts

With That settled, lets get to it. I’ve got Baloney in My Slacks.

Time to review the Animaniacs

1. Overview

Animaniacs 2020 is a reboot of the Original series that stopped after 1998. Now 22 years later Yakko, Wakko and Dot now face the challenge of being relevant in the age of the smart phones and absolute chaos. Can the Warner siblings show they are Zany to the max even in the chaotic year of 2020?

The interesting thing about the Animaniacs 2020 reboot is that it can be seen  as a sequel series. Since it takes place AFTER the original series.

2. The Good

Yakko, Wakko and Dot are solid. The new theme song is very fitting. 

They still make fun of all the things they should. They have good parodies, hilarious jokes, and there was not a segment that they were in that didn't give me at least a bit of a chuckle.

I was worried on what they would do with Dot, because of the trailer. Especially with cliché ‘#Feminism’ tropes being pushed. (the ones that are clear market grabs and aren't because people actually care. You know what I am talking about ). But everything was handled relatively well. In fact, Dot’s Suffrage song is one of my favorite parts of the new series. Dot was always feminist, so nothing they did was out of character for her regarding this and I am glad. Also her First Lady song was great. For the most part, Dot was phenomenal and I found myself laughing more often at her jokes more than the other two.

Yakko got some interesting character development, and even comes off as more mature. I will say

Pinky and The Brain: OMG PINKY AND THE BRAIN! I don't know how they did it, but outside of the animation improvements, these two fit SEAMLESSLY into the new age! I don't think there was a single Pinky and the Brain segment I didn't like. All of it was hilarious. Brain and Pinky’s dynamic is explored further and we even get a heart clenching back story on WHY brain wants to take over the world. 

The songs are just hilarious, and it is just as self aware as before. The meta jokes are great.

3. The Bad

Okay, so outside of the Warner siblings and Pinky and the brain. The other animated bits, where they were trying new characters.... They were lacking.

Like the contrast between those segments and the main cast are as large as night and Day.

Also, I miss a lot of the extended cast (Slappy squirrel and the hippos especially)

They have one episode that explains what happens to them (which is my personal favorite episode, especially with the plot twist that I didn't see coming).I get why some of the characters didn't come back. But you're telling me SLAPPY SQUIRREL isn't good enough for this? Bull s***

They played it very safe with this season.

That isn't bad, but its clear that in some instances they held their punches.

The show also makes it clear that this was written in 2018, not 2020.

This is a double edge sword.

On one hand, this means they don't have to be 100% on the ball with everything happening in 2020 (which is perfectly fine, I think we could all use a break from 2020) 

But on the other hand it also means you get a lot of the jokes that had been topical at the time but done to death by this year. Thankfully the jokes were still somewhat funny so it wasn't too bad, (some were hilarious) but others fell flat.

I miss Hello Nurse, but the reason she isn't in the show canonically is actually very in character (but the reason she isn't in the show in general is ANNOYING)

4. The Zany

For this I will be comparing how I feel about each of the characters and how they stack up compared to their previous iterations.

Wakko:

He was pretty much the same. Like I really can't distinguish much between the two. Wakko’s antics are timeless and his character was not changed much, if at all through this. So if we are giving a most in-character character for a reboot, Wakko wins.

So 1990′s Wakko = 2020′s Wakko.

Yakko:

This iteration of Yakko was a lot less girl crazy and more centered on his comedy. Yakko double downs on his puns and Jokes, showing that his banter is something he truly focuses on. I think the reason for this is because the show needed to tone it down. 

Yakko’s smart Alec routine felt more reminiscent of Bugs bunny rather than his traditional style. But, the change makes sense. 

Yakko’s comedic jokes are still the best and when he gets a good joke, Its hilarious.

Overall, giving Yakko more Dry humor and less gags actually did hit rather well.

So I would say

1990′s Yakko >= 2020′s Yakko. But maybe season 2 will have me change my mind.

Dot:

The show has me rather split on my opinion on dot, and its not the reasons you think.

Whenever they give her a joke regarding women or anything feminist. It is handled really well and she gets the jokes great.

And her general jokes are handled well, but then there are instances where, she is just a less funny Yakko. I found some of the deliveries of jokes or bits Yakko would have done in the past and Dot just delivered them in a way so similar to Yakko, it was practically interchangeable. I think the problem also is seen in the new theme song. They changed the original lyric from “Dot is cute” to “Dot has Wit”. But they also kept Yakko’s original lyric of “Yakko yaks”. 

I still think Dot is great and I really think the reboot can help Dot shine even more, but the new show needs to find a way to differentiate Dot and Yakko’s humor more.

1990′s Dot >= 2020′s Dot. I do think that Season 2 will improve on it, but they need to be willing to push the envelop more.

Pinky and The Brain:

Perfectly captured.

Pinky and the Brain are timeless. Both of them play off of each other very well. There were instances that I found myself enjoying them more then the original. The two are able to play off of each other flawlessly and these segments of the show, they don't hold any punches.

Honestly, they are the best part of the reboot and if you could only watch one part of an episode, watch the Pinky and the Brain segments. They are the best parts 9 times out of 10.

1990′s Pinky and the Brain =< 2020′s Pinky and the Brain

Final thoughts:

Overall, I give this show 8.0 /10

I think there can be some improvement and I am sure by season 2 the show will be willing to throw more on the wall to see what sticks.

The meta jokes, the bits, the cultural jokes usually land and aside from nitpicks, the show is wonderful.

I do think there are a few things lacking but I think that it can improve more.

I can't wait to see season 2, and I will be sure to bring toast for the Baloney in their slacks.

If you liked this review, and want to show support. Share it.

Or if you want to help me out, you can buy me a Ko-fi here

[inherhouseshewaitsdreaming]

NaNo Prep Week #3 - Construct a Detailed Plot or Outline

NaNo Prep is a series of blog posts covering the NaNo Prep 101 curriculum which is a good outline of the things you want to do to get ready for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

We’re into Week #3 now we’re looking at plot.

Resources

I would start here with Brandon Sanderson’s Lectures, Plot Part 1, Plot Part 2, and the Plot Q&A and Viewpoint. These effectively frame the elements of plot and plotting you want to look at. Don’t skip the section on viewpoint at the end of lecture three as its incredibly useful. With this as the starting point, the remaining sections are divided into Outlining, Plot Structures and Plot Archetypes.

Outlining

11 Steps to a Complete Cozy Mystery Plot from Jane Kalmes is a rare example of showing the outlining process in progress. I found another in a series of videos by Chris Fox called How to Plot a Novel From Scratch, but Janes has more re-usable structure. That being said, Chris seems to have another playlist that might be more structured, I just didn’t have time to watch that one too.

You can see the example outline to a Brandon Sanderson novel, Skyward, here as well as two failed attempts.

You can use any of the plot outlines as a framework for outlining your plot. Outlining is typically more than just the plot - it includes character and worldbuilding and, despite the artificial separation of these three, they actually bounce off one another a lot. The Jane Kalmes and Chris Fox examples show this.

Plot Structures

There are so many of these. Sanderson covers two of them in his lectures - the Heroes Journey and the Three Act Structure and videos on these are everywhere. Some examples: 3 Act Story Structure for Authors from Alexa Donne, 15 Beat Plot Structure from ShaelinWrites

Dan Well’s 7 point plot structure is based on the Star Trek RPG Narrator’s Guide and gets its own mention because of the RPG reference.

Katytastic’s 27 point plot structure, which is probably my favourite.

Adding to the above is the ever popular Save the Cat (which is also a three act structure). The main headings for Save the Cat appear in the Jane Kalmes video or you can google for a wealth of other material on this one. I have the book Save the Cat Writes a Novel, but you can find everything in it on Youtube.

For those who want a physical outlining method, I did like E A Deverell’s Plot Structure Zine. There is a video showing it in action on this page, as well as non-video based instructions. This gives you an 8 point story structure.

Plot Archetype

This as a concept is less spoken about and probably the main resource for this is Writing Excuses Season 11 on Elemental Genre. I did find a couple of books and an experiment where an AI ingested stories from Project Gutenberg. I also found quite a range in the number of plot archetypes from 3 to 1,462… A good summary of the 7 Story Types can be found in a this Reedsy video from Shaelin, but I didn’t find it useful for helping me plot my story in the way the Writing Excuses episodes do.

Another thing I do, that I think is similar in hindsight, is look at the website TV Tropes. Go there and look up a supertrope and you will find it broken down into sub-tropes and the myriad small tropes that make up a larger trope. These give you the building blocks of Plot Archetypes, including things that are more specific like Cosmic Horror. The website gives you lists of the component parts and, most usefully, long lists of the trope in various types of media to give you examples for further research.

How I Used Them

First I had a little crisis. In quite a few of the videos above, the authors talk about letting the plot develop in their heads over time. I’ve had the idea for the plot I am currently looking at for a grand total of 3 weeks, as opposed to the months experienced authors seemed to spend. Should I go forward with the new story or should I pick up something I’ve developed for longer?

Once I got past that, I tried a lot of different outlining methods. In the end I landed with the following:

Lots of brainstorming with no real structure giving me a very short outline of the main characters and themes. I iterated on it, writing it a couple of times. I liked the main plot, but it didn’t feel substantial enough. So I added a serial killer! It did fall logically out of the work I was doing, especially the worldbuilding. When trying to lay out the purpose of a group, it became obvious someone needed to be doing something proactive to achieve their goals. The killer is trying to prevent a terrible outcome by killing the people who would make it happen.

I then ran all the major plot threads through different approaches and found the ones I liked best.

Using Dan Well’s approach, at least in terms of order, was incredibly useful. I am so glad the Star Trek RPG references made me watch those videos. It gave me a very broad overview which I didn’t feel was enough to be my end product, but it really helped shape that end product.

I then wrote a plot outline much like the Brandon Sanderson approach, but with the following modifications:

Each major/side character had a listed set of “state transitions of Beginning, Middle and End, taken from the 7 point outline I had used.

I had a mapping underneath the plot bullet points that used the 27 point story structure from Katytastic against the main plot threads. This created a nice grid showing me where different things happened in the story. I numbered the plot bullets and referenced them in this grid too.

What I didn’t have time to do (because its barely Sunday when I write this, and I do try to post on Sundays) was to explore the plot archetypes more and I will do this over the next week. I’d like to look at each major thread, decide what its archetype is and look at those archetypes to see if there is anything I should add. For example, Sanderson mentions that a buddy cop plot is essentially a romance and since my lead characters are going to have that storyline, I want to see if I can learn anything from the archetype to enrich it.

[warsofasoiaf]

I'd love to hear your thoughts about Cyberpunk 2077 when you are ready/have finished the game. Maybe besides the game itself you have an opinion about the crunch, bugs and general feeling of disappointment in a good portion of the fans

Sure thing. It’s going to be a long write-up and there are going to be spoilers, so you better believe that this is going to have a cut. Reader beware. For context, I have beat the game, and I played it on PC and only on PC.

I’ve been a fan of the cyberpunk genre for a long time. Transhuman and techno-utopian sci-fi always struck me the wrong way; that it was too optimistic and ignored a less savory element of human nature that simply would not go away with the advent of new technologies. While I only briefly dipped my toes in the water of the Cyberpunk tabletop game (I was always a bigger fan of Shadowrun), I did enjoy the genre and was eager to see a AAA cyberpunk game. I also really liked CD Projekt Red with what they did with RPG’s like the Witcher 3. Particularly when it came to the smaller sidequests, they really found a way to bring a lot of noir elements and hard-hitting character moments to the game, and I believed that it could translate very well into a cyberpunk game. After all, noir was a similar response to detective fiction to what the cyberpunk genre was to earlier elements of sci-fi. So I was quite optimistic when it came out. What we got was...well, it didn’t quite meet up with expectations.

There are some good things about the game. Assuming you have a beefy rig, PC cyberpunk looks pretty good. Not only does it look good, but it looks like the dismal 1980′s inspired future that had defined the genre, with its neon lights, omnipresent advertising to the point of satire (amphetamines are available from vending machines in a variety of flavors and commercials are completely ridiculous). The fixers are great examples of different cyberpunk archetypes like Regina Jones being a media or the Padre being an underclass civic leader looking to protect his community with a bit of a violent streak. Plenty of the characters had great personality, the nomads and Panam were enjoyable, Judy had a great questline that detailed optimism and bitter disappointment (and the character looks cool and is a bit of a cinnamon roll), River’s quest was a perfectly serviceable cop questline with enough horror elements, they were all fine. Keanu wasn’t a great voice actor, but he did serviceably and was apparently just wonderful with the staff, so I’m willing to cut him a pass. The level design can encourage a variety of different play styles, with attribute points opening up certain pathways. Given that it’s an open-world sandbox game, the goal should be to immerse yourself in the world, and touch on elements of cyberpunk as you go through the various quests, and you do see some of that. You see the gross exploitations of dolls in the sex trade when you go to Clouds, the bizarre elements of self-expression that new technologies can offer such as the twins in Kabuki, Pacifica is an abandoned recreation ground for the rich with the nice image of rotting Ferris wheels and abandoned malls, and you can see the divide between the have’s and have-not’s on full display both in the opening (compare and contrast the Street Kid with the Corpo beginnings) or take a look at the Peralez’s penthouse apartment versus Judy’s cramped digs. Honestly, one of my favorite things in the game were just the consumables to highlight the different food and drink available to the people of Night City. The heavy population means that foods like fried ants or locust pepperoni are common, amphetamines are available in a variety of flavors, and there are no less than 20 burrito vending machines on every street (the future is not all bad it seems). I like little worldbuilding moments like this in video games because it does give a sense of completion and immersion within the world. I honestly felt bad for Johnny Silverhand, because by the end of the game I had to be a bloated man-ball of Holobites Peach Pie and Cirrus Cola. 

The game even took a few things that had aged poorly in the cyberpunk genre and improved them. The Mox is a gang specifically meant to stop the Disposable Sex Worker trope, it’s small and part of the reason it survives is that it’s small, but it offers a chance of improvement over the exploitation that the Tyger Claws offer. The cyberpyscho quest is probably the best one of this. Earlier Cyberpunk had cyberpsychosis as a serious concern directly correlated with how many implants you got. The Solo archetype even spoke about how you risk losing your humanity with your implants as you became stronger, better, faster. Even later iterations had depersonalization/derealization disorders as people who could see in the dark lost connection to those who couldn’t. A quick thought in our present though, changes this. My eyesight and hearing is just fine, but I don’t lose connection or common empathy with individuals who are blind or deaf. I have two arms and two legs and I have not lost empathy for amputees. Why then, would I lose empathy and connection with someone with average human eyesight after I get my eyes replaced and now I have the ability to see in the dark or have telescopic sight? The cyberpsycho quest actually took this concept to task; cyberpsychos around the city are seen as horrifying threats that need the high-threat response of MaxTac to deal with, but Regina is looking to see if she can cure cyberpsychosis. Mechanically, the cyberpsychos are boss-fights with elements of puzzle gameplay (how to handle the different skillsets that they have) and a bonus reward for non-lethal damage which rewards certain playstyle archetypes or prepwork for those who ensure that they have a non-lethal option. The information you find around each cyberpyscho showcase different problems in the target’s life, no real common thread or inciting incident that you can trace the onset of cyberpsychosis toward and identify a culprit. After you complete the quest, you learn the twist: there is no such thing as cyberpsychosis. Each of the targets were actually just experiencing different stressors within their lives, such as PTSD, losing their job, drug abuse, etc. and the breakdown is made much worse because these individuals have the ability to toss dumpsters like they were baseballs or pick the wings off a fly with a cybernetically enhanced brain with a .50 cal. Some of these individuals had terrible implant surgery done by bargain-basement ripperdocs and temporarily lost the ability to discern reality from fantasy, something that could easily be seen as a science fiction adaptation of temporary insanity brought on by a poor reaction to medicine. It’s backed up by the game too. V can fill every slot in their cyberware deck but never once experiences cyberpsychosis. Oda has ultra-legs and flaming-hot mantis blades and is in perfect control at every point in the game, even when he’s trying to jab those mantis blade through your sternum. Cyberpyschosis isn’t real, the irresponsible media just ran with it because fear sells. For all the flaws of the game, I respect the game for taking cyberpsychosis in that direction.

But for all those good things, the game couldn’t help but feel shallower than the Witcher 3. The side-gigs were formulaic to the point where they even led with a category. There were few twists and very little that was surprising. Exposition for these quests was limited to a short text dump and a minute voice-over. Night City was big but it was relatively sparse. NCPD never seemed to intervene in any crimes (giving the character the chance to do so) but every so often they were around a taped-off crime scene, giving a sense of inconsistency that hampered the world. While it was a bustling city, it felt empty, most of the people I saw on the street were meaningless, just NPC’s walking around to give a sense of activity. There was little in the way of things to see and experience that was unique or different about these NPC’s. They weren’t crowds I could hide in like Hitman, they didn’t have ambient dialogue that showcased something like the Witcher 3. Much like other open-world games, this sense of shallowness pervaded much of the empty space of the world; it was incredibly *big* but there was little in it. Much of the time I was driving or running through empty space that was completely worthless to me. Normal for city living, but all of that is wasted time going from point A to point B, and unlike the Witcher 3, there were no small in-game beats to help flesh it out or build it. I never had Millie from “Where the Wolf and Cat Play” give me a little picture, I never had people from a liberated village say “hey, look, it’s that guy Geralt, thanks for killing those harpies.” These were things that made the Witcher 3′s world really come alive. I didn’t have that, and I was left

Of course, we also have to handle the elephant in the room, and that was CDPR’s conduct both during production and after release. Crunch has become an increasingly common part of video game development and it’s not healthy to developers. CDPR had been called out on it once before, but it seemed there was little change in how that happens. I’m not quite sure if there’s anything we can do, and I’m sympathetic to the need to hit target deadlines to actually deliver a finished product, but there’s got to be a better way, whether that’s a change to the incentive structure, or something, because it’s hurting folks. I like games like Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2, but I understand that there was a real human cost to these masterpieces, and I wonder if there’s something we can do about that. 

Similarly, what happened after launch was beyond terrible. The last-gen console version were simply not ready for release and shouldn’t have been released to the public. CDPR openly covered up this, by only previewing the PC version, they hid the fact that the game wasn’t ready, and they avoided delaying the last-gen console version because they were looking to capitalize on holiday sales. I’m sympathetic for the need to generate sales, but the flip of this is that you have to deliver the product you advertise, and for last-gen consoles, they didn’t do so. Bugs are one thing, these games are massive undertakings of interacting systems and bugs are inevitable; some of my favorite games were buggy at release, notably Fallout: New Vegas, Witcher 3, and so on. But this went past bugs and into malpractice and deception, and that’s something that’s less forgivable. I personally had few bugs that were out-and-out game breaking but things not loading, quests bugging out, floating bags and other physics wonkiness, all of that hurt the immersion. I’d be more willing to forgive the game without the deception; I can laugh at bugs but not at ignoring quality control to get holiday sales instead of delivering a quality product. Consumers are angry at CDPR and have every reason to be, and I’m one of them. I can express my disappointment and I will do so, we need developers to stop these practices and the only way we can do that is through our wallets and words. I’m not going to tell anyone not to buy CDPR games, that’s entirely your decision because I’m a radical individualist. But I am going to say that they’ve burned a lot of their good karma with me; credibility is a hard beast to gain back. Much like other big name developers, CDPR has hurt their standing in my eyes. Whether that means I need to resort to going to indie games for a little bit or something else, I don’t know, but it’s rough. I liked CDPR and wanted to believe it’d be different, but it seems to not be the case.

Overall, I think it’s another AAA open-world game only made better by my love of the genre, and that stings. I enjoyed some aspects of it, and I hope that through Free DLC, patching, and other good deeds, the game can redeem itself and stimulate new love of the genre. But CDPR needs to do a lot more than that to win back my affection. If anyone has anything specifically that they want to know about the game, such as talk about the main story, individual characters, or so on, just ask.

Thanks for the question, Khef.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[pulaasul]

Digimon Adventure Tri – Daisuke and the others? Who are they?

A Digimon Adventure Tri review.

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This review may be a bit late, but I didn’t watch the fifth movie because I was spoiled by a certain plotpoint and tropes and I really detest tropes of that plotpoint. Considering that I opted not to watch the fifth movie, I didn’t watch the sixth movie as well, I may get confused at the chronology of the events.

I had watched Last Evolution Kizuna, the review of which is linked here, thankfully the producers of Kizuna opted to have an original story as opposed to continuing from the plot threads that Tri left hanging over the course of six movies.

With the reason for this review’s lateness out of the way, let’s continue on with the Tri’s review.

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Despite the lateness, I am reviewing  [デジモンアドベンチャーtri - Dejimon Adobenchā] Digimon Adventure Tri

As with some of the movies I had reviewed on my blog, I have an alternative title for Digimon Adventure Tri as a whole.

 デジモンアドベンチャーtri 大輔たちわだれだ？or Dejimon Adobenchā Daisuke-tachi wa dare da?

Digimon Adventure Tri – Daisuke and the others? Who are they?

TL:DR

Tri was an enjoyable watch. If you want more characterization of the OG chosen 8 and their respective Digimon, it’s a definite watch.

If you’re a big fan of the 02 kids, they do acknowledge them, but better not to expect anything on that front to avoid disappointment.

For me, Digimon Adventure Tri as a whole is a 6.8/10 for me.

I love the many things they did here, but both my bias for the 02 kids and the many things happening just left a bad taste in my mouth.

If that doesn’t hint my love for the 02 kids, this is your confirmation XD.

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I’ll start with the movie series’ art style. I still maintain my stance that I do not like the art style they chose for Tri. I will, however, expand on my reasons from the other review.

Tri’s art style is better suited for still images rather than animated. The best suited comparison I can make, and I’m sure a lot of people will protest, but it’s like the Pokemon’s Sun and Moon anime art style.

From what I heard, the new Pokemon art style focuses more on animation detail and flow. Tri’s animation and art style, while a major improvement from the fights seen in Adventure and 02, still come short seeing the ‘derpy faces’ and awkward poses found in the movie.

(Yamato has bulging pecs and it looked like both Taichi and Yamato skipped leg day)

The new art style does make the ENTIRE CAST absurdly attractive from Taichi to Himekawa even down to the background characters who have something unique in their designs despite just being one off characters.

The new art style does lessens the “cartoonish” vibes we got from the first two Adventure seasons of Digimon, so no extra-large heads, hands and/or feet. You could definitely feel that this was an updated version of the previous art style, although taken to extremes.

Although… Jiggle physics are seen on the Digimon.

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PLOTWISE...

Having watched the entire movie series, I can definitely understand why the 02 kids were given that treatment. However, there were plenty of instances to incorporate them into the plot organically than what we were shown.  

The overall plot was heart wrenching, it delves into the themes of sacrifice and unchecked grief.

SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT! BE WARNED!!!

We’ll backtrack a bit, I stated above about how the 02 cast could’ve been incorporated into the plot organically than what we were shown.

There were many instances where they could’ve been mentioned by anyone of the cast: the appearance of the Digimon Emperor, Hikari and Takeru checking up on Ken after the Emperor’s appearance, even the instances where they welcome Meiko into the group by encouraging her in times of distress; among other things.

A simple muttering of “where are they?” or “how are they doing?” from anyone, especially from Hikari and Takeru who were a part of the 02 team, would’ve made their exclusion from the main events a bit bearable and understandable.

Them not acknowledging their absence is a very out of character: for Takeru and Hikari, as they were teammates; from Taichi and Yamato as they mentored Daisuke, the former passing the goggle-torch unto him; Mimi and Sora for Miyako; Joe and Koushiro who has commented how reliable Iori was and how his thirst for knowledge was an admirable trait.

all my cons bullet points are my salt towards the 02 kids’ absence lol

In other matters, another thing worthy of criticism, this is for the franchise as a whole, is the fact that there’s a Leomon death inserted in every iteration of Digimon. (01&02 have the original Leomon, Tamers had Juri’s Leomon, Frontier both had Ice Leomon and KaiserLeomon in Kouichi Kimura, Savers had BanchoLeomon.)

Leomon’s death this time around fails to have an impact considering it has become a meme nowadays. Anyone vaguely aware of the franchise would even joke about the Leomon’s screentime before he dies, which was the case in the Tri movies.

There are two events in the Tri movies that didn’t really needed to be there, which really hampered my score for the movie series. First one is how the Mysterious Person, using Young Gennai’s form, to lick Sora’s face.

Another event that didn’t need to happen was how the same Mysterious Person choked Meiko to the point of her losing consciousness, those events IN THE SAME MOVIE really put me in an uncomfortable state, as did a lot of people.

This may be my bias speaking, but I really don’t like how Daigo died in the movie series. I am sure his death potentially served to raise the stakes of the plot, but not really.

The stakes of the plot was already at an all-time high with showing the “deaths” of the 02 kids in the first few minutes of the first movie. It’d raise the stakes even higher HAD THE OG 8 CHOSEN CHILDREN ACKNOWLEDGED THE ABSENCE OF THE 02 KIDS.

Daigo’s death was unnecessary for the stakes were already planted, but they failed to sow those particular seeds hence his death was needed. That and I really love Daigo Nishijima.

Tri could’ve been a rescue movie on top of stopping the apocalypse movie, Meicoomon shenanigans included.

I will admit that learning of Taichi’s supposed death in the tri movies, turned me off from watching the movie series to its completion, back when this was first released. Learning that Daigo, my favorite character, dies in the next one really turned me off from the franchise. Watching it now, I still maintain my stance that he didn’t need to die.

Devimon’s appearance really felt tacked on, he would’ve been a great plot point for Takeru to overcome in the movie, instead we got a few seconds of appearance then nothing. Not even delving into Takeru’s psyche about Devimon’s appearance.

The entire last movie was needlessly dark and that’s says a lot.

-------------

Considering this is a review, no review is complete until you state all the positive things you can say about the movie.

As with the debut season of the franchise, Character interactions are at the forefront of the movie series. In here we learned things about them, including Hikari’s teasing remarks towards Takeru or how Yamato is actually scared of ghost stories.

We also learned that the Teenaged Wolves broke up, due to musical differences as Yamato claimed and formed two new bands. “Knife of Day” and “World of the Knife”. The fact that the characters saying the band names have a Might Guy teeth shine effect on them was incredibly hilarious.

Koushiro being a blushing mess when it comes to Mimi was also great.

The viewers can really see the entire group’s dynamic with each other.

The digimon themselves aren’t just one-note characters. They may act as a foil to their human partners, it doesn’t change the fact that they weren’t one-note compared to what we’ve seen in both Adventure and 02.

Interactions aside, each human character having breakdowns and developing in the movie series was another thing I liked about Tri, tying them to digivolving to ultimate/mega level was a pretty neat idea.

It means that Taichi and Yamato aren’t the sole stars of the Adventure saga now.

Speaking of characters, the new characters in this movie-series [Daigo Nishijima, Maki Himekawa, Meiko Mochizuki] were introduced organically and were pretty great in their roles. The twist that the former two were Chosen Children before Taichi and the others was neat as well.

The three of them performed their roles pretty well: Daigo being a shady mentor, who’s loyalty is divided between his student and his work; Meiko being the new kid on the block really helped establish how out of place she really is, it does help that Mimi was incredibly welcoming towards her; Maki’s unchecked grief led her to taking drastic steps just to be reunited with her partner digimon, kickstarting the whole plot of Tri.

[I have a theory that Daisuke and the others were reporting to Maki, once she learned that they were aware of Yggdrasil’s plans, she led them to a trap that was when they were one-shotted by Alphamon.]

We go back to Leomon. It was nice to see a familiar face. Even his scenes were hilarious and awesome. Him being able to stave off the infection from various points in the movie he was in was also great. It makes sense in character as he does have incredible will power, going back to the Adventure days when he was possessed by Devimon’s black gears.

I also appreciate that the boys and girls had equal opportunities at being the eye candy. The boys were the eye candies during their time in the hot springs, while Mimi and Meiko had their chance as eye candies during the school festival.

Last and certainly not the least, were the new arrangements of the Original Sound Track of the Digimon Adventure themes from Butter-fly to Brave Heart’s orchestral version. They’re simply that good to listen in a loop.

-------------

As for suggestions, I have a few. This is constructive criticism after all.

Acknowledge the absence of the 02 cast.

Explain why they were absent in the first place, or at least what the characters think why they were absent.

From vacation abroad

On Yacht

Even visiting people out of Tokyo would also work

Both Leomon and Daigo didn’t need to die. Mortally wounded characters are fine, makes us think they’re dead for a few minutes to delve into character development, as was the case for Taichi and Hikari.

Make the 02 kids’ lives as stakes in the plot.

Cut back on the flashback images.

Exposition is also good, even Taichi voicing out his hesitance would’ve made for a great character moment, instead of just glaring at the enemy.

D.R Gennai shouldn’t have licked Sora. That event really didn’t need to happen.

D.R Gennai should’ve just let Meiko bleed to the point of unconsciousness instead of choking her as he taunts Meicoomon to fear and give in to her infections.

Devimon should’ve been an earlier opponent that was later reused in the ending movie to show how much Takeru has grown add in digivolving to Seraphimon.

A video file of Daisuke’s and the others’ defeat at the hands of Alphamon should’ve been viewed after the reboot happened, that would’ve raised the stakes higher.

Daisuke and the others should’ve joined the last fight in the last movie. Escaping from the hospital through their Digimon before collapsing at the very end.

I have no problem with Daigo’s partner becoming Baihumon. I think it’d been better had it been Azulongmon, considering he was the goggle head during his time and thus the leader of his group.

We know that Azulongmon is the leader of the Four Digimon Soverigns.

I think it’d come full circle had Daigo been partnered with Azulongmon.

I think the movie would then end with everyone visiting Daisuke and the others, Meiko included, introducing her to them.

Overall, I give the movie series a 6.8 out of 10 rating. It was a good watch, but the plot fell once they delved into darker themes and darker events for the sake of being dark and without substance. There were a couple of events that didn’t need to happen but happened for the sake of being dark.

Daigo’s death was certainly one of those events. The stakes could’ve been raised higher had the 02 kids were integrated into the plot and not just relegated into glorified silhouette cameos.

These suggestions would still run the course of the plot we got in Tri, but it would’ve flowed the plot organically and didn’t go dark for the sake of being dark.

I wanted to be generous with my rating, but it just won’t do. Even my bullet points review had more Cons than Pros. Factor in my bias for the 02 kids, and you get a 6.8 rating.

[itsaship-literally]

One more time...

For those of you who have followed this blog for some time, you may remember a little post I once made called Because it needs to be said YET AGAIN. Well, it’s time to revisit this. 

THIS BLOG supports the POTENTIAL FUTURE of Beetlejuice and Lydia.

As a fictional set of characters, there is nothing more endearing than a ghost who wants to live and the living who wants to be a ghost. It’s sad and holds a beauty that only the strange and unusual can truly appreciate. 

For over 30 years the Beetlejuice has been comprised of the Chuck and Delia’s, the Adam and Barbra’s, and the Betelgeuse and Lydia’s. You can go online and see these pairs all over the place. Both in the movie or in the toon verse and now we have the blessing to have one more iteration. The Musical.

This brings us to today. Yes, we are aware that there is a divide between life/death, immortality/mortality, youth/experience. These are constant dynamics in fiction all over the world. It’s perfectly normal to express these tropes in fiction because as we know, FICTION IS THE BEST WAY TO EXPLORE POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS SCENARIOS. 

That being said, how many of you actually want to fuck a ghost/corpse/demon? Like in real life with the body you have? I highly doubt it. And if you do... Well then, have fun 😊

Here is what we have right now:

Movie: Potential. Betelgeuse and Lydia do NOT have a relationship but the potential for mutual understanding is there. 

Toon: Potential. Beetlejuice and Lydia have a wonderful friendship and a relationship built on mutual understanding. They trust and care about each other and are near inseparable. They have never shown romantic interest outside of flirtations due to the show being geared towards children.  (Note, the word relationship is not used in a romantic context but a general one.)

Musical: Surprisingly the MOST Potential. Beetlejuice and Lydia both want to be seen, they both feel alone and lost, they develop a friendship. On Lydia's end, this relationship is one of a good distraction and teenage rebellion. On BJ’s end, a co-dependent and completely unhinged attachment. They love scaring people and causing chaos. If BJ hadn’t gone exorcism crazy and then MURDER crazy they could have spent more time together.... and seriously .. WHY did Lydia go through all that trouble to get Beej to believe she was in love with him? She could have easily said. “Don’t hurt them. Just call the priest and I will let you out.” You know, like in the movie. 

Now that we got those potential futures out of the way, let's cover many of the complaints we have been seeing lately...

Age of Consent: this is best represented by a statement found on the ageofconsent.net “ The legal age of consent varies from 16 to 18 years old from state to state across the United States. In some states, a "close in age exemption" exists to decriminalize consensual sex between two individuals who are both under the age of consent.” This show takes place in Connecticut. The Age is 16 - Source Musical: Age UNDETERMINED in cannon -  Actresses range from 16 (Presley) - 35 (Dana) while the main actress debuted Lydia Deetz at the age of 16/17 Movie: Age UNDETERMINED in cannon - Two scripts were made one where Lydia was aged 16 and one where they made her younger but this wasn’t said directly in the film. The ‘little girl’ comment made by Barbra was a leftover from when the script had Cathy, Lydia’s little sister.  Toon: Age Never Stated AND Lydia grew through the series. The only context we have is that she is in 7th grade at the beginning of the series. and a book came out later stating she was 14. No one really expects there to be a physical relationship between the characters and if there is, it’s not something anyone really focuses on. WE CARE ABOUT THE DYNAMIC. I have never read fanfiction where Lydia was a 12-14-year-old. BJ likes adult bodies. This is a fact. So until his best friend gets an adult body we just need to enjoy the cartoon. It’s a fucking cartoon. Folks need to relax. 

Sexual vs Romantic vs Platonic No one cares how you headcanon the ship. Friendship or Relationship. It’s sweet. They are perfect. They are a dynamic combo. 

Grooming and Abuse: Dude, If you want to know what this looks like take a visit to this page from Victims of Crime. So in this case, if you think BJ is grooming Lydia to be his wife and/or partner then you really need to stay away from fanfiction in general. BJ is not a good person if he is capable of ANY of this.  There is only one story that I can think of that shows this type of treatment in action and is in no way a story on condoning the relationship. The author of the story is conveying a toxic relationship and like many writers will encourage readers to study the signs to protect themselves.  Further Reading: Does Reading Make You A Better Person? - ScienceDaily Video Game Violence Impact

Necrophilia: Let's get this straight right here and now. Betelgeuse is not a corpse. He is not a lifeless body. That’s some Ted Bundy shit right there. Here is a list of actual Cases of Necrophilia.  In Movie and Toon, Beej is a ghost. The term is Spectrophilia In Musical, Beej is a demon. The term is Spectrophilia... yup same thing Sexual encounters with ghosts and demons have been a subject of contention since the days of Ancient Civilization. That will always be an issue. No One is ever going to make it go away. 

Bi/Pan/Gay Phobia: We are really going there. Ok. This topic is said about every fandom. You will never make everyone happy. Everyone wants representation and that is totally fine. Beetlejuice and Lydia have the potential for more than a heterosexual pairing. After all, there is Betty Juice.  Now have I hit all the complaints? Good. If not then please dig a little deeper and try not to interfere with nerds being nerds. It just make you look like a jackass. 

[knotty-hottie]

@alycat919 So, we haven’t talked before, but your post in the Ouran High School Host Club tag reminded me of my final paper for my Gender/Women Studies and I thought I’d share it. I promise I’m not tagging for drama, but just because I wanted to thank you for reminding me. It was a lot of fun to write a research paper about my first anime, and, despite the negativity I talk about in the paper, it’s still a personal fave of mine. You’re free to scroll past this if you aren’t interested, or to engage if you are. I just want to share the work I’ve done with the fandom I’ve explored. 😁

Ouran High School Host Club: Rich in Benevolent Sexism and Rape Culture

He pinned her against the bed, looming above her like a wild beast. Her chocolate brown eyes were wide, her nightgown bunched, her breath caught in her chest. The two stared at each other, like predator and prey, for a split second that felt like an eternity. He opened his mouth, and spoke, surely, calmly.

“You should fix that, ‘being a guy or girl doesn’t matter’ naivety of yours. It’s your fault for being too defenceless.”

It may sound like something from a badly written smut piece, or the rape fantasy of a young person, but in Ouran High School Host Club, this is the reality of our heroine, Haruhi Fujioka. She is a ‘commoner’ (lower middle class) student at a school for Japan’s most elite, having gotten in on a scholarship. After an incident involving her stumbling into an occupied music room in search of a study place, a vase worth ¥8,000,000 (equal to approximately $73,000 in today’s United States dollars), and some classic anime tropes, she ends up as a member of the school’s host club. The series itself describes the host club as “[The place] where the school’s handsomest boys with too much time on their hands entertain young ladies who also have way too much time on their hands. Just think of it as Ouran’s elegant playground for the super rich and beautiful.” The series is one of the most famous of all time in the anime community, coming in at spot 20 out of the top 50 most popular anime of all time on the Anime News Network. On SBS, Ouran came in at spot 40 on a fan-voted poll for best anime of all time. On Funimation (the anime’s publisher site) and Crunchyroll (one of the most popular anime streaming sites of today’s day and age) Ouran comes in at 5 stars. It’s a well known, well liked piece of media, that has earned itself an anime adaptation from its manga origin, a dating simulator from its anime adaptation, and a live action reboot based on all three of the previous iterations. Yet, somehow, underneath all of the things to like, there’s a dark underbelly that many willfully ignore or are just plain unaware of. The series perpetuates gender roles, rape culture, and some not-so-subtle homophobia. The way that it gets away with these things is by portraying them through the lens of benevolent sexism, which catches readers, watchers, and players alike off-guard.

Benevolent sexism falls under the larger umbrella of ambivalent sexism, which is divided into two main categories. The first category is hostile sexism, which is what most people think of when they try and imagine sexism. It is described by Dictionary.com as, “[sexism] reflecting negative views of women who challenge traditional gender roles.” It is the toxic, hypermasculinized form of sexism that many are taught to look for. It is the comments of, “You aren’t a real woman if your hair is short like that,” and, “Women are dumber than men.” On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the idea of benevolent sexism. Rather than comments of, “Women are weaker than men, making them inferior,” we hear the benevolent sexist say, “Men should protect women, as it’s the right thing to do.” It’s those moments where women are told they look better when they smile, or are in dresses, or have children in arm. The words are complementary and polite, but they hold the same message as those negative comments of the hostile sexist. Ouran works carefully to craft its message so that it doesn’t insult its main fan base (young women), while still getting its message across. For example, there’s the character of Renge Houshakuji.

Renge first appears in the manga in ‘Episode 3’ and in episode 4 of the anime adaptation. She is what is known as an otaku, which, in modern culture, refers to someone obsessed with some aspect of pop culture (whether that be video games, anime, movies, etc.) to the point that their social life suffers. In Japan, the word has become a word similar to our ‘nerd’ or ‘geek’. In American culture, the word is considered derogatory, and usually falls in line with words like ‘weeaboo’ and ‘wapanese’. Renge wholeheartedly accepts her otaku status, locking herself in her room to do what she enjoys most; playing dating sims. After a turn of events, she ends up at the Host Club, believing that she is in love with Kyouya Ootori, a host who looks identical to one of her favorite characters. After she reveals that this is why she likes Kyouya, she is bashed for her hobbies and considered crazy. The moment her hobbies come to light, they are painted as wrong and she is vilified, even though her male counterparts are considered just and right in there own hobbies. When Hani, one of the hosts, is depicted as morally correct for acknowledging that he is allowed to like the color pink and cute things rather than martial arts. Renge is one of the few female characters in the show that is depicted as having personality traits outside of, “infatuated with handsome boys” and “ultra feminine”, yet she is considered “crazy” for expressing those outside traits. It isn’t that she isn’t traditionally feminine, but that she has more to her character than that, much to the dismay of her male counterparts. She has her own hobbies and ideas. She knows exactly what she wants and goes for it. Even if her methods are questionable and a bit on the stereotypically crazy side, she still goes after her aspirations.

When Tamaki, one of the main characters of the show, greets and flirtily welcomes Renge to the club, she flinches away at his nonconsensual touch. She seems shell-shocked, blushing in what seems like embarrassment. After she comes to terms with him touching her face without permission, she slaps him, calling him a phony (among other insults), and leaving him emotionally beaten before going to Kyouya, the one she really wants. She decides to reinvent the Host Club’s characters in order to help Kyouya make more money, which should, she believes, make him fall in love with her the way she loves him. She is shown to get her ‘comeuppance,’ in a sense, when everything she goes for backfires. Kyouya reveals that he does not like her, she nearly ends up hurt, and she is told that she must take her time and learn about others in order to have a good relationship of any kind. When you come into relationships expecting someone to act a certain way, you are harming your chances of a healthy relationship. The message is good, but Renge’s fate is not quite as nice. She becomes a frequent background character, used for exposition, cheap plot device, and/or the voice of the fawning fan girls. The closest we get to her personal hobbies is the fact that she sometimes cosplays and, if we’re lucky, hear her talk about them for five or so seconds.

Another example of women in the show comes in the form of Benio Amakusa and the rest of the Zuka Club. In the third book of the series, specifically in ‘Episode 10’, we are introduced to Benio. She is dressed in the men’s uniform, has short hair, and is openly flirtatious with Haruhi, acknowledging Haruhi’s sex publicly to the Host Club’s dismay. Once Benio and company reveal to the hosts that they are, in fact, women, Tamaki labels them all as lesbians. All three do end up showing attraction of some sort to women, but the fact that he labels them all as such simply because one is shown to enjoy dressing in the men’s uniform and having short hair is a disturbing thought in and of itself. Tamaki sees that one is a lesbian, and begins making assumptions about their collective character based on that assumption. He goes so far as to pass out in shock at the presence of lesbians, and, once he awakens, says the following to the three Lobelia Woman’s Academy members; “You girls are all wrong!! What can come from a woman loving a woman!? Why did God create Adam and Eve, if not--!” He’s cut off before he can finish the thought, much to the LGBT+ community’s pleasure. Much to the community’s displeasure, however, is the imagery used in the anime to depict lesbians as nazis, having them do the nazi salute to a flag labeled “women”. Back to the plot, once he believes that he might lose Haruhi to this all-girl’s academy, he has some of his fellow hosts dress in exaggerated womanly clothing and wigs so that she can have ‘the best of both worlds,’ so to speak. The hosts think that, if they act ‘womanly’ enough, they will be a satisfactory replacement. Haruhi proceeds to explain that she had never even considered going with the girls, as her home was with the hosts. The Lobelia girls promise their revenge in a seemingly silly and typical manner.

In the only other episode that the Lobelia girls show themselves in, we get to see them kidnap Haruhi and, under the guise of needing Haruhi to perform, trick her into a situation that would lead to a non-consensual kiss in front of a large crowd, if not do more to her. When you watch the show, there doesn’t seem to be much going on aside from a silly and ridiculous plan that some rich lesbians are pulling to get revenge on the ‘noble and correct’ Host Club. When you really think about what’s happening though, it’s scary. They kidnap someone. They nearly sexually assault someone. What does it say that there only true gay representation resorts to these tactics when they are previously thwarted? The girls are basically degraded to recurring villains with silly beliefs, antics, and existences. Why is that?

In volume 5 of the manga, ‘Episode 17,’ we get exposed to Ayame Jonouchi, who is entirely skipped over in the anime. She makes a return in the live action series, however, holding her own arc in the third episode of the series. She’s incredibly intelligent, notably attractive, and, according to the hosts, a monotone speaker. They even go so far as to call her, “Miss Morse” and “Morse Code Lady” at one point. She is described as scholarly looking and strait-laced, and holds a major grades complex. The last of those points explains why she has always been in the top two of her classes grading system, holding the second place position hostage directly under the Host Club’s Kyouya Ootori. Once Tamaki transfers to Ouran, however, she gets knocked down to third, much to her displeasure. She becomes a foil for Tamaki in a sense, showing that her struggle and constant practice to gain knowledge will never be enough to beat the natural tendencies of her male counterparts. After checking the traditional genders of all of the names listed on the sheet for her class, I discovered that there was only one other girl on the page. Her position? Seventh place.

Ayame’s tale’s conclusion is a little bit painful to watch, as it is near a cliche at this point. It turns out that she actually loved Tamaki for a certain comment he made about her straight hair during their first meeting. Her hair is naturally wavy, leading to her having self-image issues in the face of her crush that lead her grades to drop just enough for Tamaki to take her spot. Her wavy hair being exposed by the rain, a breakdown of frustration, and a few compliments from Tamaki later, she discovers that she is beautiful no matter how she looks on the outside, and becomes a regular customer of Tamaki’s. She is petite, cisgender, heterosexual, and pale. The only reason we know that she continues attending the Host Club is because it is literally written into the final panels of the chapter. We never actually see her again in either rendition of the story.

The most famous ‘woman’ in all renditions of Ouran High School Host Club is Haruhi Fujioka. She is a first semester high school student. She is of the lower middle class. She lives with her father that, in every rendition of the story, is called a ‘tranny’ who works at the local ‘tranny bar’ (rather than addressing him as a drag queen at a drag bar). Her mother was a lawyer before her passing. She is attending Ouran Academy on a scholarship. Her hair is short, she needs glasses, and she can’t afford a uniform. She wears her father’s hand-me-down clothes and her grandfather’s hand-me-down glasses to save money. She’s blunt, book smart, and open minded. She’s a lot of things, but, somehow, she gets some of the worst treatment of the series. She is the reader’s insight into the author’s world; the character being exposed for expositional purposes, so to speak. For the sake of brevity, let’s walk through some key episodes of the anime (which is the story’s most well-known adaptation) and talk about what goes wrong in each one.

In the first episode of the series, “Starting Today, You Are a Host!”, we are introduced to Haruhi Fujioka, the protagonist of the story, who is simply looking for a quiet place to study, and, by mistake, stumbles across a club room in use by Ouran Academy’s Host Club. The members (specifically Tamaki, the series’ largest offender) proceed to insult Haruhi on monetary grounds, insert themselves into her personal space, and assume her gender identity and sexuality. After Haruhi drops an 8 million yen vase, the hosts (again, primarily Tamaki) begin to call Haruhi a dog and basically use her as a servant/errand runner. At one point, Tamaki calls Haruhi a ‘piglet’ in reference to her poor ‘servant’ status putting her beneath him. Later in the episode, Haruhi is revealed to be conventionally attractive, her wants are ignored as the hosts makeover her. Her hair is cut, a uniform is bought, and contacts are put in to make her fit the traditionally beauty standards of manhood (as, for the moment, some of the hosts are under the ruse that she is, in fact, biologically male and cisgender). Once this happens, all who attend the host club seem to treat Haruhi better. She is talked to by girls (which, many argue, is understandable, as she is now a host. My counter-argument is that the girls had to request Haruhi in the first place, something they likely would not have done before Haruhi’s involuntary makeover) and the hosts begin paying her real attention. Tamaki begins claiming Haruhi as ‘his own’ to other people, signalling that, to him, attractiveness is the primary trait that is needed to be on the same level as him, personality be damned. He also proceeds to invade her personal space without consent, which leads to her calling on Mori (another host) for assistance.

Once we hit the final moments of the episode, we find that Haruhi has gone to a changing room as her uniform has been soaked in the events of the episode’s climax. Tamaki, yet again invading personal space without consent, walks in with little to no warning on Haruhi changing, discovering her sex is female. He is shocked and embarrassed, reacting in a seemingly cute way to the discovery. Kyouya eventually comments on the predicament, laying out on the table the true message of the episode. “Could this possibly be the beginnings of love?” he asks the viewer, turning to the camera. He wipes over all of the harassment Tamaki has done to Haruhi, ignores what she really wants in the moment, and waters her character down to ‘love interest’. She is the pretty, feminine foil to Tamaki’s handsome, ‘persistent’ (read as; incessant harassment) personality. They are clearly ‘meant to be together,’ and the show makes it clear in that moment that they will be together whether she wants to be or not as the men in her life see it that way.

In the eighth episode, “The Sun, The Sea, and The Host Club!”, we find the most controversial scene of the series. Before we can get to that, however, we need to walk through the circumstances that lead us to it. The Host Club is on a trip to the beach (after all the men in Haruhi’s life argue about which swimsuit she should wear, of course), and the male hosts decide to figure out what Haruhi is afraid of via a game. The game is that whoever finds out what Haruhi is most afraid of gets pictures (taken and supplied by Haruhi’s father) of Haruhi in middle school (the more I rewatch these episodes, the more creepy things I realize are in them). After a long day with no results, Haruhi gets called up upon an overlook by some of the Host Club’s guests. As she makes her way up to spend time with them, some drunk men beat her there and begin harassing the guests. They grab the girls, asking them if it’s dull without any boys around and ignoring the girls’ pleas to stop. Haruhi, arriving upon the scene, throws a bucket of shells at one of the offenders, calmly asking them to go away. She stands her ground when one of them attacks back, allowing for one of the girls they were harassing to get away at her own expense. After some verbal abuse, Haruhi is thrown off the overlook into the water below, where Tamaki immediately goes in after her. The other hosts handle the assaulters, and, once Haruhi is proven to be safe, the berating begins. “Are you one of those?” asks Tamaki. “Actually a martial arts master, like Honey-senpai?” He grabs her, and goes on. “How could you think that you, a girl, by yourself, could do anything about those boys?!” After Haruhi explains that her actions were a split second decision and she didn’t have time to think, he yells at her, “Well, think about it, you idiot! You are a girl!”

Tamaki and the rest of the male hosts seem to be on the same page, insisting that Haruhi needs to apologize for her actions. Haruhi, on the other hand, does not see any wrong in what she did, which leads to some friction between herself and Tamaki. The two refuse to speak to each other until one apologizes to the other. At dinner, to avoid talking, Haruhi overeats to the point of making herself sick, which she notices only after being chastised again by the hosts sans Tamaki and Kyouya for her actions. After they request an apology from her, she finds that she needs to empty her stomach’s contents and runs to the nearest bedroom. She finds out that the room is, in fact, Kyouya’s, and that the two of them are now alone, prompting the series’s most controversial scene. Fans sometimes call it, “The Scene in the Dark.”

Haruhi apologizes to Kyouya on multiple grounds as he takes the time to lay out all the hassle she has caused him. When Haruhi offers to pay him back, he points out that he has far more money than her and that she is already in debt. He turns down the lights as he lays out her dilemma and brings up a new solution as he leers at her; why doesn’t she pay him back using her body? While she stands there, attempting to process what he’s said, Kyouya takes action. He grabs her arm. He throws her upon the bed. He straddles her, pins her to the bed, and tells her, bluntly, “You should rethink your own gullibility, that things have nothing to do with a person being a guy or a girl. You’ve made a mistake in leaving yourself so open.” He looks her in the eye and, in simple terms, lays out that he could take her. He has more money, more power, and, most prominently, a penis. Haruhi says that he is bluffing, and, luckily, he was. He gets off of her, and she comments that he is “nicer than she thought” for the experience he’s provided. Bisco Hatori, the creator of Ouran, drives home her message bluntly. Women are weak and should be protected by the men in their lives. They should be passive and, if they fail to be such, should immediately apologize. If a man decides to not sexually assault or rape you, he is nice. You should be thankful that he has the courtesy to not sexually abuse you. It’s legitimately terrifying that this is the message that is being sent out.

As salt in the wound, the very next scene is with Tamaki and Haruhi, with the latter cast as a scared little girl in the damsel in distress trope. She hides herself in the closet, curled in a ball, as the audience and Tamaki discover that Haruhi is scared of thunderstorms! She explains that she has always had to rely on herself as her mother is dead and her dad is constantly working. In response, Tamaki promises to take care of her from now on, she seems to come to a silent agreement to lean on the men in her life more, and the two have an emotional make up moment. Haruhi gets love and support from her friends again once she begins to lean on the men in her life and accept the help. I’ve seen other people argue that the message of the episode is that everyone needs to rely on others sometimes, which is a fair argument, but I can’t bring myself to agree the more I look at it. If it’s just about relying on others, why is there the scared little girl imagery? Why do they even emphasize Haruhi’s sex at all in this scenario if it’s not about that? Hatori knew what she was writing, and the message she sent out. She had a plethora of other ways to explore this theme, and she wouldn’t have written it this way unless she meant for it to be taken in a gender-biased manner.

I could go on, but I feel that I’ve explained my stance on the matter. Ouran High School Host Club is a classic anime in the anime community. A lot of people I know and that I’ve heard from in my life grew up with the show, and some still seek a romantic partner like one of the hosts. In all of the series’s adaptations, we find that certain themes remain prevalent. Women are meant to be pretty, submissive things that are interested in their male counterparts at all times. If you have your own interests, you are obsessive and crazy. If you like the same sex, you are against men. If you take a leadership position, you’re a nag. If you stand for what you think is right, you are a bother to the men around you. It’s scarily similar to what I’ve seen on social media. If you talk about sex too much, you’re a slut. If you talk about sex too little, you’re a prude. If you are too skinny, you’re on drugs, too fat, you have no impulse control. It seems that there is no ‘right’ woman to possibly be, in the fantasy that is Ouran or in the reality we face daily. We can only hope that, someday in the future, we can look back at Ouran and unanimously see it for what it is; a romanticized sexist daydream disguised as a teenage anime romantic comedy.

Works Cited

2400 (2011). Thoughts: The Merit Scene in Ouran. [online] Midnight Express. Available at: https://2400express.wordpress.com/2011/09/11/merit-scene-ouran/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Adler, J. (2015). ‘Ouran High School Host Club’: Haruhi, Heteronormativity, and the Gender Binary | Bitch Flicks. [online] Btchflcks.com. Available at: http://www.btchflcks.com/2015/03/ouran-high-school-host-club-haruhi-heteronormativity-and-the-gender-binary.html#.W6qeFGhKjrc

Darlington, T. (2009). The Queering of Haruhi Fujioka: Cross-Dressing, Camp, and Commoner Culture in <cite> Ouran High School Host Club </cite>. [online] English.ufl.edu. Available at: http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_3/darlington/

F. Innes IV, K. (n.d.). Benio Amakusa. [online] Absolute Anime. Available at: https://www.absoluteanime.com/ouran_high_school_host_club/benio [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Hatori, B., RyoRca., Werry, J. and Caltsoudas, G. (2002). Ouran High School Host Club. Hakusensha, p.All.

Hurford, Emily. "Gender and Sexuality in Shoujo Manga: Undoing Heteronormative Expectations in Utena, Pet Shop of Horrors, and Angel Sanctuary." Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Bowling Green State University, 2009. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. 04 Oct 2018.

Lark, M. (2015). Gender roles in Ouran. [online] Themorninglark.tumblr.com. Available at: http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/post/100669214865/gender-roles-in-ouran-hey-guys-sorry-your [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Lark, M. (2015). Kyouya and that scene in the dark. [online] Themorninglark.tumblr.com. Available at: http://themorninglark.tumblr.com/post/100783759195/kyoya-and-that-scene-in-the-dark [Accessed 5 Oct. 2018].

Ogi, F. (2003). Female Subjectivity and Shoujo (Girls) Manga (Japanese Comics): Shoujo in Ladies' Comics and Young Ladies' Comics. The Journal of Popular Culture, 36(4), pp.780-803.

Ouran High School Host Club. (2006). [video] Directed by B. Hatori, T. Igarashi and Y. Enokido. Japan: Bones.

Ouran High School Host Club. (2011). [video] Directed by C. Han, Y. Tachibana and I. Natsuko. Japan: TBS.

SBS PopAsia HQ (2018). Votes are in: The top 100 greatest anime of all-time (as voted by you). [online] SBS PopAsia. Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/popasia/blog/2017/10/12/votes-are-top-100-greatest-anime-all-time-voted-you [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

SJ Party (2017). [online] Random Media Analysis Thoughts On OHSHC. Available at: http://thesjtparty.com/post/162171016890/random-media-analysis-thoughts-on-ouran-high [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (n.d.). Ambivalent sexism. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (n.d.). Anime Top 50 Most Popular - Anime News Network:W. [online] Animenewsnetwork.com. Available at: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/ratings-anime.php?top50=popular [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). the definition of benevolent sexism. [online] www.dictionary.com. Available at: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/benevolent-sexism [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). Otaku. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). Ouran High School Host Club on Crunchyroll!. [online] Crunchyroll. Available at: https://www.crunchyroll.com/ouran-high-school-host-club [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (n.d.). Renge Houshakuji. [online] Ouran High School Host Club Wiki. Available at: http://ouran.wikia.com/wiki/Renge_Houshakuji [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Unknown (2018). Stream & Watch Ouran High School Host Club Online - Sub & Dub. [online] Funimation.com. Available at: https://www.funimation.com/shows/ouran-high-school-host-club/ [Accessed 11 Oct. 2018].

Wings, S. (2018). Ouran High School Host Club’s Infamous Episode 8: A Study on Rape Culture. [online] Pixels and Panels [ A Game x Manga Blog]. Available at: https://soaringwingsblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/ouran-high-school-host-clubs-infamous-episode-8-a-study-on-rape-culture/ [Accessed 4 Oct. 2018]

[peter-egan-writing]

VIDEO GAME REVIEW: BATTLE CHEF BRIGADE (BEST OF 2017)

It’s been a great year for incredibly long games. In 2017, I’ve played at least 5 games that took me well over the 100-hour mark. In anticipation of those much longer reviews, I’ve decided to kick off my GOTY festivities with a small appetizer. An amuse-bouche, if you will. Prepare for a lot of cooking analogies. 

Battle Chef Brigade

Developer: Trinket Studios (Published by Adult Swim Games)

Platform: Switch, Windows, Mac

Platform used for review: Switch

Battle Chef’s greatest success is the way in which it uses a completely original set of gameplay mechanics to perfectly capture the feeling of its real-world analog: Iron Chef. Seriously, I tried to find a less brand-specific way to describe it, but this is ‘Iron Chef: The Game’, from the secret ingredients and celebrity judges, right down to the overly dramatic, caped chairman. 

To bring the experience of Kitchen Stadium into the lives of the average microwave jockey, first-time developer ‘Trinket Studios’ has concocted a truly inspired combination of hack n’ slash combat, resource management, and fast-paced buzzer beater strategy. Play is divided into two areas. First, the field, where you use your characters combat skills to defeat monsters and collect ingredients. Each ingredient has a specific flavor profile, made up of a combination of elemental orbs. The key to effective hunting is to know what you plan to cook ahead of time. To that end, you’ll be given a list of guidelines to follow: judges preferences, number of meals, and the ever important key ingredient. How well you follow these guidelines will have drastic effects on your scores. If the secret ingredient calls for you to take down a massive monster (a dragon or a hydra), you’ll need to prioritize battle strategy over swiftness in order to claim your prize. If the ingredient calls for a specific element, then make sure you know exactly where to go in each of the games 4 hunting areas to get as much of that element as possible. 

Once your pouch is full, you’ll return to the kitchen to cook up your plunder. Cooking is a simple Match-3 puzzle concept, where 3 matched elemental orbs of the same color combine into a richer flavor, freeing up more space on the grid to fill with even more orbs. 3 level ones match to create a level 2, and so forth. Because you choose which orbs to add when you pick your ingredients, It’s not so much a puzzle game as it is competitive inventory management. Still, you’d be surprised just how addictive it is to try and cram as much flavor as possible into a single dish. You have to make sure you’re dividing your time properly between dishes to avoid disappointing the judges, not to mention keeping each of them free of bones and poison. You’ll have a selection of signature spices you can bring in to give yourself an edge, and your cookware can give your meals added bonuses like elemental affinities or higher bonuses for longer match strings. 

Each round pits you against an AI opponent, but you hunt in separate areas and the game conceals their cooking progress until the judging portion. This means your only real enemy is the clock. You never know just how well you have to do to win the round, so you’re always bringing your A-game, always fighting the clock to add one more splash of flavor to your dishes. It's a design decision that initially frustrated me, but I’ve grown to appreciate just how ingenious it is. Still, the idea of defending your kitchen from sabotage while also trying to derail your opponents dishes could have been an interesting concept, so I’m sad to see they didn’t try to implement it. 

I was definitely pleasantly surprised to find the gameplay equally engaging, but the visuals are definitely what led me to check this game out in the first place. Garnishing the entire experience are some killer visuals, decent voice performances, and a cast of loveable and memorable characters.  The character designer really nails that western-anime ‘Legend of Korra’ look, and their takes on classic fantasy tropes like orcs and harpies are pleasantly subtle and inviting. Color choices are striking and vibrant, with bold primaries for the cast and muted tones for the backgrounds. 

Some of the character and combat animations are a little too stilted and barebones for my taste (no turning animation? what is this? Castlevania 1?). Still, they’re more than serviceable and beautifully done considering indie production limitations. I find it hard to fault a low budget game for not being able to deliver the level of polish I’ve been spoiled with, especially for their first game, but stronger art direction could have definitely helped round off those rough edges. 

I’ve shared my little nitpicks, but If I had to find any major fault with Battle Chef Brigade, I’d say that it's simply too short. What’s on offer is undeniably compelling, but it plays its hand just a little too quickly. Perhaps the team was afraid of the mechanics getting a little stale with too much iteration, which, to be honest, is probably true. That being said, I feel like there’s still a lot of room for growth here, and I’d love to see how the concept can be further fleshed out with another trip to the drawing board.

There’s a pattern to the few faults I can find in this game. See if you can spot it. All my complaints are easy fixes based on peripheral elements. Basically, what I’m saying is: SEQUEL! MAKE A SEQUEL! MAKE A BIG LONG FLESHED OUT BEAUTIFULLY ANIMATED, BIG BUDGET SEQUEL! THIS GAME WAS POPULAR ENOUGH (I think?). C’MON, TRINKET! USE YOUR FANCY NEW MONEY AND GET TO WORK MAKING THE BEST DAMN COOKING PUZZLE MONSTER HUNTING GAME YOU CAN!

...*ahem* Still, that isn’t to say whats on offer feels like a proof of concept or an unfinished experience. As much as I know this IP has room to grow, I really enjoyed what I played. It wet my appetite perfectly and left me ready for seconds. I’ll definitely be putting Trinket on my ‘Developers To Watch’ list. 

BATTLE CHEF BRIGADE (Nintendo Switch)

Final Score: B+ (Highly Recommended)

Pros: Inspired Core Gameplay, Beautiful Character Design, Room for Growth

Cons: Criminally Short, Limited Art Direction, Forgettable Soundtrack

This has been a Best of 2017 Review by Peter Egan for PeterEganWriting.com

Check back in the following weeks for more reviews and honorable mentions from the past year. 

[tokupedia]

Kamen Rider 45th Anniversary File: Decade

2009

Sing it with me now..♬ Chan-Chan-Bara Chanbara! Chan-Bara-Bara Chanbara! Samurai Sentai Shinkenjā! Appare!♬  The 33rd Super Sentai authorized by the network! Shinkenger, Goes Forth!

RPM! GET IN GEAR! Power Rangers RPM hits the airwaves on the new Disney XD channel (formerly Jetix in the US). Decreed by Disney to be the final original Power Rangers series, the company wanted to be super cheap by pulling the plug on production and re-airing old episodes next year. The franchise would then get tossed out by the Mouse House after this harebrained scheme backfires.

Fresh Pretty Cure debuts, airing alongside Decade (and Double) and Shinkenger. This season attempts to expand the Pretty Cure brand beyond its young female demographic, which would prove successful next series...

So~(I Can Fly!) Hurry!~ (You Can Fly!) Miracles!~ (We Can Fly) DRAGON CHAAAAAAARGE!~  Tomica Hero: Rescue Fire, the sequel season to Rescue Force, debuts and... sadly is the final installment of the Tomica Hero series. Among the supporting cast for the show was the man, the myth, the legend, Hiroshi Fujioka!  Tomica Hero Explosively Completed its run in 2010.

Engine Sentai Go-onger vs. Gekiranger, the 15th Sentai Vs. series entry, is upgraded from a direct to video release to a feature film. It is the first Sentai crossover put on the silver screen since JAKQ vs. Gorenger in the 1970s. This marks the first time in history that Super Sentai has more than one film in a single year and would continue from here on out.

Victory Pose! Yatter! Yatter! Yatterman, the Tasunoko late 70s anime classic, gets a live action film adaptation courtesy of film director Takashii Miike.

Ishimori Pro declares 2009 to be the “Year of Cyborg 009″ because of the franchise’s 45th anniversary. The company does special events for the occasion, such as showcase Cyborg 009 concept art, animation cels and sketches from the private archives of Shotaro Ishinomori at areas such as Akihabara and the Ishinomori Manga Museum.

Lastly, Koichi Sakamoto of Power Rangers fame sits in the directors chair on several tokusatsu projects, including the Ultra Galaxy Movie and a few Kamen Rider movies.

(2009 was a busy year!)

Kamen Rider’s home network TV Asahi was celebrating 50 years of broadcasting and the number of main Kamen Riders in the Heisei Era had reached the milestone of 10 in total. To celebrate the two momentous occasions, TV-Asahi treated fans to not one, not two, but three Kamen Riders in a single year. The first was the non-canon Kamen Rider G, the later half of the year saw Kamen Rider W, and Kamen Rider Decade was right in the middle.

Decade brought forth tropes in super hero fiction with near limitless writing possibilities: The Multiverse and the reunified continuity trope. Not only was it now possible for a Kamen Rider to have a crossover with other Riders, but the series can go to other universes such as....

crossing over with its sister series Super Sentai!

For the first time ever on TV, Kamen Rider and Super Sentai had a team-up crossover special. While JAKQ vs. Gorenger in the 1970s mentioned Kamen Rider Amazon being part of a greater universe of heroes, this was never expanded upon any further other than a quick mention/cameo image.

Often comic book fans draw parallels of this show’s story to another...

Both serve a purpose, to unify all continuity back into one single linear pathway that audiences can follow. Thus the multiple variants of stories become one sole tale in one setting. That being said, unlike many who recommend Decade as a starting series, I would advise newcomers to hold off a little until they familiarize themselves with the Heisei era a little better, as otherwise the story elements may confuse them as they will have no frame of reference going in.

Heisei Kamen Rider up to this point allowed itself to avoid continuity ties by letting each series stand on its own aside from maybe Kuuga and Agito, but even that could be a stretch. Decade is where things began to merge back together, as after this series, Riders began interacting with one another on a regular basis in movies and direct to video films. Aside from a few teases of non-canon events like the Ryuki V-Cinema and the Den-O and Kiva Movie, Toei didn’t seem too interested in doing TV or film crossovers on a grander scale until this exact year.

So... what happened that may have changed their minds?

Oh yeah, THAT happened...Marvel made it known at the end of a little movie called Iron Man they were going to do BIG crossovers. So naturally, Toei possibly followed suit (with mixed results depending on who you ask). It is just speculation, but you have to admit it is odd timing given the franchise almost avoided crossovers entirely up to this point.

This show is also the last hurrah of Rainbow Zoukei as the costume designers, as their workload had grown to insane levels. RZ was doing Super Sentai, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, prop replacement parts for Power Rangers on top of various movies and TV commercials. In order to ease the burden, the company created a secondary studio based in Tama called Blend Master to divide the workload. Rainbow Zoukei does Super Sentai and new Metal Heroes costumes/replacements while Blend Master works on Kamen Rider from Double to the present day.

Another new addition to the franchise would be the introduction of Bandai’s Legend Rider gimmick for their Ganbaride arcade video game cabinets. Rider Cards were the primordial phase of this gimmick, utilizing the powers of past heroes in the show while being something Bandai could double up in profits on. Later iterations and Ganbarizng would incorporate the electronic collectible toy trinkets in combination with the trading cards. Another staple of this series was the introduction of the Rider lexicon term “Driver” for the belts (Get it? A belt is the driving force of the super powers of a Kamen Rider.)

The biggest thing this series did though was revive the Showa Riders presence in the franchise after a long absence from TV with a story arc about visiting the non-Heisei Rider worlds, with at least one of the originals physically appearing and returning to his role:

Tetsuo Kurata as Kohtaro Minami/Kamen Rider Black and Black RX! (Parallel universes thing, complicated to explain.)

Decade is a very divisive series, some love it for upping the stakes of conflict with the fate of reality itself hanging in the balance and a war between Riders of past and present series with a super powerful rider that had a cool belt voiced by radio personality Mark Okita.

On the opposite end of fandom, some hated it for undermining their favorite Riders with what some assessed to be a Marty Stu fanfic-y character who was almost super-invincible and ultimately served as a plot device.

On the upside to fans who dislike the show, at least we got a female Rider and a meme out of it...

ONORE DECADE!

Speaking of which...KAMEN RIDE: DECADE!

“The Destroyer of Worlds, Decade. What do those eyes see as he travels through many worlds?"

(Mr. Kadoya, circa 2014 in a crossover with Kamen Rider Wizard, lookin’ like a boss.)

Real Name: Tsukasa Kadoya

As a child, Tsukasa was often alone with his sister, but soon discovered she had the ability to create trans-dimensional gateways called Dimension Walls.

Tsukasa ran off into one of them one day and in his later years, came into contact with Dai-Shocker, a revived amalgamation of all the past villains the Kamen Riders had ever faced. They tricked him into playing the role of their Great Leader (which a teen Tsukasa thought was a “fun idea” at the time) and later offered him a new weapon to test out: The Decadriver. The belt device was the intense labor of Dai-Shocker scientists who HATED the Kamen Riders. The Decadriver could duplicate and surpass the powers of all Kamen Riders to obliterate them once and for all or use them as lifeless tools to enhance the Decade system. Tsukasa tested them out, but this ended badly for him as the overwhelming shock of crossing multiple universes all at once caused mental trauma that wiped his memories away. The Decadriver was somehow left hidden and abandoned in an unspecified alternate Earth.

Cut to 2009 and an amnesiac Tsukasa is on an Earth working as a photographer for the Hikari family. Natsumi Hikari is having strange nightmares about a figure who kills all the Kamen Riders in a great war, enveloped in a magenta light. Strange things then start happening as random unexplained catastrophes occur such as monsters appearing from silvery walls and people being randomly teleported to unfamiliar locations and slaughtered by more monsters.

As this happens, a familiar face appears to Tsukasa: Wataru Kurenai aka Kamen Rider Kiva who asks him where his “buckle and cards” are and that this “world will end if he doesn’t do something“. Tsukasa at first does not understand and is confused by all this, but Natsumi later finds the belt and gives it to him when she is being attacked by some Worms. Tsukasa transforms into a new Kamen Rider and then remembers how to fight, using the powers of past Kamen Riders to defeat waves of monsters effortlessly.

Once Wataru and the other Kamen Riders freeze the world in place with their combined powers to prevent further destruction, the veteran Rider explains to Tsukasa that the parallel worlds of Kamen Riders are merging due to an outside force and will destroy all of existence if it isn’t stopped.

To that end, Tsukasa as Kamen Rider Decade must go to the 9 Worlds and destroy the nine Kamen Riders of those worlds to preserve the Prime universe. Wataru laments that creation cannot come without destroying something and promises to hold the world in place for as long as he can with his comrades until Decade “fixes” the multiverse.

Decade ends up doing the exact opposite after befriending the Riders and connecting their stories. This at first did not sit well with the Prime Universe Kamen Riders and they attacked Decade to preserve their existence and those of their loved ones, thus the Rider War began.

But by being a destroyer and connecting with heroes, Decade did find a way eventually to save everyone. Tsukasa now spends his days traveling across space and time, exploring new parallel worlds and helping those in need in his own unique way.

(As many Rider Scouts will tell you: This one idea has massive fanfiction potential as Decade could have visited any number of universes of beloved franchises along his journey: Marvel, DC, Image, Transformers, Doctor Who, Star Trek etc.)

In one non-canon moment of a video game, an enemy called him the Destroyer of Worlds. Decade then casually responded that he is “retired” from that role. Even in Kamen Rider Taisen (*ugh*) any mention of this title seems to annoy/upset Tsukasa, as he feels he is beyond that part of his life.

Powers:

Decade can become invisible, make copies of himself, has expert markmanship and sword skill, enhanced strength and has the ability to travel across dimensions to parallel Earths.

Decade’s signature ability is for his Rider System to analyze an opponent and if it is a Kamen Rider, copy its data for Decade to assume the powers, weapons and forms himself in the form of Rider Cards. The Rider Cards can also upgrade/seize a Kamen Rider into a new form dubbed as a “Final Form Ride”, transforming them to act as a support such as a new power, a vehicle, a weapon or a device such as enhanced armor.

Decade himself can Final Form Ride into a giant sized version of the Decadriver for Kamen Rider J to wear and he assumes control of Kouji’s body as a giant sized Decade. Decade can obtain the power of Kamen Riders through cards in one of two ways, the first is the Magic of Friendship and the other is straight up beating them to near death and sealing the weakened Rider in a card in a manner somewhat similar to the Blade System with the Undead. Decade prefers option one, but in a rare instance used the second one as circumstances forced him to.

The Decadriver is also compatible with other card systems such as the Gosei Cards from the Goseigers and the Decadriver is shown it can utilize Super Sentai weapon Rider Cards.

Using some kind of construct projector somewhat akin to ZX’s Virtual Image Projection Unit, Decade can assume the form of ANY Kamen Rider. (As confirmed by recent toys, Decade can go up to Kamen Rider Drive currently. But Ghost and Ex-Aid are likely part of his card deck by now). Upon tinkering with it apparently, the Decadriver can holographically disguise itself as another Rider Belt (such as 1′s Typhoon) and through a voice modulator, Decade can fully impersonate a Kamen Rider for stealth/infiltration missions. This image projection is enhanced even further in Complete Form, as Kamen Riders in their ultimate forms appear on command and seemingly mimic Decade’s movements like a shadow for a double final form Rider Finisher.

In his more deadly Violent Emotion mode, Decade can obtain and use any power of a Kamen Rider automatically, even sometimes without the use of the cards and no form change needed. He is seemingly so powerful in this mode that almost no Kamen Rider can stop him and his Rider Kick pretty much becomes a human seeker missile (As shown when he chased down Skyrider in the air and kicked him, turning the airborne 8th Rider into a falling fireball.)  Complete Form can summon the powers of the Heisei Rider’s ultimate forms and utilize their Rider cards in those forms to enhance Complete form further.

Tsukasa as a human is bestowed with new skills in every world he visits to serve whatever purpose the multiverse needs him for. (Ex. knowing the Gurongi language)

Weaknesses:

Decade, much like the the future Gokaigers who would adopt his same power copy gimmick, is not all powerful on his own in base form and can be beaten in some instances. (Blade in King Form gave Decade quite the beatdown once with just one slash of his sword)  This is more to showcase that Decade on his own is neither stronger or weaker than any previous or succeeding Rider in base form and through the comradery of his fellow Riders sharing their strength with him, he can become the strongest of all of them.

His Rider Cards at first had a one use limit, it is uncertain if this still applies in some capacity. When the cards were used they would seal away the powers selected until they were activated again after gaining a Rider’s trust. Some universes disrupted or negated his power such as the World of Negatives, which rendered all his cards useless until he upgraded to Complete Form.

His Rider Belt is basically a big bullseye, as stabbing or damaging the Decadriver at close range will shut down the device and de-power Decade. Though if the first episode is any indication, dimension wall energy can automatically repair the belt. Still, like most modern belts which are not surgically attached to the Rider, Tsukasa could have the Decadriver knocked away from him or he could lose it.

The Decade system was designed to defeat Kamen Riders, thus other superheroes are immune to the copying of powers on some level. (though this does not guarantee opposing sides victory).

Kamen Riders sometimes had a bit of animosity towards Decade given his reputation and even after the Rider War, some view him akin to a Nuclear Option, as in someone who should only be called upon in a crisis or as an absolute last resort. Like Kuuga, Agito and Kiva, Decade has a dangerous side to the power he wields that could end all life..well..everywhere, especially if he succumbs to his darker impulses such as with using Violent Emotion mode.

Gear:

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Decadriver

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Rider_Cards

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Ride_Booker

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Machine_Decader

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Kamen_Terminal_K-Touch

Signature Finishers:

Dimension Blast: Using the Final Attack Ride: Decade Card, Decade uses the Ride Booker in Gun mode to fire a charged shot

Dimension Slash: Using the Final Attack Ride: Decade Card, Decade uses the Rider Booker in Sword Mode and executes an energy charged Rider slash.

Dimension Kick: Decade’s Rider Kick which is executed using the Final Attack Ride:Decade Card. Variants include the Enhanced Dimension Kick in Complete Form which utilizes the power of the 9 Heisei Riders in conjunction with his own power and the Final Dimension Kick which after using the FinalKamenAttackForm Ride Card, turns all the Kamen Riders into Kamen Ride cards that Decade flies through to enhance his kick to maximum power.

Enemies:

Dai-Shocker

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Dai-Shocker

Dai-Shocker is a supergroup of past Kamen Rider Villains from various parallel Earths who scour the multiverse to find like-minded individuals to convert/recruit into their army for one ultimate goal: Total conquest, subjugation and absolute rule of the entire multiverse and creation itself!

Out of all incarnations of Shocker, that is a pretty ambitious goal for evil and difficult considering that Kamen Riders exist on other worlds as well as other superheroes who stand in their way. Tsukasa was once their Great Leader, but turned against them and the organization had been crippled and splintered into various forms such as Super Shocker and Space Shocker, but manages to revive at least once.

Narutaki

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Narutaki

Nobody knows what his deal is, but he has a wide array of powers including the ability to create Dimension Walls, summon evil Kamen Riders or monsters and assumes the form of past Generals such as Colonel Zol of Shocker. He hates Decade for some reason and sees himself as a prophet of the Rider’s nature as a destroyer, warning other heroic Riders to try and stop him. He does flip-flop his allegiance at times.

Some fans have theorized he is an incarnation of the real Great Leader, while a still of the pre-production film shots of what would become Decade: Final Chapter gave a bombshell to his possible identity:

That pink camera is Tsukasa’s..so some speculate from this image that he is an older Tsukasa from an alternate reality.....

Sadly due to unknown legal issues and production delays, this plot was tossed out along with several other story ideas. So Narutaki’s identity and purpose for antagonizing Decade is never explained and his character was taken to a...very weird direction...

All we can say to those good stories and his identity not being told to us is...

ONORE DECADE!

Now we must go on the road to another Rider’s world.... til next time...

[smartphone-science]

In this inaugural instalment of the Stand Series, I will turn Galen into a JoJo stand master and assess his character and abilities.

They say everything is a JoJo reference. Well, is it? As a tired and lazy biologist I can confirm this to be true and scientific. Which is why I’ll devote some time to recast my favourite person from the history of medicine — Galen — as a JoJo stand master. But before we start we all need to be on common ground, lest we stand on a shaky one.

The cultural juggernaut that is JoJo has enjoyed a new burst of vitality thanks to the internet, where the four-letters exist in ubiquity. It is found in almost all online pages, forums, and comment sections: YouTube, Twitter, your nan’s Facebook profile picture, Egypt, a Bible quote, you name it. Nothing is safe from JoJo. But despite the massive popularity, there is still work to be done in spreading its gospel, for many have yet to encounter JoJo or have wilfully ignored its existence. So to acquaint those who are still unfamiliar, let us first ask: What is JoJo, what is a stand, and what is a stand master?

The Peculiar Escapades of JoJo

JoJo is shorthand for the Japanese manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険) that first burst into the scene in 1987. It is the brainchild of the vampire mangaka Hirohiko Araki. Like the youth bestowed upon him by fresh blood, JoJo retains its vitality even to this day, as it is on its 8th iteration. On the third part of JoJo, Stardust Crusaders, Araki introduced a new feature that would eventually become a major part of what makes JoJo JoJo: stands.

Stands in JoJo are manifestations of a stand master’s will, spirit, and mind. As such they take various and unique forms depending on a stand master’s overall character. There are humanoid stands. Some are microscopic. Sometimes stands attach themselves to things like hair and, of all things, a transmission tower. They come out when summoned or after certain triggers are met (the stand Notorious B.I.G. is activated once its user is dead). When stands first graced the pages of JoJo, they took the names of Tarot cards. But come part four, Diamond is Unbreakable, Araki decided to share his playlist with the world by naming the stands after musical references.

Let’s have an example: Kishibe Rohan’s relationship with his stand Heaven’s Door (named after the Bob Dylan original Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door). In JoJo, Rohan is a mangaka like Araki and also a very popular one at that. Heaven’s Door gives Rohan an extreme edge in his craft as it grants him supernatural artistic powers. But more than that, Rohan can also use Heaven’s Door on people to gain advantage over them. Heaven’s Door turns people it acts upon into books, which it can then edit: Rohan can have Heaven’s Door erase certain passages which will greatly affect the person’s life, like delete the life event “luckily dodged a speeding baseball to the head”, or write commands that have to be fulfilled. A very artistic and poignant depiction of how editors can decide whether you’ll be able to pay this month’s rent or enjoy another healthy week of forced diet and fasting. Araki hits hard with the social commentary.

Here is a scientific presentation of how stands work in a controlled environment:

Taking a Stand

Good. We’re now standing on a more or less even level. Thus, it is time to move on to our main objective: to imagine Galen as a JoJo stand master. (If you don’t know much about Galen, please read The Life of Galen and His Importance to Medicine.)

To at least have the semblance of organisation and order, this discussion will be divided into three sections:

What will his stand be like and what will be its name?

How did he get his stand?

What powers does it have and confer to Galen?

Ready? On to the first part.

The Pulse of Dreams

When someone tells you that you have to do this or that because they dreamt of it, the only formal responses are aggressive rebuke and rejection. However, if someone instructs you to watch JoJo because they had a nightmare about you not seeing it, then you better get started immediately.

Dreams are important in Galen’s story and career. Not in the token “talent” show trope where X dreams of being an astronaut so they decided to pick up the guitar and wow the world with ballet. It was a dream that led Galen down the medical career path. Though it wasn’t him that did the dreaming, but his father, Nicon. And it was all because of a deity who saw potential and promise in Galen – which Nicon had to know about it, immediately! But how do gods communicate with mortals? By their usual means, of course: being spooky. From their jumping board in heaven, the deity dived deep and swam in Nicon’s dream.

The impeccable intruder was no other than the Greek god of healing himself, Asclepius. The god made Nicon dream of Galen as world-class doctor which implied that this would truly happen if Nicon sets his son’s career direction that way. The next morning, Galen’s life took a major turn.

The rest, they say, is history.

But does history really tell us what’s real? I kid, of course, because history doesn’t. If it did, then we would have known Galen’s stand by now. So let us teach these so-called “historians΅ and show them what real history is all about.

The visitation of Asclepius is an event reminiscent of the angel Gabriel telling Mary about her divine pregnancy. Both are full of religious significance and extremely creepy. In this light, the spiritual patron of Galen, or his guardian angel, is Asclepius. Therefore, as a character in JoJo, Galen is the stand master of a familiar moulded like Asclepius (visual representation below). A humanoid stand that that follows the form of Hellenic statues. An important detail: one prominent feature found in depictions of Asclepius is his famous stick, the Rod of Asclepius — a piece of wood with a snake coiled around it.

Job done and on to the next chapter, right? Not so fast. Asclepius is only the form. We still need a stand name. For that we need to find a musical reference that best describes Galen in one way or another.

Galen was ahead of the flock thanks to his treasury of knowledge and carefully cultivated skills. Such talents and gifts lent him extraordinary powers in healing. Foremost was his diagnostic precision in reading pulses. That’s right: no stethoscopes needed — give him your hand, show him your neck, whatever, just let him feel your pulse. Congratulations, you have malaria.

This impressive ability was one of Galen’s principal techniques and it led him to correct judgements all of the time (according to him). From correctly diagnosing the emperor Marcus Aurelius, a lovesick woman, and his feverish friend, Galen’s pulse-reading skills saved many and as such were unmatched. In fact, Galen said that other doctors didn’t know how to do it correctly. In On Prognosis he writes:

“They consider a pulse that is not large to be large, or sometimes one that is not swift to be swift, or one that is not slow to be slow.”

What this means is simple: in the context of healing, Galen had an inner ear so sensitive able pick out even the most subtle information from pulses and beats. An inner metronome that enabled him to keep time, understand time, and know what time was trying to say. In a way, Galen’s connection with beats and pulses helped people stay alive. And his stand is exactly that, 『Stayin’ Alive』, the BeeGees song used in medical emergencies to help medics perform CPR for its beats/minute ratio. It is also remarkably relevant to Galen’s profession as a doctor.

Now that we’ve come up with a stand form and name, we can already make a JoJo stand master sheet for Galen. This is how it goes:

How Galen Became a JoJo Stand Master

People don’t just become stand masters in JoJo. In the series, stands are acquired after getting scraped or hit by stand arrows. A little history of the stand arrows is thus necessary.

In JoJo lore, the stand arrows carry a virus. This virus is the agent that confers stand abilities to anyone who comes into contact with it. However, in the event that the individual struck by the arrow isn’t fit or strong enough to host the virus, they die. Only those seen “worthy” by the virus live and gain powers.

But where do these arrows and virus come from, anyway? I’m glad you asked.

Tens and thousands of years ago, when Araki was still a baby, a meteorite landed on what is now Cape Town, Greenland. Fragments of this meteor borne the galactic virus that would later infect human beings. A 1978 expedition to the crash site took a turn for the nasty when two of the researchers who came close to the meteorite fragments grew horrible blisters. They both died.

Later investigations of the meteorite samples found a virus unknown to the scientific world.

Putting the clues together, we can easily arrive at this conclusion:

We now know the properties of the main material used to make the arrows. The question now is: who made them?

Even before 1978, word of the curious Greenland crater had already spread to mystics and geology aficionados far and wide. Unfortunately, it also reached the ears of those lustful of power. So, “centuries ago”, a trip was commissioned to gather pieces of the meteorite. The recovered shards were then fashioned into arrows.

Nice and good. But how does this all tie-in with Galen’s story?

This is the tricky bit, and we’ll need to rely on informed speculation to arrive at a possible scenario.

The Romans never reached Greenland, nor were they aware of its existence. Thus, a Roman origin for stand arrows is disqualified. The most plausible scenario that we’re left with, given the nature of the virus carriers and Galen’s history, is this: the meteorite in Greenland is just a fragment of a meteor that disintegrated into many splinters as it approached earth, landing on many locations.

If this were true, then there are still many undiscovered and undisclosed locations where the virus lives in silence, biding its time, waiting for me to recover them so it can give me the stand powers that will make me the ultimate being on ear. . . As we need a conjecture close to truth, we need the aid of science. Fortunately, geology is very willing to aid us in our investigation.

James Brennan, a geologist from the University of Toronto, has an interesting suggestion for us. The earth has a rich medley of minerals deposited in its soil, sediments, and stones. But no one knows exactly why and conditions on earth should have made this diversity impossible. “The extreme temperature at which the Earth’s core formed more than four billion years ago would have completely stripped any precious metals from the rocky crust and deposited them in the core.” Who was it, then, that introduced variegated minerals on earth’s anaemic and boring surface?

Brennan has a culprit in mind: cosmic criminals. “Our results indicate that they could not have ended up there by any known internal process, and instead must have been added back, likely by a ‘rain’ of extraterrestrial debris, such as comets and meteorites.”

This all makes sense in the context of conferring powers. After all, many of our species’ oldest civilisations were built on stones and rocks. Didn’t the Egyptians house their forever lethargic rulers in triangular stacks of stones? If this example gives you the impression that death is the only way to access the power of stones, then wait a minute. That’s not exactly the truth. Some living people are welcomed into unknown states of consciousness after being stoned. Effects of the virus, maybe? But that’s not all. Even god himself decided to write his basic rules on two slabs on stones. Not to be outdone by his father, Jesus followed this hardened trend and built his church on some rock called Peter.

It is highly probable that Galen accidentally cut himself with these virus-carrying space stones when he collected mineral recipes for his medicinal drugs. Before coming to Rome for the first time, he made brief stopovers to visit pharmacies, merchants, caravans, and mines. In Cyprus, he was able to recover “a lot of kadmeia, diphryges, spodion, pompholyx, copper ore” (On Antidotes). Some of these he could have bought. Others may have been gifted to him. But some he likely retrieved himself. Galen entered the mines to personally look for the right minerals. In On the Mixtures and Powers of Simple Drugs he says that one of the mines in Soli was so foul that “the smell of the air seemed stifling and difficult to bear, smelling of copper and verdigris.”

This insistence and drive just to get the best possible materials for his medicines show a character that would have been seen as worthy by the virus. This last bit of conjecture completes our highly plausible origin for his stand: A freak accident with sharp-edged alien minerals infected Galen and granted him command of 『Stayin’ Alive』.

Striking the Perfect Imbalance

The addition or removal of something in a substance can lead to drastically different outcomes. The French language provides a perfect example of this: if you swallow poison, you die; but if you ingest poisson, chances are you get full and healthy — because poisson is fish in French.

This is one power of 『Stayin’ Alive』. Galen was known to frequently use phlebotomy in his treatments, so he was quite willing to remove a litre of blood whenever he thought his patients needed it. But this can be quite dangerous when left at the hands of amateurs. If done correctly, it can do wonders, well, again, according to Galen. The logic behind it is simple: to return the body to its natural balance. Put in other words, too much blood will kill you just as sure as none at all.

When in close proximity, Galen can use 『Stayin’ Alive』to violate the volume of one’s blood. As an offensive move, this can give his opponents various health problems. 『Stayin’ Alive』can remove so much blood that the person can die from hypovolemic shock. Or he can leave them in a state of such depletion that his opponents are weakened. This happens because there is little blood to transport oxygen to the trillions of cells in the human body. Mitochondria inside cells are unable to perform their activities because they require oxygen for aerobic respiration. Cells, tissues, and organs start to fail and collapse. Galen, as the master of this JoJo stand, has the potential to be a brutal foe, but he is largely handicapped by its short offensive range (maybe around 2 metres).

As the JoJo stand master of 『Stayin’ Alive』, Galen can cause serious problems and even death by draining his enemies’ blood.

Consequently, 『Stayin’ Alive』can also be a force for good and healing. People in drastic need of blood can be brought back to good health by『Stayin’ Alive』 with its ability to magically supply them with a fresh litre or two.

In health, an excess of one thing can also be as life-threatening as the lack of it. While potassium is integral in keeping your motor organs functional, the surplus of it can also spell your inaction as it can kill you. Hyperkalemia, the condition of having too much potassium in the blood, can lead to renal failure, the shutdown of your kidneys. I kid you not. This describes the offensive capability found in the power of『Stayin’ Alive』to supply people with blood. What about it, specifically? He can go beyond people’s average blood volume.

Certain complications can arise when the body has too much blood. One example: cancer.

Galen can coax the person’s bone marrows to go on a rampage and produce an overabundance of blood. This is the opening riff of the famous cancer called leukaemia, where the body forms much too many white blood cells than necessary. In a normal day, white blood cells fight off pathogens to keep the body healthy. They also retire fairly regularly to let newer defenders save the body. However, when problems in the bone marrow occur, abnormal white blood cells are produced – variants that live far longer than prescribed. A more economic situation, perhaps? Nope. Not at all. Their longevity isn’t something to celebrate. It’s tempting to think of it as a positive because we’ll have longer lasting defences. But these abnormally produced white blood cells are lazy and just want to hang out. They then continue to increase in number quickly, which is illegal in many bodies. As these delinquents grow exponentially, they occupy much needed space —space where other normal cells should be. Ever had that feeling when you really needed to go to the loo but a bunch of vagrants blocked your entry? That’s how certain cells feel when leukaemia is around.

The other components of blood, platelets, can also be a cause for concern. Platelets mainly function as a clotting agent. Best to think of them as plumbers: Platelets are plumbers. Sounds right. But why? When a blood vessel or part of the skin is opened, blood comes out – a fact conclusively demonstrated by many films. Platelets rush to the scene of injury to close the wound by forming a clot. The same way a plumber rescues the day by fixing a leaky faucet.

Problem is, when there’s too many platelets, they can clot anytime anywhere even when not needed. A certain disagreeable lunch may convince the lot of them to clog and clot a certain artery. Imagine if it were on your birthday. Remember when old folks said to never ever overfill your plates? They might have missed a suffix in their warning. Here comes Galen, your plates let him decide the outcome of your life. This is what doctors call thrombocytosis.

The above ability makes Galen an elite offensive JoJo stand master. In the right range, he can inflict serious and fatal damage. He can also heal himself and others when necessary. This is all well and good, but we have left one area of his character wanting. We have yet to discuss his defensive attributes.

With Asclepius’ protection, it’s safe to say that Galen is automatically immune from all forms of diseases and ailments, rendering one of the most powerful stands in the franchise, Pannacotta Fugo’s Purple Haze, quite weak. So the only way to defeat him would be to strike an instant lethal blow. However, this won’t be as easy as typing it makes it out to be. Remember Asclepius’ rod and Galen’s superlative ability to read pulses? Using the rod of Asclepius,『Stayin’ Alive』can read any major and minute pulses on the ground to detect incoming danger, thus giving Galen much needed time to escape and information on what to avoid. A detection range of 20 metres sounds about right. The snake coiled around it can also pick up chemicals from the air as information of an enemy’s whereabouts and profile, which can be used for either defence and offence – but as the snake needs to stay coiled around the rod, it is mainly defensive in purpose.

『Stayin’ Alive』doing his best JoJo pose.

In conclusion, while Galen doesn’t necessarily have the grit and toughness to endure a dropkick to the head by boots with metal soles, he possesses the ability that grants him the advantage of avoiding such an encounter. As they say in medicine, prevention is better than cure.

That pretty much sums up Galen as a JoJo stand master. What do you think? Do you think he would’ve been a formidable foe in JoJo? Do you think he would have been a perfect ally for the Joestar gang? What do you think of 『Stayin’ Alive』? Is it too weak or too strong? Maybe you know another stand candidate from the history of medicine that you’d like me to write about? Let me know in the comments below or contact me!

If there is any health lesson that I want you to take away from this, it’s this: moderation is key. Stay healthy — eat your poisson and avoid poison! Ari, ari, ari, ari, ari, arrviderci!

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