#i know I have a couple of odd songs from things like shows or cartoon bumpers in my playlist (i got whats new scooby doo on there)

[mokeonn]

I think the frustrating thing about Spotify recommendations is sometimes it really does introduce me to lots of cool Indie Bands that I really vibe with and allow me to try some new stuff and sometimes it keeps telling me that I need to Listen to Mother Mother (I have not listened to Mother Mother ever and at this point I never will because it is a pride thing.)

Or a random unfunny tiktok joke song from 3 years ago/ a viral YouTube song from over a decade ago.

[survey--s]

462.

Are you a dreamer or a do-er? Both but overall I’d say I’m probably more a do-er as I’m quite a practical person.

Do you think people get what they deserve? Some people do, others definitely don’t. It’s just random.

Does it take a lot of physical pain to make you cry? I don’t often cry from physical pain, normally the shock of being injured iyswim. Like I fell of Stanley and although my arm hurt that wasn’t what made me cry, it was just the bang and the shock of what happened.

Name the strangest game you’ve ever played (video game or real game): I have no idea.

Do you like sitting in the front, back, or middle of the classroom? Middle.

Do you ever see commercials for restaurants that aren’t even in your area? Yeah, Facebook is full of adverts for really nice places to eat and none of them are ever anywhere near me lol.

Do you know anyone who has been struck by lightning before? No.  Which is better: living where there’s lots of tornadoes or lots of hurricanes? I’d probably prefer hurricanes overall, but we don’t experience either where I live.

Would you pay if your dog needed an operation? That’s what insurance is for. 

If you’re a girl, what’s your favorite color of eyeliner? I never wear eyeliner anymore but why is that something unique to girls?

Have you ever overflown a bathtub? No. 

Why did you ignore the last person you ignored? Because it was 9pm on a Friday night and I wasn’t getting into a work-related call at that time of day.

What’s your favorite pizza place? A local place called The Sourdough Pizza Co.

What’s at the top of your to do list in life? At the moment, it’s to ride up a local mountain on horseback - I won’t manage it this year but I’m hoping to get it done next summer. Do you ever eat leftover pizza cold? Yeah, TBH American-style pizza is definitely better cold.

Where are you the most ticklish? My feet.

Would you put your life in danger to rescue someone? Nobody can answer this until they’re actually in that position - it’s so easy to sit there at home and say “well duh, who wouldn’t?” but the truth is you never know how you’ll react and the bystander effect is a real thing. When you’re wanting a midnight snack, what do you normally get? Popcorn, leftovers or maybe some chocolate.

Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Snoopy! Or Stich.

Do you like marshmallows? They’re nice enough but they’re not my absolute favourite thing.

What is your favorite flavor of candy cane? Just the regular Peppermint ones.

Do you have any shoeboxes full of old photos/letters/other memorable stuff? No.

When was the last time you felt seriously embarrassed? I have no idea.

Have you ever liked a song, looked up the lyrics to it, then hated it? No.

What’s your favorite Christmas song? Fairytale of New York.

Did you like the show Invader Zim? I’ve never seen it.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen in a grocery store? Live lobsters, horse meat.

Do you prefer to pull off band-aids slowly or quickly? Slowly.

Have you ever met any bands/band members before? Yeah, a few, but nobody really famous or anything like that.

Do you enjoy riding around town looking at Christmas lights? I used to absolutely love doing that as a kid but it’s not something I’d really do now unless I was walking the dog anyway.

What states have you been to in the past year? I’ve not left my county since COVID lol.

Have you ever sleepwalked? No.

What’s your favorite superhero movie? I’m not into superheroes.

Do you struggle with acne? No, thankfully not. I get the odd spot around my period or if I’m really run down, but otherwise I’m good these days.

Around what year did you start using the internet, anyways? We had dial-up at home from when I was about ten and then we got broadband a couple of years later. I started using the internet regularly when I was about 12 or 13 and I got my own computer for the first time.

What did you do for your 16th birthday? Went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant with a bunch of friends.

Have you ever fostered an animal? No. I’d never want to give them back lol.

What’s your favorite form of exercise? Riding or dog walking. Do you have a back pack in a shape of an animal? No. Those never appealed to me, even as a kid. <--- same.

Do you still take hot showers when it’s hot out? Not really hot ones, they’re more lukewarm in the summer months.

What’s your favorite type of cake? Cheesecake!

Name something you thought was cool when you were younger but don’t now? Emo music, lol.

What was the last song you downloaded onto your computer? Just the photo that’s at the top of this survey.

What color are your headphones, if you have any? I have one white pair and a black pair.

Do you honestly like The Beatles or are you just conforming? I love the Beatles. I grew up listening to them as my dad is a huge fan - see also Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix and Everything But the Girl.

What was the last video message you received on your phone? It was a video from Suzanne of Charlie being adorable, lol.

Who did you last talk to in Facebook chat? Emma.

When writing $ sign, do you draw one line through the S or two? I never really need to write the dollar sign.

Do you feel bad for people your age who have never had a significant other? Only if they want to be in a relationship and have never had the chance. < Yeah. <--- this. Not everyone is interested in a relationship.

When do you plan on moving out? If you’re already moved out, how old were you? I moved in/out of my parents house at various points through my late teens and twenties, but I left for good at 28.

Would you kiss the last person you texted? No.

What do you think of guys wearing colored skinny jeans?  People can wear whatever they want.

Where do you normally get your hair cut? I do it myself.

Would you trade last names with your best friend? We’re already married and share a last name, lol.

Would you ever get blonde highlights? Sure, I had blonde highlights for years when I was younger. I love the look but it’s expensive and takes forever.

Will you go to your high school reunion? Never in a million years would I ever go back there lol.

Have you stayed up past 3 in the morning this week? Nope.

Do you ever not speak to someone because you’re afraid you’ll annoy them? Yeah, sometimes.

Personally, do you think you have a nice smile? It’s not horrible, it’s just awkward and never looks genuine lol.

What animal have you always wanted as a pet but couldn’t have? A sugar glider!

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Legend of Vox Machina: The Terror of Tal'dorei Part 1/Part 2 (1x01/02)

I've decided to break this sucker up, reviewing the two-part premiere and then moving on to episode three in a separate review.

Let's just start by screaming: OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY HERE!!! Also, if anyone actually bothers to read this and you are not familiar with the stream, warning for some spoilers as to characterization and future relationships developing between various members of the party. And then let's dive right into my thoughts!

Cons:

While ultimately I am very, very pleased with what I've seen of the show so far, as is tradition I will start off with my personal gripes.

My biggest complaint? Well, the humor, honestly. It's odd, because I think the first couple of scenes of the first episode had a lot of weaknesses that then mostly disappeared from the second half, and from the second episode entirely. The show was front-loaded with so much adult humor that felt to me almost... self-conscious? Like the show was posturing a bit too hard, trying to set its tone so you wouldn't mistake it for a kid's cartoon. And that's all well and good, but for me it felt a bit jarring. In the first ten minutes of the first episode, we get plenty of swearing and the gruesome deaths of the generic opening adventuring party... fine. But we also get Keyleth throwing up directly into someone's mouth, which is disgusting, we get a shot of Scanlan's balls, we get Scanlan peeing directly onto a man's legs... I don't know. Does anyone else think some of this stuff was a little try-hard? For me, the moments of comedy that did work were a lot more subtle and character-driven, and I'll talk about that later.

As far as larger missteps, honestly? Scanlan's intro song was a mistake and shouldn't have been there. I think Scanlan's other musical interludes work really well, they stick out as being tonally inconsistent with the rest of the music in the show but in a good way, they make him shine and they certainly haven't toned Scanlan down to make him more palatable to a general audience, which I am all in favor of. But the one moment that stood out to me was him breaking into a rap to introduce himself during the intro song at the palace. That... was cringey to me and not in the way I think the episode intended. I was wincing while it was happening. I couldn't help but think that a better joke would have been if he'd introduced all the other characters very briefly and then just started bloviating about himself, going on and on and on until someone interrupted him and brought his focus back. Same joke, but without the jarring hip hop moment.

There were one or two more awkward moments in the animation. The dragon looked really cool in some spots, but I think they were using a 3-D model at certain times that didn't gel quite right with the 2-D character animation? I know absolutely nothing about this, but I was picking up some strangeness. Could be a budget thing. It wasn't anywhere near bad, it just was distracting enough to the eye that I thought I'd mention it.

There was also just the stuff that was unpleasant to look at with my eyeballs, like the animation of Keyleth throwing up on like three separate occasions, all this brown sludge everywhere. No thanks. Also, I really liked the stuff with Gilmore and Vax (more on that later) but there was this weird moment right at the start of the scene where he came forward to hug him and Vax just... didn't hug him back at all? It unintentionally read that Vax was uncomfortable with Gilmore touching him, which was not the vibe that the rest of the scene had at all, so I thought it was a weird choice that Vax's hand didn't come up to wrap around Gilmore in that moment. Am I nitpicking? Yes. But it's Shaun Gilmore, what do you want from me?

Let's talk about the supporting characters. It's not necessarily a big issue, as I'm sure we'll be getting more of them later, but Allura and Kima sure didn't have personalities here, did they? It makes sense in a two-part opener that needs to establish seven leads, make sure you know who key side characters are (particularly General Krieg and Sovereign Uriel Tal'Dorei), etc. I'm not going to dock points because Kima and Allura didn't get a bunch of attention, but I just wanted to note that in a show that looks very standard-fantasy-fare but then has a lot more going on underneath the surface, Allura and Kima felt like the most standard-fantasy-fare of all, with nothing much to set them apart.

I want to add one more thing to the "cons" section here before I commence with the gushing, but really it's not so much a complaint as it is a question. There are seven main characters in this sucker. And in this two-part opener, there are several important secondary characters that need to get their due. In order to introduce everyone, you kind of have to strip them down and show a few key aspects of who they are, get the audience on board and help them to tell everyone apart. So there's bound to be some flattening/simplification. I was really impressed overall with how quickly everyone was established: Vax is a bisexual disaster, he's also sneaky and cool-but-not-too-cool. Percy is aloof and superior. Grog is a loveable dumbass but you don't want to get on his bad side. Keyleth is insecure about her magic. Pike is the moral center, the cleric going through a crisis of faith, doubting her relationship with her god.

But wait a minute. For those who watched the original campaign, did you catch that last part? Keyleth is insecure, and Pike is the moral center? Um... Keyleth is Vox Machina's moral center, their conscience, the one who is constantly questioning what they're doing and their impact on the world around them. When Pike says that stuff at the beginning where she wonders if they should try doing some good, after they get kicked out of the bar, I found myself narrowing my eyes. Like, hey, isn't that Keyleth's line? Similarly, Keyleth then wonders why the group is even staying together, what their purpose was... I found myself thinking, hey, shouldn't that be Pike's line? Pike is the one who has this convenient metaphor in the form of a godly talisman around her neck, that links her to a god and intermittently helps her in times of need, and lets her down in other key moments. Shouldn't she be the one doubting purpose, while Keyleth is the one trying to steer the group's values?

The reason I bring this up here, when we have so little to go on, is that I would hate for Pike to get Keyleth's trait of "the group's moral center". I think it flattens both Keyleth and Pike in uncomfortable ways. Kiki is so much more than just insecure about her own abilities and her own place in the world. And Pike is so much more than the kind, sweet healer who always wants to do what's best. Again, as I said, this isn't a complaint about what we've seen so far, necessarily, but more of a questioning, a worry about how this is going to manifest as we keep the show going. There's so much setup in these first episodes, and I was bound to notice a few simplifications and shortcuts that didn't quite land for me.

Pros:

Oh boy, you guys. I'm just so entirely thrilled that this show exists, and even if it was FAR less impressive than it turned out to be, I'd still be so happy that it all happened. And let me tell you... I am pretty damn impressed overall!

As I said above, really my least favorite aspects of the show were front-loaded into the first ten minutes. Maybe that doesn't bode well for trying to get new viewers hooked, but for someone like me who was always going to stick around to see everything, it meant that I got to be slightly worried for a few minutes that it wasn't going to click, and then increasingly impressed with everything that happened after. I was smiling through so many moments of this show, and I want to start with the bar fight at the start, because despite my issues with some of the humor and tone setting, discussed above, I also think this bar fight set up one of the coolest aspects of the show for me thus far, and one that is an added element that didn't happen as much during the stream. That being: the character arc of Vox Machina as a collective.

Let me explain. In the stream, this party had years of home games, not to mention the entire Underdark and Slayer's Take arcs to establish their team dynamics. By the time Percy is dropping his backstory lore, Vox Machina are pretty dang ride or die for each other, and we've already seen them working out most of the kinks in their dynamics. Sure, a roll of the dice or pressure during combat can still make for mistakes and chaos, but within the logic of the story, they're in many ways a well-oiled machine leading into the Briarwood arc.

Here, in the animated series, we have something only subtly different, but in my opinion, importantly different. In the first episode, the bar fight shows that these people know each other incredibly well, are going to go hard for one another without a second thought... but also they're not necessarily all on the same page. In that fight, we see examples of suave teamwork. We see Vax making the quip about "giving me a hand," then ducking out of the way without even looking so Grog can take a swing and chop the man's hand off. We have Vax stealing the money and tossing it to Vex. Vex summoning Trinket. All moments that show that this isn't their first rodeo. BUT, we also have... Vex tripping over Pike. Grog "saving" Percy and crushing him under his enemy. These little moments do so much in setting up a character arc for them as a collective. Their fight against Brimscythe was a uniting moment where we got to see them all use their special abilities and contribute to the kill, bringing them into further cohesion, but we're seeing them as a group still working out the kinks in terms of who they are to one another, and how they can best serve the collective. I think that's so important, to have them be an established group of friends and still have some growing to do.

I'm going to try and do a bit of rapid-fire commentary on each of our leads really quick, picking out some favorite details.

Grog: I love that he got to do his rage, that we got Travis Saying The Thing, and that shot of him standing in front of Brimscythe's corpse completely drenched in blood was one of my favorite visual images in this opening story. I also like the little moments with Pike, from saving her during the first dragon encounter by pulling her out of the way, to giving her a lift when they're walking back into the village. They've really established a bond between these two with very little need for words.

Pike: We get to see her saving Scanlan like a bad-ass in episode two, we see her sincere desire to help but also the ways in which she might not always be able to. Her failure to save the boy after Brimscythe destroyed the village was really touching and you could tell how crushed she was to have failed. But she's also such a bad-ass, I loved the "Light him up, Vex" moment in that second fight, the way she and Vex got to do a cool combo hit there with the arrows. Loved seeing her use her holy magic as a shield, a weapon, and a force of healing. Love that she went as rough and rowdy during the bar fight as any of them. Honestly, what I can say most about Pike is that I just love that she's here. Ashley's frequent absence from campaign one makes Pike's presence shine all the brighter for me now. I can't wait to see how they adapt certain Pike moments for the show. Also... oddly charmed by how they're doing the Scanlan/Pike stuff? In the original stream, I'd say Sam's over-insistent pursuit of Pike at the table is perhaps one of the things that holds up less well, just simply because it edges towards a situation where Pike says no and Scanlan keeps hitting on her anyway. Here, we get something slightly toned down from that, where we see Scanlan proudly flirting with everything that moves, but with Pike he catches her as she collapses and blushes when he realizes the intimacy of the moment... there's clearly a bit of a spark there, and I even like the idea that Scanlan feels something for Pike that is at this moment not quite reciprocated. There could be a lot of fun stuff with the two of them moving forward.

Scanlan: I've got to say, I'm so pleased they haven't sanded down Scanlan to be more palatable to a new audience. Scanlan is bawdy and ridiculous and over the top, and when I watched the stream, I remember writing him off early on as "oh, he's the comic relief." I thought Sam was very funny, but to me it didn't seem like he had the same heart and connection as most of the other players. Which, of course, is what made it so fucking powerful when Scanlan's development really took off. I can see how it could hit just as hard in animated form, and I'm excited to see that come to life. With the exception of the rapping moment I mentioned earlier, I loved all of Scanlan's musical moments, especially that first one when he's seducing the barkeep's daughter. So funny, so Sam Riegel. But of course what works about Scanlan is that he's all bluster, and that really is who he is, the libertine and bawdy jokester of the group... but he's also the guy who sees devastation in front of him and quietly announces to the group that they're going to kill a dragon. I loved him plucking at his lute strings as Vax looks down stricken at the dead body of a child. That quiet chill of determination, even though you can still hear his fear underneath. Masterful bit of voice acting from Sam in that moment.

Vex: I love the way Vex is being classified as a bit of the de facto team leader in these early episodes! There's a bit of tension with Scanlan over who's going to give the orders/come up with ideas, but ultimately Vex is rational and intelligent, and everyone falls in line with her automatically. It makes so much sense for her character. I'll always be pleased whenever I see twin characters that aren't carbon copies of each other, or comedically diametrically opposed. Vex and Vax are quite similar, but they have their own shit going on, and you can see the ways in which everyone defers to Vex even without drawing too much attention to it. I particularly love the moment when Vex is talking about her dragon-spidey-sense picking up something weird when talking to the council, and Vax and Percy both pretty immediately say they should give up the whole job, all based on Vex's bad feelings and discomfort. Yes, I love it on the level of "Vax and Percy are the two people in this world who love Vex the most", but I also love it on the level of her intuition being respected. Vex is a favorite of mine, and in the fandom it has been oft-noted that she has less "main character" time during the campaign than some of the others. So slotting her into this role works extremely well for me. It all comes to a head when she has the idea of how to get Brimscythe in the final fight, and that idea is to play to everyone's strengths: let Scanlan do a trick, use Percy's gun and Keyleth's magic and Vax's dexterity and Grog's brute strength. Vex-as-leader, Vex-as-strategist, is really working for me, and I hope we see it develop more as we go on.

Percy: Obviously I'll be talking much more about Percy in my episode three review, but I was so impressed by how in this opening story, they captured the... essence of early-campaign Percival. One of the reasons that the Briarwood arc slaps So Hard is that Taliesin spent the earliest parts of the stream in the back seat. He was the snobby sophisticate, always looking down his nose at the others, he had some funny one-liners, but he was quiet. So when this dude comes forward with "SYLAS" and "your soul is forfeit" etc., it fucking owns. In these first two episodes, I really felt that vibe from Percy. He had some funny lines, I loved the "fulcrum/fuck room" joke, I loved his obvious glee at the prospect of respectability, but appropriately he felt slightly more one-note than some of the others. He's going to have his chance to shine this season, and I love that these first episodes play his characterization close to the chest. (The moment when he, or rather Scanlan's illusion, called Vax "peasant" was a highlight of the whole show for me so far... fucking stellar stuff, this is the type of comedy that works for me.)

Keyleth: As I said above, I'm the most worried that Keyleth's characterization is going to be flattened from what Marisha gave us on the stream. That said, Marisha is killing it with this performance, imbuing Keyleth with so much of that tender naiveté mixed with intense power that we love about her. The moment when she uses her considerable magical ability to call lightning on a blue dragon with lightning powers was the perfect synthesis of her insecurity. She's so strong, she's so good at magic, but she breaks under pressure and she often does the wrong thing at the wrong time, when she's trying to help. Of course, then she turns around and saves them all from being crushed to death in a rocks fall, everyone dies moment, proving that she can come through when it counts, and when she's not overthinking things. I loved the small hints of Vax/Keyleth, there's such a soft sweetness to his obvious regard for her, and I'm going to die seeing it all play out over again.

Vax: Vax was probably the character I was the most afraid they'd get wrong. He's the rogue, he's cool, and he needs to be cool, we need to see him suavely bantering with the asshole in the bar, we need to see him run through a rock slide and jump on a dragon and cut it open, we need to see him wink at Gilmore and give as good as he gets... but we also need to see him be a fucking doofus and disaster. Drinking ale in the middle of a bar fight, getting so distracted flirting with Gilmore that he forgets important dragon facts until Percy reminds him (another highlight of the episodes for me). And he also needs to be sweet and gentle with kids, giving a silver piece to a little boy, calling out for Pike and begging for help as he watches that boy die. He needs to be all of those things, and in my opinion, these opening episodes nailed that for him. If campaign one as a whole has a main character, it's Vax'ildan, just in terms of the fate-touched thing, and if we get to see the whole arc of his character play out in animated form, he's going to be the one who makes me cry my eyes out. The fact that they seemed to get him so right from the jump has me BEYOND thrilled for what's next.

Taking a break from talking story, I want to dive into some technical aspects.

The music is so far really, really working for me. Scanlan's songs are a joy, but the soundtrack as a whole sets an amazing tone. Appropriately epic but not too extreme, it captures the somewhat frantic energy of the battle sequences, highlights the bad-ass moments and also emphasizes the flubs where our characters make mistakes or are in real peril. I can't wait to hear more of what the music can do for the story moving forward.

The voice acting. Just... obviously I knew they were going to knock it out of the park, but I was surprised by how not distracted I was by the cast doing these voices! I wasn't hearing Sam and Marisha and Liam etc., I really was hearing Scanlan and Keyleth and all the rest. Some favorite line deliveries include Liam's plea to Pike to save the dying kid, Scanlan's line about killing a dragon, Percy's "we hid and it flew away" moment, Pike telling Keyleth that they're all alive because of her, Vax's "finesse" moment with the lockpicking, and so many more. To extend it out, obviously we'll get to Matt Mercer's meatiest role of the season come next episode, but it was a delight to hear him out and about in the world. It was a lovely Where's Waldo both in terms of background character design, and Matt's voice. And the fact that he gets to be Trinket is SO thrilling to me!!

David Tennant was fantastic as Krieg. The fact that after the prologue, the first line of actual dialogue in the whole show is world-famous actor David Tennant yelling "fuck!" just put a big smile on my face. They let him be Scottish, and over the top and dramatic, and evil and sinister and funny and just... yeah. I loved it. Kima and Allura didn't have a ton to do yet, as I mentioned, but I think both of their voices sound great. Uriel had a couple of fun moments, I loved when he hired Vox Machina mostly because he liked the bear. He's got a certain irreverence to him while still maintaining the gravitas of a ruler.

And Gilmore! Man, I loved the performance of Gilmore, I loved the whole scene with Pike as a third wheel constantly rolling her eyes at the flirting... I think the voice acting and the writing of this scene really highlighted the vibe between Vax and Gilmore so much. It's playful flirting, but you can tell there's a charge of real affection between them, too. The Easter eggs were fun, Gilmore's disappointed squeak when he saw how little they were going to pay him, Pike appearing to remind them of her continued presence... I loved it all. I hope we get to see him a ton in the Chroma Conclave arc, but this was a fantastic intro for his character.

The animation... yeah, I mean, I know nothing about the art of animation, but I think the show looks pretty dang cool. It has this very '80s cartoon vibe, I love that it's 2D animated for the most part, I think the character designs really work... I remember seeing promo materials and being a little uncertain about some of the designs, but it's already really grown on me. I especially love Percy and Keyleth, they look so right to me. And the twins. And really everyone. The fight sequences are pretty impressive, with all sorts of creativity and movement, you can tell they had something of a decent budget to work with, especially when you're talking about a TV show originally crowdfunded and based on a fucking D&D livestream... honestly, sometimes I can't believe any of this actually happened in real life, that I'm sitting here having seen a Critical Role animated series... god, life is strange and sometimes wonderful.

Ahem. I've talked on probably long enough, although I'm sure I'll think of more I want to say after I've posted this. I wrote the bulk of this review before I'd seen episode three, but I have seen it now and I had to hold off on adding a lot more of my thoughts so I can save it for a separate review. Which will hopefully be less rambling than this one, but no promises. Let's just say that after watching these first two episodes, I was reasonably pleased with what I'd seen. The simple fact of this show's existence means I would have probably loved it even if it had been rather rough around the edges, and in fact I feel like the first two episodes were broadly pretty strong. Without preexisting love for the characters and story, I'm not sure I would have been over the top hyped for it or anything, but I probably would have had a decent time.

And then I saw episode three, and...

Hold onto your hats, everyone.

My rating for the two-part opener of The Legend of Vox Machina is...

8/10

[disneylanddilettante]

The Disney Renaissance Killed the Disneyland Star

This post has been brewing and stewing in my brain for some time.

We here in the Disney theme park fandom are prone to lament the modern attraction design philosophy that says everything must be based on a movie. Aside from spectacularly clueless comments about “a random mountain in India or whatever” and misuse of the term “barrier to entry,” the reason behind it seems to boil down to: That’s what guests want. On the one hand, this is very clearly an excuse to do what Marketing wants (because film IPs are proprietary in a way that broad concepts are not, and can be merchandised accordingly), but on the other hand…it seems to be…kind of…true? The vast majority of the public, in my experience, does think of Disneyland (which I am going to use as synecdoche for all Disney parks, because it’s the one I grew up with, it’s easy to say, and because I can) as a place where you see Disney characters walking around as if they were real, and go on rides based on Disney movies, and anything else there is just to, idk, fill space until they can think of a cool movie makeover for it.

I have spoken to people online who quite enjoy Disneyland, but also think the Enchanted Tiki Room should become a Moana attraction, Tom Sawyer Island should be something to do with The Princess and the Frog, and the Matterhorn should be turned into Frozen. When I challenged them as to why, they didn’t seem to understand the question—what did I mean, “why?” Isn’t it self-evident? A couple years ago, one of the Super Carlin Brothers (I don’t remember which one; anyway I couldn’t tell them apart if you put a gun to my head) made a video expressing bafflement over the use of Figment as a mascot in Epcot because “He’s not from anything.” As if a ride in that very parkwere nothing.

So there is something to the assertion that film IP tie-ins are what regular guests expect and want. But the question remains as to why they want that—after all, it didn’t used to be that way. Costumed characters and rides based on movies have always been part of Disneyland, of course, but in past decades, the most elaborate and promoted attractions were the ones based on unique concepts that had nothing to do with the movies. The reasons to love Disneyland were things like the Haunted Mansion and the Mark Twain and Space Mountain…not so much the chance to meet Mickey Mouse. So what gave the public the idea that it was all about movies and characters? I’m sure there are several reasons, but I’m going to focus on one that I don’t see brought up that often.

I’m going to blame the Disney Renaissance.

Let me give you some personal background. I’m a young Gen-Xer, born in 1977. I was a child of the 80s…and in the 80s, Disney wasn’t doing so hot. Feature Animation had dropped to a cinematic release about once every four years, the live-action division was even less productive, and the corporate raiders were pawing at the door. In those days, when I saw a Disney movie in theaters, probably four times out of five it was a re-release of an older classic. (Anyone else remember when that was a thing?) There wasn’t much new at Disneyland either. The biggest thing to happen in the first half of the decade was the remodel of Fantasyland, which added one new ride—based on Pinocchio, a 43-year-old film—and otherwise just rearranged and refined what had always been there. On the other hand, the big Imagineering projects of the 60s and 70s were mostly still going strong.

The upshot is that if you were a Disney fan in those days (there weren’t many of us, even in my age cohort), you were a fan of the older movies and/or the parks. And for all its genuine quality, that stuff was showing its age. It was made in decades past, and there was a corniness and a quaintness to much of it. Most of the kids my age considered Disney “baby stuff” and were eager to put it behind them. It seems to have been a widespread phenomenon, because I don’t remember the park being very crowded when I was a young kid. Queues for even the roller coasters tended to top out around 45 minutes and it was very rare that we didn’t have time to do everything we wanted on a given visit.

And then, the year I turned 12—the year my age bracket hit puberty and could definitively be said to have outgrown cartoons altogether (except for the weirdos like me)—The Little Mermaid hit theaters.

Two years later, we got Beauty and the Beast.

And the hits kept coming. Suddenly, Disney was the hottest thing in entertainment again. Not just kids—by this time the generation that would come to be known as Millennials—but their parents watched these movies and went wow, this is really good. Disney is better than I thought. Maybe we should rent some of those older movies that I remember from when I was a kid. Maybe we should go to Disneyland… Unlike in the past, when families went to Disneyland because it was advertised and known as a family destination, families went to Disneyland because the kids were going gaga over the new Disney movies and the parents wanted to make them happy.

So a whole new generation of fans flocked to the parks, most probably never having been before, or not recently. They didn’t know what to expect. They just knew they loved these new movies with their endearing lead characters (so much more full of personality than Snow White or Alice or Pinocchio) and their big bombastic Broadway-style musical numbers (so much more in line with current musical tastes than the Tin Pan Alley ditties from Cinderella or Peter Pan or The Jungle Book). That’s what they wanted from Disney, whether they were paying six bucks a head plus popcorn, or fifty bucks a head plus lodging.

And that would have been fine but for the fact that endearing characters and big bombastic musical numbers are really hard to build traditional dark rides around. What you can do, though, for people who want to meet their favorite characters, is build dedicated character meet-and-greet spots. What you can do for people who want to sing along with Academy Award-winning songs is create huge colorful parades and stage shows that feature those songs. Best of all, if you are certain people who shall go unnamed, these sorts of things are much cheaper to create and operate than rides. Corporate was more than happy to meet, rather than try to exceed, the expectations of this new wave of fans.

The newer guests got used to seeing more-or-less verbatim (condensed) film content in the form of these shows and parades. The classic dark rides began to look decidedly odd to them—why are the movie events out of order? Why doesn’t the main character show up more? Why don’t we get to hear all the songs? And no one was there to explain it to them, because the older generations of fans had largely drifted away and the internet wasn’t quite a household staple yet. Rides that weren’t even based on a movie seemed even odder—what does a Wild West roller coaster have to do with Disney? What does a submarine ride have to do with Disney? I thought this park was supposed to be for kids, but my kids don’t recognize this stuff! They should build a Lion King ride! They should build a Toy Story ride! That Snow White ride isn’t suitable for kids; they should do something about that! I didn’t pay all this money to stand in line for an hour and a half and go on a ride that my kids don’t get!

The pattern was set. IP tie-ins were what the people wanted, and they closer they hewed to their source material, the more guest approval they got, simply because people didn’t know any different. And it has snowballed from there. The Disney Renaissance was amazing for the art of animation, but I think it was a net negative for the art of theme parks.

Tl;dr The Disney Renaissance changed guest expectations for Disney entertainment products in ways that were incompatible with classic Imagineering principles.

[ghostiewriter]

🥺 it’s my birthday and I would like to politely request any fluffy domestic headcanons you have yet to share/when you have time bestie 🥺

AHHHHHH MATE HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY🥳🥳🥳🥳I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY!!! I shall give you what you ask, HOWEVER, I also wanna give you something else so if you send in your fav fluffy headcanon (it doesn’t have to be here and it doesn’t even have to be fluffy if you don’t wait it to be) and I’ll write a wee blurb for it👀

This is deadass gonna be the most random headcanons so BE PREPARED

Look, like every couple they have their song. What that song is, is a debatable conversation. HOWEVER can we just take a moment to imagine Kie teaching JJ their song on the ukulele when it’s late and neither of them can sleep, their fingers softly brushing and small kisses of praise whenever he manages to get a chord right and then being so excited when he finally gets the song right all the way

They get matching tattoos that are actually just a heart that’s been drawn by the other on their wrist so even when they aren’t together, they have a memory of each other always there with them

Every Sunday is reserved for the couple to just say fuck it, and they eat children’s cereal and watch cartoons in the morning whilst cuddled up together, sharing the odd kiss or joke here and there and it just makes the perfect start of the day

They make stupid competitions out of their chores and divide up a list to them try and complete their side of the list before the other. It gets quite heated, one time JJ had to go to hospital because he thought wearing socks whilst mopping would help him be faster but he went sliding into a wall and got a concussion

Kie is insanely ticklish and JJ always uses this against her when they are just playfully wrestling and he wants to win. But he also kisses every place he tickled afterwards and murmurs an apology, even though they both know he’s not really sorry and he will do it again

Sometimes when they are out, JJ and Kie play a little game to spice up their evening if they know they will probably never go again. This is something they came up with during the surf trip and they would fake a whole dramatic scene in public, giving each other stupid names and making deranged comments to see who would break first

“I CANT FORGIVE YOU AFTER YOU SOLD MY RAT ON EBAY AS A POODLE, LUIGI!”

“WELL MAYBE IF YOU HADN’T SLEPT WITH MY GRANDMOTHER, THIS WOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, DORA!”

Sometimes that’s deadass just their date nights and Kie is always the one that ends up breaking first

JJ loves to tease Kie when she wears heels because they aren’t too different in heigh normally, but she’s a few inches taller in heels and he likes to call her Sasquatch or ask how the weather is up there. She retaliates by leaning against him or even pretending she can’t see him because she’s too small. But he’d never stop her from wearing them because goddamn to her legs look good and he just can’t get enough of her in heels

JJ and Kie take Halloween super seriously. No like I mean they are planning their costumes months in advance, thrifting and making their costumes by hand, getting decorations weeks before the holiday and even going full out on candy when trick-or-treaters come by. They fucking love the holiday

JJ taps his cheek for a kiss but always turns his head so she kisses his lips instead. Kie knows he’s going to do this every time but she likes the wee grin he has on his face when he thinks he got away with it

They sing duets in the shower. Like they have full on stadium tours, it’s spectacular and it’s a full on show. It’s their stupid wee thing but they love it.

Every morning is a competition of JJ trying to get up and Kie whining and aggressively cuddling him so he doesn’t leave the bed. But at night it’s the other way around with JJ just wanting to cuddle up with her and fall asleep but she’s just been hit with a bolt of energy and is running around doing random tasks whilst he tries to pull her into bed when she walks past.

[mai-the-crow]

TW: CHILD ABUSE AND F-SLUR USED

song this is based off: Luka, by Suzanne Vega.

this is in second person, but it's not a self-insert. narrator is a woman around susan's age that lives in a small apartment building with thin walls.

dedicated to all the people that heard my parents, my brother, and i screaming while we lived in an apartment building

read on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32560975

My name is Luka I live on the second floor I live upstairs from you Yes I think you've seen me before

You know the Mayfields. They live directly above you. The Hargroves moved in with Susan about a month ago. From a trailer park, if gossips are to be believed.

Susan is a lovely lady, if a bit paranoid. You've had her around for lunch occasionally. She's tall in stature but small in personality. Her daughter, Max, is a budding skateboarder and is snappy but sweet, like the bubblegum she loves to chew.

You don't know the Hargroves as well, yet. Billy seems to be a very polite young man, despite his rebellious looks. He's a bit flirty though, which concerns you. He's only in middle school. Neil is a veteran, from 'Nam, and looks stern. He's always ordering Billy around, but is kind to Max.

If you hear something late at night Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight Just don't ask me what it was Just don't ask me what it was Just don't ask me what it was

You're starting to hear odd thumps and yelling coming from upstairs. At first, you chalk the thumps up to Susan and Neil being newlyweds and doing... the thing. And the yelling is probably just from a normal fight. You think you heard a man yelling "faggot," but you're not sure. After all, when you were a teenager, you fought with your parents often.

Then you see Billy the next day, and he's got a black eye and is moving stiffly. What Neil's doing isn't right, you know that, but it's none of your business how a man disciplines his son. So you don't ask, you don't tell.

I think it's because I'm clumsy I try not to talk too loud Maybe it's because I'm crazy I try not to act too proud

Neil catches you looking at a split on Billy's lip one afternoon, and nudges Billy. He walks up to you with a charming smile. "How are you, ma'am?"

"I-I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" you say, still focused on the bloody split.

"Fine, fine. Walked into a locker today at school, though. Lip's still a bit sore." It's hard to tell that he's lying. He must have practice. The thought sickens you.

"That's unfortunate, Billy. Hope you recover soon. It was nice seeing you and your dad today, but I've got to go."

He's already turning around, and tosses a "See ya" over his shoulder.

They only hit until you cry And after that you don't ask why You just don't argue anymore You just don't argue anymore You just don't argue anymore

You've made a new recipe for a pie, and decide to share it with Susan. She's been down a little, recently, and you remember that she always enjoyed making sweets with Max. As you near the door of their apartment, you start hearing something. A voice.

"Sorry, sir- I'm sorry, dad! Please-"

You walk back downstairs. It doesn't seem like the best time, right now.

Maybe you'll come back later, and Neil will open the door, and you'll see his split knuckles. You'll see the belt draped over the couch, speckles of blood glittering on the metallic buckle, and maybe you'll decide that this is bad. Very bad. The evidence will be right there. And maybe you'll find the courage to tell the police.

But you don't come back later. So you don't see, you don't tell.

Yes I think I'm okay I walked into the door again If you ask that's what I'll say And it's not your business anyway

You keep seeing him with more and more odd bruises and cuts. You could swear you saw welts curling across his back once when his shirt rode up. You try asking about it a couple times, thinking that it's not going to get you too involved with... whatever is going on, but all his answers are some variant of "Got into a fight" or "Walked into the door again. I'm just clumsy, it's nothing" with a sheepish smile.

I guess I'd like to be alone With nothing broken, nothing thrown Just don't ask me how I am Just don't ask me how I am Just don't ask me how I am

You hear something shatter one night, and the next day, Billy shows up with four shallow, straight cuts on his calf that crisscross over each other. Another night, there's the sound of aluminium--like cans of beer--bouncing off something solid, and the next day, Billy shows up with a lump on his forehead.

You console yourself by thinking that Billy must've gotten into trouble at school. Billy must've talked back to his father. Billy must've gotten bad grades. Billy must've pulled Max's hair. Billy must've...

My name is Luka I live on the second floor I live upstairs from you Yes I think you've seen me before

It's been half a year, now. Max is still sweet and still skateboarding. Susan is still nervous and still fills her day with magazines. Billy is still polite and still covered in injuries. And Neil... you really don't know what to think about him, now.

Noises still come from upstairs. The TV blaring news, the clash of pots and pans while one cooks, pained yells, Max indistinctly chattering, the cry of faggot!, the opening tunes of The Smurfs, that new cartoon that all the kids like, and the peculiar thumps.

You keep up the chorus of Billy must've, Billy must've.

If you hear something late at night Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight Just don't ask me what it was Just don't ask me what it was Just don't ask me what it was

Every night, just like clockwork, the thumps start. Thump. A cry. Thump. A plea. Thump. Thump. Thump.

But you don't ask, you don't tell. What use would it do anyways? And you really don't want to get involved in some long, complex investigation. Neither does anyone else, it seems.

It's not your problem, anyways.

They only hit until you cry And after that you don't ask why You just don't argue anymore You just don't argue anymore You just don't argue anymore

It's been four years since the Hargroves moved in with the Mayfields.

Something happens in Apartment 204, the one right above Apartment 104. No one knows what, but the screams were louder and went on for longer than usual. And the roar of faggot! is clearly heard. Then sirens sound, and take the battered boy away in an ambulance. The gossips talk about how the father spun a tale about how he had found his son crumpled in the doorway, bloodied and bruised. It's a weak lie, and everyone knows it.

But it's none of their business how a man disciplines his son. Never has been.

The family moves away--to Indiana, the gossips squeal--two weeks later, as soon as their son is discharged from the hospital.

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

The longtime residents of the apartment building are gathered together in your kitchen, playing cards. The radio's on, and a song that feels oddly familiar to them starts playing. "My name is Luka. I live on the second floor."

You know that everyone is thinking of Billy, sauntering up to the ladies, wary around the men, but shaking their hand all the same, saying "My name is Billy. I live on the second floor."

[just-call-me-the-intrusive-thot]

Soulmate September - Day 4

Day 4 - There is a trail of color only you can see that marks out where your soulmate has been.

Pairing(s): Platonic Patmile, Aro Patton, Aro Emile

TWs: None I can think of rn, possibly a warning for Pat questioning his aromantic-ness? If I need to tag anything that I’ve missed, please lemme know!

--

Patton wasn’t sure what to feel even as his own two traitorous feet carried him along the sidewalk in the direction of the sparkling baby pink soulmate trail; he knew he would have one, everyone did. At least, that’s what he was always raised to believe. 

“One day, Pat, one day you’ll meet your soulmate and everything will be wonderful. You’ll fall in love and be happy for the rest of your days!”

Patton loved his nana, bless her, but just remembering her words made his stomach churn more than the nerves he felt watching the trail. He already felt so happy with his best friends;  sure, perhaps a part of him felt a little like the odd one out considering they were all in relationships with their soulmates now, but he didn’t feel like he needed a romantic partner to feel fulfilled. But maybe that just meant he wasn’t truly happy. Maybe.

After all, he had a trail. Heck, he was following it right now! That meant he’d have to face his soulmate. Someone who would be looking for a loving partner who’d shower them with romance. Affection, Patton could do. Heck, platonic kisses and cuddles were practically his second job. Romance, however…. That he just couldn’t seem to grasp. Not that he didn’t know what to do, just the thought made him feel uneasy. The bad kind of uneasy, the kind of uneasy you get when you’re about to hear awful news for the first time, not the excited uneasy when trying something new. 

With an exhausted sigh, Patton tried to remain positive as the trail led to the local high school. Was his soulmate a teacher? A janitor? Maybe a parent stopping by to pick up their kid early? Or were they giving a talk to the students? Either way, Patton checked the time and was thankful that he didn’t have to try and explain to someone that he had to go wandering around the school to find his soulmate. Fifteen minutes wasn’t such a long wait anyway..

… Okay maybe it’s a long wait when your mind is positively racing with anxiety. Patton had been so lost in his own mind, it took a woman - probably a member of staff going by her attire -  talking to him to pull him out of his daze, 

“Sir? The last of the students are leaving, are you still waiting on your child?”

He shook his head, “Ah, no, that’s not it, see, I’m looking for-”

Pat wasn’t able to finish. Just as he looked over her shoulder, he spotted his soulmate, the pink trail glowing behind and around him. Gentle looking, perhaps only a couple of years Patton’s senior, wearing a light brown cardigan over a pink tie and white button up shirt. His pressed black pants would have clashed with his adorable pink sneakers if they didn’t suit him so well. Not to mention the pink streak in his dark hair or the numerous cute badges adorning the cardigan. Oh God this was too soon. Far too soon. As his soulmate pushed up his glasses, Patton became aware of the woman still waiting on an answer.

…… Nope, he can’t do this-

Patton made a small whining noise as he turned and took off down the street. He can’t do this. He can’t face his soulmate. Not like this! Not while he was still a mess!! Not while he wasn’t able to be the partner his soulmate surely deserved. Patton hadn’t even met him formally, but already he knew he didn’t want to let him down, not someone who was so clearly a wonderful person. 

For a moment, Patton began to wonder what was wrong with him. He liked him. His soulmate. That much was clear. One glance and he couldn’t get the sweet expression on his face out of his head, yet he didn’t feel an ounce of any romantic feelings for him. Not one. 

He stopped to catch his breath once he’d hit the nearest bench - he narrowly avoided ramming straight into the damn thing - and tried to work out what to do. Pat knew he couldn’t avoid him forever, of course, after all the trail-

Oh no, the trail-!!

Patton looked behind him just in time to lock eyes with his soulmate while he was tripping over the curb and falling flat on his face in his pursuit. 

“Great, now’s my chance to run.”, Patton thought, but upon noting that the man seemed to be hurt, his conscience wouldn’t let him retreat. Damnit. Swallowing the pit in his stomach, Patton rushed to his aid, 

“Are you alright!?”, Patton asked, offering a hand to help him up.

His soulmate beamed up at him, smiling brightly despite the fact his nose was bleeding from the impact with the ground as he took said hand,

“Yeah! I’m a little banged up but don’t worry about me, are you alright um..?”

“Patton.”

“Patton!”, his soulmate beamed, unaware of how it was breaking Pat’s heart, “I’m Emile Picani, do you how do?”

Patton was surprised to find himself chuckling at Emile’s antics despite his growing anxiety. “Oh jeez, he IS my soulmate..”, Patton caught himself thinking, unsuccessfully hiding his disappointment with himself in his expression. Emile noted the crack in Patton’s happy facade and decided to try and be light-hearted in his approach, “Hm, lemme rephrase my question; eeeeeh what’s up, Pat?”.

It was a terrible Bugs Bunny impression, but it did get a smile out of Patton. Oh boy, he still didn’t want to have this conversation…

“.... How about I bandage you up a little, then we talk?”

Emile agreed and the two sat down on the bench while Patton opened up his satchel and took out his cartoon network print plasters, a sight that had Emile excitedly bouncing his leg. Of all the people to be his soulmate, Patton couldn’t have asked for a better match, if only…

“Are you a father?”, Emile queried, catching Patton off guard.

“Wh-What?”, he stammered in surprise.

“Your bandaids, I thought perhaps you-”

“Oh, no, no!! I don’t have kids, but I work at the local daycare. It’s my day off today.”, he explained. Emile nodded, “I see! I work at the high school-  well, you know that you, found me there, I mean I’m the school’s student councillor. I’m sorry if my assumption upset you, Pat.”

Patton shook his head, “No, no, it’s fine!”, he waved off the concern as he silently got to work with the bandaids. The assumption hadn’t upset him, well, not in the way Emile probably thought; he hadn’t known Emile for a day and yet Patton knew he wanted Emile in his life forever, but… surely his soulmate would be looking for a husband. A lover. Someone to have romantic nights out with and someone who would love him back. But Patton couldn’t do that. He felt a form of love for the man but the idea of them getting married or anything like that just-

He was pulled from his simultaneous daydream and bandaging work as he listened to Emile hum something familiar. At first, Patton couldn’t pin down where he knew it from, however, as Emile hummed more, Patton recognised the faint singing he was doing under his breath;

“When you trip on your face and your teeth are misplaced..”

“Friends are there to help you.”, Patton sang in continuation, returning the excited grin Emile bore, “Ed, Edd, ‘n’ Eddy, right? I haven’t watched the show in years.”, he admitted.

Emile beamed brightly, “Oh my goodness, really?! Well I have the entire series on DVD! If you want, we can go back to my place and-”

The churning feeling was back. Patton had heard about this song and dance before. What was it his friend Virgil had called it? Netflix and chill? No, that’s the more R-rated song and dance, isn’t it? Either way, Patton’s displeasure must’ve shown on his face as Emile gently placed a hand over Patton’s, 

“What’s got you feeling blue there, my diamond?”

Patton couldn’t help but give an exhausted smile at that. Steven Universe references now. Lord help him, he’s about to break this poor man’s heart. Gathering what little courage he could muster, Patton tried as best he could to explain,

“Emile, you’re wonderful. I just want to make it really crystal clear, ah ha, that it’s not you, it’s me...”, Patton began, noting the way Emile appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood, “But I can’t return your feelings. Not um, not in the love-dovey way, I mean! I really like you, but as a friend?? Gee, I’m sorry, I wish I could love-love you back, but I-! Romance just, I can’t do it and I don’t want to hurt you because you’re so nice, but- ! Ugh! This is so confusing-”

“Oh thank God.”

What. Patton locked eyes with Emile to see genuine relief wash over him, a couple of tears welling up in his eyes as he explained, “I thought I was gonna have to explain me being aromantic to you and hope you weren’t against it-”

“Wait, wait, aro-what?”, Patton asked, perplexed.

Emile took a second, realising what was happening, “Oh, Pat. Um, right, let me explain; I’m aromantic - and genderfluid by the way, I use all pronouns and such but don’t you worry about that right now.”, Emile assured him, continuing, “Being aromantic means you don’t feel any, or very few, romantic feelings for anyone. You might like some things generally considered romantic but enjoy them platonically! Take me for example! I, much like Olaf, like warm hugs! And platonic kisses are a-okay with me too! But if you’re not into that stuff, of course-”

“Oh, no I am!!”, Patton beamed, feeling like a weight had been torn from his shoulders, “I really like physical affection, but I like it from everyone really! I’m just so happy I’m not breaking your heart here..”

“Aw Pat..”, Emile opened his arms wide, giving Patton a look of genuine adoration, “Awkward Soulmate Hug?”

Appreciating the Gravity Falls reference, Patton chuckled, “Awkward Soulmate Hug.”

The hug was far from awkward. If anything it was the best hug Patton had been given all year.

------------ I hope you all enjoy this one!  I wanted to give a little love to platonic soulmates too so here we go!! @tsshipmonth2020

Taglist [just message me to be added!]: @somehow-i-got-an-account  @cateye-glasses

[justalokifanaccount]

Episode 4-Play by Play Reactions (Spoilers)

(I accidentally spoiled a major part for myself by browsing tumblr after the episode aired but before I watched it because I’m dumb)

I’m watching this on my TV and not my phone this time so I’m excited

Previously on… the show I’ve been obsessed with months before it released. As if I need reminding lol.

Friggin marvel opening gotta remind me of Tony snapping every episode

Interesting watching this on my flatscreen cuz the show is wide screen

Oh asgard!

Little Sylvie!

Oh my gosh that would be horrifying as a kid… she just got kidnapped pretty much

“Crimes against the sacred timeline” oh for cripes sake she’s just a kid!

Oh my gosh this would be terrifying

Oh is this when Renslayer was still a hunter

Clever girl!!! She escaped before even being sentencing

There’s a lot more to Renslayer I bet

TIME KEEPERS BABY

Space lizards finna meet the business end of a pruner

Mobius yay!!!!! I’ve missed him!

And what’s so bad with different branches?

Oh is that hunter locked up?

Oh nvm

That “how?” from Mobius is the closest thing we will get to hearing him say “wow” in this show and that makes me sad.

Dawn of the Final Day

Aha iconic promo scene!

Serious Loki moment?

“The universe wants to break free so it manifests chaos like me being born the goddess of mischief.”

I don’t believe C-20 is actually dead

Soooo does Loki not still have the tesseract? Or are we gonna get a silly clown Loki moment of “OHHHH I FORGOT I HAD THIS.”

“Do you think what makes a Loki a Loki is the fact that we’re destined to lose?”

“No. We may lose. Sometimes painfully. But we don’t die. We survive.”

Please don’t romance them

This is sweet and sad

Don’t kiss please don’t

What set them off? How did they find him?

He really should have an equal amount of security

Mobius shut up.

Bad friend? Oops

Uh oh

TELL HIM THE TRUTH LOKI DO IT

Oh? Asgard?

Uh oh

Lmao

Bully Sif

Ouch

Poor Loki

Ohhhhhh lmao time loop of being beaten up by Sif… ouchie

Cmon Loki fight back.

Or break her mind lol

Loki don’t fall for it— ahhhh ok

Ouchie

Controlling woman huh

Easiest to break huh? Shut up Ravonna

Titans? (Lmao please tell me they arrested a variant Thanos)

Vampires??? Hinting at a Blade reboot????

Hunter B-15 knows something is up

Oh my gosh Loki real moment confessing to Sif “because I’m scared of being alone.”

Genuine or??? Is she gonna throw him? Poor Loki…. “You are alone. And you always will be.”

Mobius you scumbag. That’s literally torture.

Mobius shut up

Mobius shut up. You don’t know the real Loki.

Oh so even they don’t know what caused it

Now Loki is lying just to avoid being hit by Sif

Oh no. He thinks she’s gone. Loki can’t lie very well when he’s sad.

No not swooning… please don’t ship them I beg you.

Not romance please stop no.

MOBIUS SHUT THE HELL UP

Please don’t make it romantic please please please please

SHES NOT HIS GIRLFRIEND PLEASE SHUT UP

YEA LOKI TELL HIM THE TRUTH

Maybe he had a family, a life… maybe… maybe a jetskii?

Mobius shut up.

Shut up about “girlfriend”

Yea Mobius. Let it stew. You’re a liar.

That Hunter B-15 is onto something.. OH YEA SHE WAS ENCHANTED FOR A BRIEF MOMENT TOO

SHE MUST BE REMEMBERING SOMETHING

Theremin. Nice.

Odd music choice for a date I gotta say.

How much older is Owen Wilson than Gugu Mbatha Raw? (Googling) Owen Wilson is 52… Gugu is 38

Mobius is onto something. But I’m still mad at him.

“What we do here matters.” Doubt

Friendzoned

What trophy?

Oh the sword

SNEAKY MOBIUS SWITCHING THE REMOTES NYAHAHAHA

He’s not the best liar tho

For all time. Always. Doubt

She knows he’s lying.

Hunter B-15 interrogating Sylvie at Roxxcart

Yea Sylvie tell her!

FRIENDS? Please?

Oh my gosh poor Hunter B-15…

Hug?

Team up?

Yay???

Damn C-20 really is dead?

Funny with all that technology but that video looks like my old handheld game from like 2010 that I bought from Walmart.

Mobius having an existential crisis. Good.

Please stop hinting at a romance between them…

Friends yay!

Renslayer you scum…

Uh oh

Maybe he had a Jet Skii!

NO

NO

LOKI JUST LOST ANOTHER FRIEND

Renslayer I will revel in your demise

“But she’s just doing her job.” Shut up. She saw what Hunter C-20 said…

Loki is crying again… he just made another friend and he’s gun… HE NEEDS TO COME BACK. If Mobius is gone forever I will never forgive the TVA.

Awww she asked if he’s okay… I’m still praying only friends. Please nothing more.

What was the event? Come on Renslayer. You remember you crap hole.

Oh my. Time keepers??? Aha this IS where the stairs on the wall and a fight breaks out.

Lmao that one time keeper sounds like a dopey dog from a cartoon.

YEA HUNTER B-15 I LOVE YOU

Oh that’s how Loki gets that cut

Now he has a sword babyyyy

Renslayer I hate you

Loki help her!

Oh nvm she’s good

Child of the time keepers?

I KNEW IT

JUST ROBOT PUPPETS!!! ITS ALL A TRICK

So… who’s really in control???

Seeing Loki in this blue light… cmon give me Jötunn Loki.

Where’s hunter b-15?

Don’t confess love pease I beg you

Please please please don’t romance them. For all that is good in this world.

Oh gosh

Hug?

Please just hug

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHAT????

PRUNE HER DO IT

Loki?????

What???? NOOOOO

HE CANT BE GONE!!! We still haven’t gotten that scene where he has the flaming sword!!!!!!!! Pruning HAS to not kill them please!!!!!!!!!

Dammit I KNEW something would happen. They had their backs turned to them and it was too quiet.

LOKI BETTER NOT BE GONE I SWEAR TO GOD MY HEART CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH AGGHHHHHHHHH

I’ve seen him die too many damn times agahahshehhdheiebdusienenridiehehejd

And now the credit song has love in it

I really really hope they don’t have some sort of self-cest between Loki and Sylvie…

POST CREDIT SCENE WHAT????

LOKI YES

OH MY GOSH THANK GOD HES ALIVE

Oh

My

Gosh

MY JAW JUST DROPPED

ALL THE OTHER LOKIS

SO WHAT THE HELL DOES PRUNING DO?????

WE GOT KID LOKI, BLACK LOKI, OLD COMIC LOKI, AND EVEN A FRIGGIN CROCODILE LOKI LIKE WHAT???????

And what is black loki (I feel bad for calling him just that but I don’t know his name DX) holding? And what is old comic Loki holding?

What is this place that looks apocalyptic??? Why are they all here?

WHAT IS HAPPENING

THIS IS MY FAVORITE EPISODE YET AGGHHHHHHHHH

SO IS MOBIUS STILL ALIVE THEN????

IS EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN PRUNED STILL ALIVE?

Is each pruned person sent to a place with all the other variants of themselves???

I HAVE TOO MANY QUESTIONS

NO WONDER TOM HIDDLESTON SAID POOR LOKI IN THESE EPISODES

My biggest concerns now are: how on earth are they going to wrap this up in only two more episodes? And PLEASE DONT ROMANCE SYLVIE AND LOKI!!! I mean, I get it… if Loki should fall in love who better than his parallel. She’s different enough from him to have it not be too weird I guess, but it’s still a variant version of him. And it seems a little too forced. Like sure a crush maybe, but don’t you dare say love when they’ve only known each other for like a couple days.

My mind is melting. I’m so glad I waited to watch this in the morning instead of at night so I could appreciate it in all its glory.

BUT NOW I HAVE TO WAIT ANOTHER WEEK AGGHHHHHHH

Oh and is Hunter B-15 okay? We saw her get knocked down but that was it. She didn’t appear in the rest of the fight.

AND WHO MADE THE TIME KEEPERS????

IS IT KANG? IS IT…… MEPHISTO??? WHOOOOOOOOOOOO?????

Gonna go browse tumblr to cry and reblog gifs from the episode to help me cope until next week.

[derfisch]

Earlier today, one of my roommates was recommending some rhythm games to me (he's new and doesn't really know what I've played), mainly rhythm games because that's all he knows I'm really into. One of them was Crypt of the Necrodancer.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that I really, really don't like that game.

In fact, I've kind of noticed over time that aside from a few outliers, I don't really enjoy most video games. Sometimes Nintendo will release one of their major titles and there'll be something intrinsically rewarding about playing it, but aside from your Wild Breaths and Odd Marios, I can't think of many video games I enjoy that aren't either a rhythm game, or Rivals of Aether.

The biggest draw of rhythm games to me is how intense and intricate they can get. The flow state you get into trying desperately not to drop your combo in osu! is thrilling in ways I can't describe. Playing a song that you couldn't even pass just a month ago, and realizing that you only got a single miss, and if you just play it like 2 more times maybe you'll FC it. Thoroughly destroying one of the hardest songs in a given game, turning to the high score board, and thinking, "I bet I could do that." And then showing your friends who don't play, and hearing them ask, "how is that even humanly possible??" And all the while, only consciously feeling like you're just really good at listening to cues in music and pressing buttons to it. The dexterity just feels natural at some point, like you should've been able to do it from the start, like all you needed was to surpass a mental barrier.

Rhythm games have had a bit of a resurgence lately, but they've been mostly dead for a while outside of Japan. They're pretty expensive to make, legally confusing, and hard to export. Once Guitar Hero and Rock Band died, we basically had nothing new for years. So the latest trend has been to combine rhythm games with other genres, allowing for more minimal soundtracks and a greater focus on gameplay that western developers are more familiar with designing. We've got rhythm game, but it's a first person shooter; rhythm game, but it's a platformer; rhythm game, but it's a roguelike. It seems like every couple of years, a new one pops up, and the gaming world goes nuts for a new rhythm game (finally!)

But when you combine genres, you have to make compromises somewhere. And unfortunately for people like me, the intrinsically fun parts of rhythm games are the parts that are hardest to make fit in with another game without making it unreasonably hard. All the fun charting, quickly intuitive gameplay, is the first thing to get ripped out and replaced. No one wants to play a rhythm roguelike where the charting is insane but the combat is easy, secondary. It'd make you wonder why they added the roguelike elements in the first place. But when it comes to rhythm aspects, it's much easier to justify just adding that for extra flavor. A game's gotta have music, so it's not too far of a step forward to have the character just move to the beat.

But just pressing the buttons to a four on the floor beat does not make something fun to me. It doesn't match the music in any meaningful way, and I can't get into the flow of it because I'm too busy thinking about how to navigate around a dungeon I've played like, 15 times already, and I keep dying right before the frickin boss, and it stopped being fun after like the 3rd try.

I don't think Crypt of the Necrodancer is a bad game, or any of these other rhythm game hybrids. Clearly, a lot of people find them very fun. They often have very catchy music, commissioned exclusively for those games. Camellia did a track that you hear in the first level of Mad Rat Dead, and it is a total banger. But it gave a lot of people a very different idea of rhythm games than what a lot of us who already love the genre enjoy, and I can already see the effects of that among gamers who are unwilling to give pure rhythm games a try for being too hard, or too simple.

Luckily, there is hope. Friday Night Funkin' is super close to more arcade-style rhythm games like Guitar Hero, or DDR (its closest inspiration), mixed with some of the more approachable gameplay of games like Parappa, and all at a difficulty that any average person should have no trouble playing. Even the tougher charts are trivial to pass on your first or second try. And lots of people, especially younger gamers at just the right age to be forming their tastes, are in love with it. It's been such a massive success that the kickstarter reached all its (serious) stretch goals in just a few weeks, reaching over $2M raised by the end of its campaign.

I have no idea if they'll actually deliver on all their promises. That's an absurd amount of money, and an equally absurd roadmap they have to follow. But what that says to me personally is, regardless of if it's cartoon rap battles or something completely different, the west is ready for another big rhythm game to hit it, no caveats required. All we need is someone willing to make it.

[geekynichelle]

Bless the Harts and Family: When I get the urge to write about something I gotta take it, so while this is still not a review per say, I wanted to bring up another reason this cartoon is underrated. This might get long.

Most family sitcoms, live action or animated, have a mom, a dad, three kids and (though less so now) occasionally a pet. Shows like Black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat brought in a focus on intergenerational households, with a grandparent taking the place of a dog or a cat, which a lot of people of color could relate to. However the structure of these households is still pretty much the same. Bless the Harts changes this because it’s about a single mom, who is no rush to marry her boyfriend (Wayne), who lives with her one and only daughter(Violet) and her mother (Betty), and similarly to Bob’s Burgers they are not rich and it actually shows. It’s not glamorized it just is. 

Which leads into this point: A lot of programs these days are clearly trying to make up for the era in which husbands and wives hating each other was the norm. Some have succeeded, but up until recently not many couples have really stood out to me. Jenny and Wayne are definitely now on the list of fictional couples you can actually care about in no small part due to the fact that they actually care about each other. As I mentioned earlier Jenny doesn’t want to be married, which is brought up in the season one finale. A fact that says nothing about the love she has for Wayne, which the show points out implicitly. Family is about more than following social norms and it’s rare for a mainstream sitcom to show that positively. Not wanting to get married is either seen as a character flaw or a sign of trouble in the relationship. Jenny simply knows what she wants.

In recent episodes we’ve learned a bit more about Jenny’s youth and suffice to say she was a bit of ass at times. She was a mall model, and on track to becoming a professional cheerleader before her daughter was born. Said daughter on the other hand is a completely artsy fartsy (potentially queer) girl who in most shows would be at odds with her mother 24/7. In Bless the Harts, Violet is not Jenny’s punishment for being a young mom or an athletic/popular youth. They love each other and neither really tries to change the other. There’s also no underlying shame as is often the case when you have an athletic father and a nerdy son for example. This is equally true in Jenny’s relationship with her own mother. The Hart women may clash at times, but it never feels like they wish they had different kids/parents.

This is especially true in one of my favorite relationships in the whole show, Violet and Wayne. Wayne is clearly insecure from time to time about not being Violet’s “real dad”, but never has that fact been more irrelevant. The man was responsible for her name and didn’t even know it! From the minute they met when Violet was a baby, Wayne was looking out for her and encouraging her art. Hell in the theme song Violet’s painting is an image of her mom and Wayne on a horse with hearts around them. Wayne is her family and while they are pretty different from one another, there’s no teen angst keeping them apart. I could go on, but then I’d be here all day. Bottom line he is her dad period.

In conclusion, Bless the Harts does a great job at subverting some of the usual family sitcom pitfalls largely because it’s clearly it’s own thing. Jenny and Wayne don’t need to be married. We honestly never need to meet Violet’s birth father (though I am curious about how that’d go), and Betty doesn’t need to be the wise/feeble old matriarch that’s waiting for the end. Something I hope more family sitcoms will finally take note of. Families are all different and it’s not just race representation that we need.

[fandomlurker]

A Ponderous Rewatch: “Win Big”

And so we begin. For real, this time.

And to start, we have to go all the way back to Animaniacs season 1, episode 2, with the very first Pinky and the Brain skit which is named “Win Big”.

Interestingly enough, the duo are not directly trying to take over the world in this episode. The premise is that Brain needs money to buy the one part needed for his actual plan to take over the world using a machine he calls the “Super-Conductive Magnetic Infindibulator”, which will “deplete hydrogen and promote gravitational collapse [to produce] a magnetic charge from the center of the Earth so strong that every person who has loose change in their pockets will be magnetically drawn to the ground and stuck there”.

…

For those of you who are new to the series and for those of you who maybe can’t remember the show very well, I want to say that yes, what you’re probably asking yourself right now is true: Brain’s plans are almost always this complex and completely absurd with giant, glaring holes in logistics. There’s been a long-time “theory” that while their theme song says “one is a genius, the other’s insane” and intends to indicate that Brain is the genius while Pinky’s insane, it’s actually the other way around. And honestly? That doesn’t exactly hold up to any kind of scrutiny at all. Brain is actually a genius…he’s just also very, very short-sighted and lacks a lot of common sense. He’s so focused on his goal of world domination that he forgets to account for even the most obvious of details that would completely ruin what he’s trying to accomplish. And Pinky? Well, Pinky’s a lot smarter than he seems, but I wouldn’t exactly mark him as a genius. He’s just more worldly, more emotionally intelligent, and has a knack for pointing out the obvious. For you D&D nerds out there, think of it like this: Brain is a high INT low WIS character while Pinky is a high WIS low INT character.

As for which one is “insane”? Disregarding the…let’s just say “problematic” baggage that comes with that word, I’d argue that Pinky is just neurodivergent and Brain has a lot of problems. Like, a lot of problems. We’ll get more into that mess much farther down the line.

In any case, the opening of this episode has Brain pulling Pinky away from watching what is obviously supposed to be The Honeymooners, complete with “Bang, zoom, right in the kisser!” quote and everything. That quote, or one like it, was what the character Ralph Kramden would frustratedly yell at his wife, Alice, after she’d dismiss a get rich quick scheme of his. It was an ultimately impotent threat of violence, as he never did hit her. A lot of folks before me have delved into how messed up and controversial that whole running gag was, so I didn’t particularly feel the need to go over it here.

However, it does become immediately relevant because as Pinky laughs at the joke and excitedly quotes it while Brain is trying to get his attention, Brain reaches up and gently holds both their faces close for a few moments…

“Stop saying that, Pinky!...”

…then more aggressively tugs Pinky’s face down as he finishes with “…Or I shall have to hurt you.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry, Brain. NARF!”

Isn’t it interesting how the very first thing this series does is juxtapose Pinky and the Brain’s relationship with that of the main married couple on The Honeymooners? Like, it’s certainly not the most healthy of a relationship parallel to make, but in Pinky and Brain’s favour their world is governed by slapstick humour and thus any and all violence is much less serious. Also, there’s Pinky’s…uh…special relationship with physical pain that will become more apparent as the series goes on. Like, of course this kind of behaviour is wrong and appalling in real life, but this is a Warner Brothers Looney Toons-style cartoon and there’s a big difference between the two.

There’s also this little tidbit of information on the Animaniacs wiki regarding this episode and its writer, Peter Hastings:

“Although Peter Hastings has stated that he always tried to have Brain threaten to hurt Pinky but never actually hit him (because he felt this was both funnier and truer to the character), Tom Ruegger and the other producers would often have Brain actually hit Pinky. Even in this very first short, the Brain does follow through.”

Moving on, though, after Brain Rube Goldberg machine’s his way out of their cage and points out that Pinky has an “inordinately short attention span” after Pinky gets briefly distracted by another TV show that’s a very blatant parody of Jeopardy, he explains to Pinky his latest plan for world domination.

“EGAD, Brain, brilliant!”

“…Uh oh, no, wait…what if they take off their pants?”

^ The face of a man who somehow managed to forget that clothes are removable.

See what I mean about Pinky having a knack for pointing out the obvious? It’s very much needed to counteract Brain’s complete lack of foresight and introspection.

“Then…we’ll have to take over the world quickly.”

…Though there’s also something to be said for Brain’s stubbornness.

So they need a part for Brain’s machine called a Infindibulator, which is for some reason listed in the Farmer’s Almanac??? Which to my knowledge doesn’t sell anything at all??? Okay, Brain, whatever you say.

Brain actually kicks Pinky directly in the ass to get him up onto the Almanac to read it,

which would be alarming if not for Pinky’s completely happy and sincere “Thanks! :D” afterwards. It’s a mere hint to Pinky’s…predilections. I find it interesting that it’s so subtly foreshadowed in this very first short. I know you newer folks might think I’m joking, but I assure you I’m not. You will see.

As a side note, it’s so odd hearing Rob Paulsen’s early Pinky voice in these first several Animaniacs shorts. I’ve seen fans say that it’s more lispy than the standard Pinky voice that we’re all familiar with, but to me it just sounds like Pinky with a very, very bad cold and a stuffy nose. Get this mouse some nasal spray.

So Pinky finds the entry for the Infindibulator and it costs a whopping $99000. Where would two little lab mice find that kind of cash?

It sure is lucky and convenient that the TV is still on during that moment and tuned into an episode of Jeopardy—I mean “Gyp-Parody” (Really, writers? Really? In addition to being a horrible and lazy pun, I would rather not have to type a slur so much, so I’m just going to call it the name of the show it’s based on) where the reward for winning totals $99000.

And here we go, the first of its kind. The birth of the most famous running joke from Pinky and the Brain!

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“I think so, Brain, but where are we going to get a duck and a hose at this hour?”

…Believe it or not, Pinky’s bizarre answers do have an explanation and a certain logic to them, but we find out the hows and whys much, much farther along in the series. That said, I’ll be damned if I know how he got to this particular train of thought right now. The inner machinations of Pinky’s mind are an enigma.

So Brain gets the idea to become a contestant on Jeopardy to win the amount of money they need for their plan. Pinky points out that the questions on the game show are very, very hard and Brain would have to get all of them right, and I just love Brain slowly turning his head to face Pinky with the most deadpan “Bitch, are you for real?” look on his face.

To Brain’s credit, he doesn’t berate the other mouse at all for his doubts. He just very calmly asks Pinky to quiz him about anything he can think of. When Pinky asks him “What is pie?”, well, see above for the summary of the answer Brain gives.

He then asks for a harder question, and Pinky asks him which TV character says “Bang! Zoom!—“ before Brain cuts him off with a wack of a pencil for quoting something inane and annoying him again.

Though he quivers a little before the smack, Pinky’s fine afterwards. Smiling, even.

And he happily gives Brain the answer anyway, complete with bows. “Ralph Kramden! TA-DAH! :D”

But Brain is insistent on preparing to go on Jeopardy, grabbing Pinky by the tail to drag him off-screen and Pinky is…

Hmm.

He’s, uhh, more than fine with it.

Now we get the debut of the human suit mecha. It’s quite the staple of the series; the go-to for a human disguise whenever the mice need one.

And it certainly is…something. You may be noticing the lack of a human head. Don’t worry about it. Brain certainly didn’t.

I love Brain’s playful little “Honey, I’m hoooome!~” when he pops his head out, despite having a deadpan look on his face the entire time. He’s having fun!

“Ahahaha! Oh, that’s a funny joke, Brain!”

“I am not devoid of humour.”

Pinky is having a little less fun with his tail accidentally tied along with the shoelaces, however.

It’s fine, he’s fine. He’ll be okay! Pinky is indestructible.

He’s a pocket pal now. He’s fine.

Makin’ my way downtown, walkin’ fast…~

Okay, sorry, he’s hailing a cab instead. Effectively, too!

Oh hi, Warners, nice to see you! Doing a literal running gag, I see. Nice, nice.

Goodbye!

So if you were wondering how regular humans would react to Brain’s “clever” and totally made without proper foresight disguise, well…

“Wh—HOA! Hey, if you don’t mind me askin’, bub, what happened to your head?”

“Nothing. I am a mouse in a large, mechanical suit.”

“Hehehehe! Okay, all right, my fault for askin’, right? Heh.”

Yup. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing happens. I guess since they’re in Hollywood the taxi driver’s seen worse.

So Brain gets on the show (don’t worry about how, shh) and the announcer calls him “Brian” instead and Brain politely tries to correct him. I can’t exactly fault the announcer because 1. “Brain” isn’t a name and 2. Look at Brain’s gloriously messed up handwriting.

The host walks on in. It’s pretty cute that they gave him the parody name “Alex Quebec”. It’s a suitable pun and rhyme to hint at the fact that Alex Trebek was born in Canada. Rest in peace, Mr. Trebek.

The first question is in the category of celebrity shoe sizes and asks what size sandals Plato wore. Umm. Okaaaaay… Thank goodness this show first aired before websites for foot fetishists cataloguing celebrity feet was a thing. Also is it just me, or does that font looks like something off of The Simpsons?

I don’t know if I should be worried or not that Brain got the correct answer to this question. (Seven and a half, if you’re curious.)

Question two is totally a trick question, though. There’s no such place as “Lestho”. “Lesotho”, however, is a real kingdom in South Africa. King Moshoeshoe I was indeed the ruler in 1820 as Brain answers, although the place was called “Basutoland” at the time and didn’t formally become a kingdom until 1822.

Educational!

Question three is a normal if extremely hard question for anyone unfamiliar with geographic locations off of the southeast of Asia. There are a lot of correct answers, and Brain answers correctly with “Bikar, Ailuk, and Ailinglaplap”. As this post notes, he is totally flexing on everyone by naming very obscure coral atoll islands that are some of the furthest neighbours from the Isle of Yap.

You smug asshole, Brain.

We don’t get the questions Brain answers correctly in the following montage, but we do get a close-up of his handwriting. Look at this. Just…look at it.

We get to see the aftermath of Brain’s monopolizing of the scores, though. The other contestants aren’t looking too good. Note that it seems there were times that they did manage to buzz in to answer before Brain did, but they must have got all of their answers or at least most of them wrong. They’re both in the negatives.

“Any plans on how you’ll spend your winnings?”

“Yes. I plan to take over the world!”

“...”

“…Ah haha, my fault for asking.”

Pinky claps and congratulates Brain on doing so well so far, because he’s a sweetheart like that, and

Brain flicks him back into the pocket. Man, you’re so quietly mean in this first episode, Brain.

Now it’s the final question, from the category “Quotable Quotes”. I remember this kind of category as usually being the easiest on Jeopardy, so it’s kind of surprising that it’s the Final Jeopardy question.

Uh-oh.

Looks like someone forgot that Jeopardy questions aren’t all science, history, and geography-related. Sometimes they’re about pop-culture.

Brain is…not very good with pop-culture. And Pinky’s been banished to the bottom of the coat pocket.

Whoops.

“Umm. Uh, who is, uhh… I, umm. Who is, uhh… Who is…uhh, Pinky…?”

Oh Brain, honey, it’s cute that you got so stumped and flustered that you just blurted out the only name that came to mind (and because Pinky was quoting it earlier, but still!), but it’s also so very, very sad.

Of course that’s incorrect, and Brain is just so monumentally defeated.

“And how much did you wager?”

“Everything…”

HUBRIS!

We then cut to the mice watching Brain’s horrible defeat on TV, and Pinky suggests a few other game shows they could try: Wheel of Misfortune, $10,000 Pile-A-Mud… The latter of which is supposed to be a parody of the old game show Pyramid, which wasn’t around in that format by the time this episode aired, so…good luck with that one, Pinky.

But no, Brain doesn’t plan on going on any more game shows. He instead walks sadly over to their cage to rest for tomorrow night.

It’s then that we are witness to the birth of the other memetic exchange this show is known for:

“Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!”

That wink, though. It’s the confident wink that sells this and tells us all you need to know about the Brain. No matter how bad his defeat, how humiliated he gets, or how sad he feels about failing, Brain always gets back to business sooner or later. He has determination on his side. And Pinky, of course.

And that was the very first Pinky and the Brain short! A pretty good start for the series, really. Nothing spectacular, and definitely not the worst, just a good start that sets the tone of the series well and establishes several of the running gags the show is known for. The creators pretty much have Brain as a character down right away: serious but not devoid of humour, single-minded, stubborn, egotistical, smart, and determined to meet his goals. There are a few things missing from him that we get later, and he certainly softens a bit by the time the spin-off starts, but they’ve set up a solid foundation to build on so far here. Pinky’s character is a little more nebulous in this episode, though. He’s shown to be generally good-natured, smarter than he first seems, easily distracted but well-meaning, and willing and able to help Brain achieve his goals. Still, he’s missing the much of the overwhelming kindness and his enthusiasm for Brain’s plans and awe at Brain’s intellect that he has as we go further through the series. I mean, there are hints of it here, too, but it’s much more understated compared to later on. Not to mention that Pinky gains a bit of a sassy side to him that somehow still manages to be friendly, like when you gently tease your friends while still caring about them.

I understand that you can’t really squeeze all of that into the first, like, fifteen minutes or so of a series, though.

Also, the animation for this episode wasn’t exactly the best of the series. There are points where Brain looks kinda muppet-y and Pinky is uncharacteristically gaunt and gangly. I mean, Pinky is usually a little gangly but not as hunched over and his nose stretched out so much. It’s not the worst, either, and serves as a decent baseline of how the characters look. Wang Film Production looks to be the animation studio behind this one, and I’d say their style is the most “normal” quality of the ones that get to animate for PatB. They do settle into a better and more consistent style for the show, so I’ll try and be on the look-out for that.

I’m not sure if the other posts I’m going to do on this rewatch will be quite so play-by-play as this one was. Since this is the first, I felt the need to establish in more detail the kind of things that happen in your average episode of PatB and the general rhythm of the show. I’m definitely going to try and include every instance of the ongoing running gags the series has, though.

I feel I should also say that from now on I might have to double or triple the amount of episodes in one post, too. There are some episodes in a long-running series like this where not too much of note happens, I’m sure, and I know at least a few are either silent shorts, cameos in other Animaniacs skits or little music videos and you can only get so much out of those entries.

Yes, music videos. Including a cameo appearance in a Macarena parody. I’ll prepare as best as I can to cringe so hard from secondhand embarrassment that I morph into a pretzel shape.

We’re only getting started, folks. Things are only going to get weirder and more interesting from here on out.

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-2nd Place

If you’ve been paying attention to Disney’s televised animation, you’d noticed that there’s been a weird trend going on with their shows. Recently, most of Disney’s shows begin as random comedies only to have a deep story to them in later seasons. Some shows soar as they do this right, and others tend to flail as they do it wrong. Personally, I would like to think it’s all because of one show that Disney has made. And since its series finale, the network tries their hardest to replicate it due to how well received it was. And despite the many attempts, no one can do better than--

#2-Gravity Falls (2012-2016)

The Plot: Twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines are forced by their parents to spend the summer in Gravity Falls, Oregon. But don’t worry, their parents are not entirely careless. They just sent their only children to spend the summer with their con artist of a great uncle with a deep, dark secret...okay, so they're a little careless. In fact, the parents might be more irresponsible than you think because Gravity Falls isn’t the small backwater town as it seems. Soon enough, Dipper and Mabel will learn that it’s a town with monsters, demons, and a mysterious author who recorded all of the town’s weirdness in his journals. Will the Pines twins solve the town's mysteries, or is their summer going to be over sooner than they thought?

By the way, I FREAKING love this premise! The idea of an entire town being filled with mysteries and monsters is so compelling to me because the possibilities are endless. One episode could be dealing with zombies, and another could be dealing with an entire society dedicated to keeping the town’s weirdness a secret. On top of that, every monster/weird oddity that Dipper and Mable face is just so creative, from a multi-headed bear to even the main antagonist being (and I kid you not) the Illuminati symbol wearing a top hat. And even when the show does use monsters you’ve seen before, they utilize them in a way you wouldn’t have expected. For example, there are two episodes where the characters deal with ghosts. In both scenarios, the methods these ghosts use to haunt the living are not just creative and scary, but in some instances, they can also be kinda funny. There’s just no telling what this show is going to pull off. Or at least, not entirely.

Because another great thing this show has is its mystery element. And I don’t mean just how well it handles mystery within a single episode (although it does that phenomenally too). What I mean is that Gravity Falls has a great overarching mystery that you, the audience, can solve for yourself. With that comes the show’s impressive attention to detail. From the secret codes to solve, to the lines/scenes you wouldn’t have thought twice about, to even a single license plate. That’s right. A single license plate is an essential clue to the show's most significant twist ever. In fact, it’s a twist that fans have solved years in advance due to all the hints that were left within previous episodes. And most of the credit goes to Alex Hirsh and his team. They really put a lot of effort into what many would describe, a kids cartoon. Even though this might just be the most adult kid's cartoon that I have ever seen.

You know how Pixar movies try their darndest to make films suitable for both children and their parents? That’s basically what Gravity Falls does. Whether you’re an adult or child, odds are you will be entertained in nearly every episode because rarely does it feel like an episode leans too far in either direction. If there’s an episode with a serious story, there’s always a silly/lighthearted subplot to keep the kids entertained. And if there’s an episode that is just silly all the way through, there are adult jokes that make you ask, “How the hell did a Disney cartoon get away with that?” Even when the show gets genuinely creepy, it works just perfectly above the line of going too far for kids (except in “Northwest Mansion Mystery." S**t gets real in that episode). Many kid's shows in the 2010s struggled to find this balance, and Gravity Falls is another one of those rare exceptions that somehow feels like it does it without even trying.

And what keeps that balance? The show’s sense of humor, that’s what. Even in the darkest episodes of the series, there is almost a well-placed joke to lighten the mood. And with Gravity Falls, the show relies on four types of humor. Being random, being surreal, being smart, and being dark. And not just dark for a Disney cartoon. I mean that Gravity Falls has a dark sense of humor that I would have expected in something like Rick and Morty (which is fitting because the creators of both shows are actually close friends in real life). As for how funny the jokes are in this series, they. Are. SO. Funny. I’m not kidding when I say that every single episode--and I do mean, every. Single. Episode--has made me laugh at least once. Not even the best comedy shows that I’ve seen have been capable of doing something so spectacular.

But do you want to know why the comedy is so hilarious? And do you want to know what really kept me invested in all 40 episodes? The answer is simple: It’s all because of the characters. Most jokes are funny because the right person said them. I care about the show’s mysteries because the characters make me care about those mysteries. And when the stakes get high, I’m invested because I care about the characters so much that I fear they’ll get hurt. In fact, I was so invested in all of these characters that the series finale made me cry FOUR TIMES due to how heart-wrenching it was. And I don’t weep that often when it comes to specific media. Most of the time, I get a little misty-eyed, and even when it feels like a scene has yanked at my heartstrings, I usually get myself under control before any real tears show up. But with the series finale of Gravity Falls, I was so emotionally invested with this cast that I was tearing up with them as tearful goodbyes were said. This is because Gravity Falls’ writers know that the key to making any story work is to have a great cast of characters. Because it doesn’t matter how epic your plot is. If I’m not invested in the characters winning the day, then I won’t be invested in the story.

Now at this point, you’re probably wondering what is wrong with this show. To that, I say virtually nothing...Okay, that’s not true. There are some problems the show has, but trust me when I say that the good heavily outweighs the bad. Are there occasional continuity errors? Yes. But they’re usually intentional for misdirection or made up with really great attention to detail in other scenes. Are there occasionally bad jokes? Of course. But like I said: EVERY. EPISODE. IS. FUNNY. So who cares if not every joke lands? Are there also a couple bland characters? Obviously. However, they’re either made better in later episodes or forgotten quickly due to even more memorable characters. And now the big one: Are there bad episodes? And there are...in comparison to the show’s usual quality. Even when Gravity Falls is at its “worst,” the writing is still somehow entertaining in its own right. Hell, the real complaint I have involving the series isn’t even about the show itself. It’s about other shows on the network.

Like I’ve said in the beginning, as of late, there has been a lot of modern Disney cartoons trying too hard to be the new Gravity Falls. And they’re all best intentions met with poor execution. The best (or should I say worst) example I can think of is Tangled: The Series, a television series based on Disney’s Tangled. The first batch of episodes was cute, harmless, and downright charming. Then halfway through the first season, it becomes dark, dark, and even darker. And unfortunately, the show’s quality feels like it took a dip with its direction. As for other Disney cartoons, they follow a similar pattern, with the thought that Gravity Falls did the same thing. The problem is that it didn’t. From the very first episode, the show started off by hinting that it isn’t as cute and innocent as it seems. Sure the stories got significantly darker in season two, but they slowly worked their way towards earning that by slowly becoming more dramatic with each episode. And like I said, even at its darkest, the writers still knew when to keep the tone light. So that’s really the only logical problem I have with Gravity Falls: It made people think they need to be more like Gravity Falls.

When I hear that people wish the show was brought back, I honestly don’t get it. The series ended on a perfect note, with very few questions left unanswered. And the unanswered questions were actually answered through other media such as books or comics. And if you ask me, I’d rather have the series come to an end in the way that it did. It had a perfect premise told with fascinating mysteries, funny comedy, infesting characters, and even a kickass theme song (I know that I didn’t mention that last bit, but trust me when I say that it’s so GOOD). Why ruin that by turning it into something like The Simpsons, where a show would just get stale after too many seasons? In the end, while I was sad to see it go, I’m still happy to say that this is always going to be a show that will make you Fall in love with it.

(But the real mystery is: What series is going to top a cartoon that was practically perfect?)

(...)

(Who am I kidding. You’ve probably already figured it out by now.)

[ask-the-good-creeps]

can we get some of the carney groups interactions

The mechanical whirring was cut short as Davie switched off his tattoo gun. He wiped the latest piece on his newest client a couple times with a clean towel as he set down his supplies and encouraged the canvas to take a look at the finished image. It would need a bit of time to heal, but this wasn’t her first time getting inked - she was well aware of that. She thanked him for his work and told him how much she loved the art he’d permanently drawn into her shoulder, and he finished the administrative tasks associated with her session today before wishing her well and sending her out the door.

Emma had been his last appointment for the day seeing how the guy who had been scheduled after her had suddenly called it off. Davie was both disappointed and relieved that the man had quit on him; he was glad he didn’t have to work with someone so difficult, but at the same time...strange things tended to happen when he was the only one in the shop. Things that nobody ever believed him about when he tried to tell someone. He found himself hoping for a surprise walk-in as he began doing random housekeeping around the place.

Be careful what you wish for.

The little silver bell on the door rang out. Davie called out a quick greeting to whoever entered as he threw out some garbage in the back room. He heard conversation as he walked back out to the front, and he felt a sinking unease in his gut when he entered to find the front room empty...but the conversation didn’t stop. That could only mean one thing...he was back, and he must have brought a friend this time.

Davie felt sweat start to bead on his forehead as his eyes scanned the room. The voices seemed to be coming from all around him, but there were no people in sight to attribute them to.

“H-hello?” Davie called shakily. The conversation paused for a moment - that was all it took. Oh no.

“Hello!” He appeared out of nowhere, leaning down so his eerily-grinning face was both level with and inches from Davie’s own. The tattooist was almost glad there wasn’t anyone else there; a grown man shrieking like a child and falling back on his ass was usually cause for a little light-hearted ridicule from his coworkers.

“Ah, sorry about that! I always forget how easily startled you are.” the jester laughed and though Davie didn’t think he intended to sound like a maniacal villain, he most definitely did. 

“Are you sure he’s alright with us being here? Are you really sure?” Davie turned his attention to the blue-haired maniac’s friend. If his eyes could’ve bulged from his skull and exploded like in a cartoon, they would have. 

This questionable character was taller than his already-too-tall companion. The greyscale scheme of his outfit seemed to have leaked out into his very being, as if the clown had been soaked in a vat of magic bleach. His black lips were set into a frown as his creepy eyes bore into Davie’s soul. He had a single black brow raised in question, and his seemingly boneless arms were loosely crossed as he waited for the jester’s answer.

“Of course it’s fine with him, Jack! I’ve been here at least three times already - he knows me!” Candy Pop offered Davie his hand, and the artist reluctantly took it. Pop hauled the man to his feet and turned to face a still-skeptical Jack. Davie’s throat was so dry it hurt to swallow, and he was sure the clown saw him shaking before he realized it himself. The jester had never seemed determined to harm him on any of their previous encounters, but Davie was reluctant to drop his guard around a creature of supernatural origin...especially one capable of things like Pop.

“W-what can I do for you?” Davie asked with a forced smile. He didn’t want to offend these two. Pop opened his mouth as if he intended to answer, but the clown - Jack - beat him to it.

“We can leave if you don’t want us here. It isn’t our intention to terrify you, but this unholy cretin,” Jack gestured to Pop, “has a habit of not knowing when he’s crossed a line with people.”

“Oh, but lines are meant to be crossed, old friend! Life is so much more interesting outside our comfort zones!” Pop laughed again and did an exaggerated spin before looking back at Davie. “I don’t trust anyone else to mark up my skin anyway.”

Davie was too focused on the painfully-wide smile splitting Pop’s cheeks to see Jack roll his eyes. The jester started to tell him about the latest art piece he wanted on his back, but Davie wasn’t paying much attention to his words at this point. He nodded his head almost reflexively until the jester stopped talking.

“Can you do that?” Pop asked at the end of his explanation. Davie snapped back into reality.

“Y-yeah, sure, I just gotta get a sketch down...” he mumbled. Pop clapped his hands in excitement as he turned to head to the chair he always sat in here to get work done. Davie turned to follow him but was stopped. A cold chill ran down his spine as he saw the long, dark claws resting over his shoulder.

“You sure you’re up for this? We’ll leave if you say so.” Jack rasped behind him.

“It’s f-fine,” Davie gulped, “I just...didn’t know you were real before this, that’s all.”

“Pop told you about me last time he was here, then?” there was a curiosity behind the clown’s words. It didn’t sound malicious, but it was hard to tell with how creepy his voice was.

“He, uh...he did a little more than that.” He heard a confused hum from behind him as the sharp-tipped fingers disappeared from his shoulder.

“Did I forget to tell you about that?” Pop was already sitting shirtless on the chair, even though he didn’t need to be for the next half-hour at least while Davie sketched the design he wanted.

“What did you do?” Jack’s voice sounded exasperated, tired, somewhat defeated in the face of his jester friend’s ever-present smile.

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter now, all things considered, but...”

“But...?”

“But I may have gotten a picture of you feeding little ducks inked into my back a couple visits prior.” Davie heard a sound behind him akin to a hard slap, followed by Pop’s echoing laughter. He risked a glance over his shoulder to see Jack with his palm covering his face. The demonic clown seemed completely fed-up with Pop’s antics; having dealt with him a few times now, Davie could easily understand where that sentiment came from.

“Are we going to get this show on the road or not, boys?” Pop asked in a light, sing-song voice. Jack sighed as he and Davie both went over to get started. The tattooist wasn’t surprised to see the jester’s back completely blank. Every tattoo put on this guy faded away after a little more than a week, and it seemed even Candy Pop himself didn’t know why that was. Davie wondered why the guy kept getting tattoos if they weren’t even going to stay for long. What was the point of doing all that work only to have nothing to show for it later on?

He sighed quietly as he grabbed his sketching tools. He remembered the first tattoo the jester requested. A rainbow unicorn that took up his whole back. At the time, Pop had really creeped him out in general, but he hadn’t known the guy wasn’t human. The next tattoo was a snake slithering up his arm, and Davie still hadn’t suspected supernatural issues.

Then, Pop came in for his third tattoo...a full back tatt of Jack feeding ducks. Davie had tried to say that he didn’t think there’d be any room around the unicorn piece, only to stop mid-sentence when Pop exposed his tattoo-less back. His jaw had dropped when Pop responded by saying, “That would have been a really cool idea for my first tattoo, but I’ve got my heart set on this one.”

He had done the piece while doubting his own sanity. 

It was the fourth time that started to make him afraid. Pop had come in with a cardboard mustache photo-prop held in front of his face to ask for another full-back tatt. The jester tried to deny he’d been there before when Davie mentioned their previous interactions, and seemed genuinely upset that Davie ‘saw through his clever disguise’ when he finally admitted his identity. And of course, his back was blank again that day.

The jester always requested the strangest, most outlandish things after that. There was a piece of a female version of himself flipping the bird and saying ‘fuck off’, an upside-down giraffe with green square spots wearing a yellow bandana, what could only be described as an alien lifeform offering a striped banana to a faceless cow...his requests never made sense or seemed to have any meaning, and Davie had never expected to see a physical manifestation of one of those images here in his little shop.

He set to work sketching his otherworldly visitor’s latest request, and wasn’t surprised to Jack hang his head in his hands after Pop approved the sketch. Davie found it interesting to know that Pop’s ideas were odd even by the standards of other creatures like him.

The tatt took about six hours; they finished an hour and a half after closing time, but Davie hadn’t been willing to ask him to come back and finish it another time. He could suck it up. Jack had been quiet through the whole thing, while Pop had been his usual chatterbox self. The jester admired his back in the mirror for a few minutes before snapping his fingers. There was a puff of blue smoke, and his shirt was back on. 

“I can’t wait to show Jason.” Pop smirked mischievously. Jack had shaken his head in disapproval, but didn’t say anything.

The two entities thanked him for his time, paid and tipped well, and headed out the door into the night. Davie wondered as he locked up the shop later why they didn’t just teleport away. Part of him hoped he’d never see the two living examples of nightmare fuel again, but part of him didn’t mind the thought of it so much. Sure, they were terrifying, but they never hurt him...and he couldn’t deny they looked familiar somehow. 

He briefly wondered who Jason was...and why the nude redheaded woman Pop had inked into his back tonight was important to him.

[jemfisch]

⌠ MASON GOODING, 21, CISMALE, HE/HIM ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, JEREMY “JEM” FISCHMAN II! according to their records, they’re a SECOND YEAR year, specializing in ADVANCED ENCRYPTION & “MACGUYVER” SURVIVAL SKILLS AND NAVIGATION; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (old hip hop blaring from headphones, a broken crtv with the cords ripped out and repurposed, the smell of spray paint graffiti, brightly colored shirts with 80s patterns). when it’s the (cancer)’s birthday on 06/23/99, they always request their ICE CREAM SANDWICHES from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. ⌿ kati, 24, she/her, est ⍀ @gallagherintro

STATS / PINTEREST / CONNECTIONS / CLASSES

INSPIRATION

fox mulder (the x files)

hogarth hughes (the iron giant)

will turner (pirates of the carribean)

robin hood

george weasley (harry potter)

aladdin

spike spiegel (cowboy bebop)

mark watney (the martian)

BACKGROUND + CLICK FOR BIO

his parents were high school sweethearts and married just before they attended college at harvard together, securing careers at the kennedy space center. 

jeremy fischman sr dies under mysterious circumstances in a lab accident and ellen is twenty-eight and left alone to raise baby jem. things only go downhill from here. jeremy was the love of her life and she becomes obsessed with his disappearance and all kinds of conspiracy theories, blows a bunch of her money. it doesn’t take long for her to be fired, savings blown on expensive equipment or sunk into internet hoaxes

they move to a rough neighborhood in gainesville where jem grows up. he likes jem, not jeremy, jeremy is his father. he’s never experienced the perfect life his parents used to live, the white picket fence, the shiny space shuttles. he’s only got this, and honestly, he doesn’t hate it. 

the neighborhood’s rough, but there’s a lot of fun characters, and his mom is practically his best friend – aside from his next-door neighbor, NOAH WARD.

jem’s mom does odd hacking jobs from the comfort of their home. some of them are shadier than others, she makes connections with a lot of private investigators in town and looks into people’s cheating husbands and tracks down birth parents and missing people. she does pro bono work too, a kindhearted woman, she can never say no to those in need, even if she’s not so fortunate herself. as jem gets older, he learns everything that he knows from her

every summer vacation growing up, jem and his mom would pack their bags and make home in a camper van, traveling across the country. in some ways, this was great mother-son bonding, but this wasn’t why they did it. his mom never gave up looking for the truth about her husband,  but hacking into secure, top-secret government databases is nothing like hacking into the gainesville city hall, it’s hard work, and they travel around the country methodically so that their signal cannot be traced. every summer they get close, but never close enough.

when noah moves away for college, jem stays home. he’s not comfortable leaving his mom. 

he keeps up with hacking jobs and keeping up with looking for his dad on the side. he doesn’t think they’ll ever find him, his mom holds out hope but jem is eighteen years old and a bit more jaded now, he figures the guy’s just really dead and well, the conspiracy of it all matters less and less when he knows that either way, he’s still grown up without him. 

a lot of jem’s social life is online, whether it’s friends from hacking forums or via soundcloud.

when he’s not hacking, he’s making music. his passions of technology and music mix and he creates his own beats and soundcloud, mashing together songs, and even putting together a popular meme track or two used on tiktok. 

it’s actually a bit lucrative, but that’s not why he does it. doesn’t even really use his name, catch him on soundcloud…username? uncutjems.

every time he and his mom get close to finding his dad, there’s just more to do, and it’s almost like someone KNOWS what they’re doing. 

jem’s right about that – he is being watched. since noah’s admission to gallagher, recruiters have been aware of the boy who taught her everything she knew. 

when gallagher makes the choice to start allowing male students, an agent shows up at his door offering him a once in a lifetime chance at a free education. 

jem doesn’t have any strong ambition to go into espionage, per say, but he won’t say no to advanced classes taught by some of the world’s brightest minds – and a chance to reunite with his best friend. however, he hasn’t stopped trying to get into the government’s records and still has ambitions of going into music production.

PERSONALITY. 

INTUITIVE. jem has a natural intuition about things and he trusts himself and his own opinions about things. i suppose you could perceive this as confidence, but honestly he’s just really SMART, good at absorbing facts even subconsciously and putting things together about people or situations. in a sense, he has a habit of being correct – he definitely comes off as intelligent, even though his grades in school have never been very good. he just has different priorities. 

LOYAL. make a friend out of jem and you have a friend for life, he’ll take your secrets to the grade and he’s pretty trustworthy. he’s the type of guy that gets along with pretty much everyone but he has a few select, close friends because he is somewhat intentional about the company that he keeps. he’s friendly and kind, but he keeps his inner circle of people he trusts close and somewhat exclusive. 

PROTECTIVE. kind of has papa bear energy, you know ? maybe the dad friend of your friend group, but in a laid back way, he might not seem like he’s the type to spring into action but call someone close to him a rude name and you’ll see his fist coming at your face. he’s protective but not possessive, i guess is how i would describe it, but i think he gives pretty good advice as well because he’s really hoping the best for ppl. 

MALINGERING. jem is kind of a SLACKER! at least, that’s what teachers have called him in the past, he simply does not dream of labor. he’s just kind of doing his own thing, will fake sick to skip a class, whatever else, even though he likes producing music he doesn’t really have a great ambition for anything, spy or otherwise. as long as he has a good computer setup, then he’s fucking chilling. 

MOODY. he’s laid back to the umpteenth degree when it comes to work or obligations, but he does have sort of mood swings, i guess he’s the sort of person that you would describe as grumpy at times ? definitely NOT a morning person and when he’s in an off mood, he can be hard to interact with or snap out of. 

DISORGANIZED. the sort of person to throw his stuff across the bed or leave piles of clothes on the floor to deal with later, maybe he’s not your favorite roommate for this reason. he has a habit of losing things that he just set down or whatever, things like that. 

HEADCANONS.

tbh you can think of him like...beca in pitch perfect ! he’s here bc he was offered a free education and he’s cool with that, but he’d rather be pursuing a future in music. a damn good hacker, though, and the gallagher recruiters are hoping that with some ‘ambition’ he’ll want to work for the government someday. 

played baseball throughout middle and high school and he’s fairly athletic – he can get pretty competitive when he plays, it kind of brings out a side in him that most people don’t expect to see because he’s fairly chilled out most of the time 

a boss with a slingshot. there is no reason for this, but he had one as a kid and he used to chase squirrels away from the bird feeders outside their home. he has great eyesight and his aim is great, but it’s literally the only weapon he’s proficient in

he’s not tiktok famous for his face, but he has two tiktok famous songs...he’s made like 12k in record deals for selling the rights, it’s just the kind of shit that he does goofing around in music software and he has a good ear for what is going to be catchy

he’s NOT a morning person, definitely a late night kind of guy, will stay up until all hours just fucking around on the computer and then he’ll sleep until 1 or 2pm, at least. getting up for morning classes is a struggle for them and he has slept through them on occasion.

funky sweaters, crazy socks, fun-patterned shirts, he dresses a bit like a circus tent at times, but you can’t say that he doesn’t have style – he dresses well, but it’s like he’s stepped out of a 90s cartoon or something

if he makes u a playlist he either wants to be ur friend so fucking bad or he’s head over heels in love with u

really likes making new things with old technology, he loves taking the macguyver courses and learning new things and he’s actually built his own computer and a lot of his own musical instruments 

usually has a couple bandaids because he’s a bit accident prone or can lose his focus when working in the lab. when he gets in his own head while working on a project, he literally cannot hear anything else – sort of selective hearing

likes fucking around with spray paint, if he can, he’s got a bit of an artistic streak and he doodles stickers on sticker paper sometimes. you can probably catch his tag around campus or even stuck to the latops of his close friends, it’s just a little man with a tv for a head. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

HACKING JOBS – if you STILL need a hacker for any of your wild backstory connections, jem is a great bet. he’s been doing paid jobs for people professionally since he could type, and he’s sort of an ace at getting in and out without leaving a trace...and he’s no gossip. so, your secrets would be safe with him. 

SMOKING BUDDIES – people that he can smoke up with, talk about life, talk about the bullshit of gallagher, but also people he can laugh with that don’t make him feel stressed or concerned about the future. 

MUSIC MAKING BUDDIES – if your character makes music, maybe they can collaborate on something...we’re about to drop the hottest mixtape of all time right here at gallagher academy i will teach myself garageband for this shit...jk but maybe

EX ON BAD TERMS – someone he dated last year...i’m imagining it was their first year and things were really great for the first semester, but shit fell apart second semester along with the school. maybe all the drama on campus caused distance, maybe he wasn’t there for them when they needed it, or maybe they got jealous of the way he always prioritizes noah ? a combination of things, we can hash out the details since i know some of you had some pretty angsty things going on second sem, and maybe it’s awkward now because it feels like there’s unfinished biz. 

EX ON GOOD TERMS / LOVERS TO FRIENDS – maybe someone that was a rebound and things didn’t really work and they saw that, maybe he wasn’t over his ex or whatever but they were able to stay friends ? it’s up to you how your muse feels about it but i want an ex that jem also has no hard feels about and actually is maybe sort of protective of them and cares a lot about them finding happiness, they bonded hardcore. 

EX-FLING – idk maybe they were hooking up for a while and then one of them started seeing someone else or one of them caught feels so they don’t hook up any more but it was super fun when they did !! also down for it to have been like a summer fling and once the summer ended. 

BROS – idk i would like for him to have a squad or something for him to just fuck around with <3 but it’s wholesome and they respect women

ONLINE FRIEND (ANONYMOUS) – he spent a lot of time on forums online and stuff so i’d love for him to have an online friend !! maybe cute if they just know each other by their screen names rn and we can do a bunch of text chats and maybe they both know they go to gallagher but they simply. haven’t met idk

ONLINE FRIENDS – also friends he met online that aren’t anonymous they could’ve met through any number of forums but probably have similar interests like music or hacking so they’re long time homies , someone he’s known almost as long as noah

ONE NIGHT STAND – self explanatory. maybe they’re super good friends and now it’s kind of awkward now and they want to get back to a place of normalcy but it’s simply not normal, maybe they fucked things up by breakin the tension on like. halloween or some shit. 

FRIENDZONED – someone jem accidentally friendzoned and maybe he doesn’t even realize it himself but they had a thing for him and he really just didn’t realize it bc he can’t tell unless you spell it out for him.

CLASS RIVALS – someone who tries really hard and cares about class a bunch vs. jem who doesn’t give a fuck but he keeps making the grade without really trying, so they’re ? bitter about it ? and so the two really do not hit it off because of that and they go back and forth , i just rly want a classroom rivalry. maybe even this rivalry and them nagging him actually motivates to try in the class just to piss them off 

 ENEMY – this person shared a secret with jem and then it somehow got out on the gossip blog idk ! they think jem told and now they hate him. 

anything pls let’s chat !

[charleskenny]

Wolfwalkers Review: Another One for the Ages

Eleven and half years after seeing the first film in Tomm Moore’s Celtic trilogy, The Secret of Kells, it was time to watch the last film in said trilogy. Wolkwalkers tells the story of English girl Robyn Goodfellowe as she grapples with life in the Irish city of Kilkenny where she receives a rather mythical revelation.

Robyn and her father have moved to Kilkenny as part of Oliver Cromwell’s English forces who have subdued the Irish. Cromwell tasked men like Robyn’s father with ridding the land of wolves as a means of making the forests safe for clearing. Robyn is the irrepressible young girl with notions of accompanying her father on his mission laying traps. However, a tragic occurrence during a wolf attack on sheep leads to a chance encounter with Mebh, a wolfwalker. What follows is a journey for Robyn as she navigates a complex web of relationships, responsibilities, politics, and self-introspection

My thoughts on The Secret of Kells, have aged much better than expected; given that they were written by a person with almost twelve fewer years of life experience but with reciprocal levels of over-enthusiasm. From this vantage point, that film has some flaws but nothing one couldn’t expect from a director making the most daunting undertaking of their [then] short career. Wolkwalkers gains from the additional years and experience of everyone involved in the best possible way, and it shows.

Wolkwalkers features the by now recongisable traits of a Moore/Cartoon Saloon feature film in every aspect. Visually, Irish Celtic and pagan mythology make for fertile grounds on which to tell a story. Lush colours lend their depth to the flat backgrounds which propagate excitement, exhilaration, and intrigue to every scene. Thematically, there is a stark contrast between the wild, native Irish landscapes, and the chaotic, urban Kilkenny overtaken by the English in their grey armour.

The animation proves, once again, that 3-D CGI endows a films with a best-by date. The Secret of Kells does not look like it was released in 2009, and undoubtedly in 20 years, Wolkwalkers will not look its age either. While not as fluid as the best and greatest, there is a simple pleasure in the traditional movements of the characters; there are no pretensions here. When called upon, the complexity arrives not in abundance, but with restraint. The film’s crew knew that gimmicks are not needed in this film, but a careful balance between the different elements is, and their care pays dividends. Nice touches such as the subtle traces of the pencil construction lines of the characters hint at the many human hands at work behind every frame; in stark contrast to a Pixar film where every whiff of human skill is buffed and polished out to showcase the latest capabilities of a piece of software.

The music by Bruno Coulais and Kila serve as the foundation for the storytelling experience. The music (and song by Aurora) provide the atmosphere that once again bring the viewer into the story instead of simply providing emotional cues.

The direction does a fine job servicing the story. Co-directors Moore and Ross Stewart are more than happy to let the art and story drive the direction rather than taking a Kubrick-esque approach where direction is everything. As with the animation, there is a restraint with a dash of fun, but when called upon for action scenes, there are ample reserves for a real surprise. The ‘wolfvision’ sequence in particular is praiseworthy for both its concept but also the amount of work that went into it.

Getting down to the nitty gritty, the characters took a while to warm up to. It’s not that they’re inherently cold or flat, but perhaps because at only 103 minutes and with a lot of ground to cover, the film has to get to the point fairly quickly. Robyn’s background is merely stated and I found myself craving more allusions to her past as away of driving her future. Mebh requires much less effort as her mythical origins are clearer, and her interactions with Robyn provide the little spark of interest on which the relationship rests. The Odd Couple this is not, but a getting-to-know-you tale in the finest form of the trope. Robyn’s father plays his part, with a relatable touch of being reluctantly subservient to his job for the benefit of his family. Cromwell makes for an interesting case since his reputation in Ireland differs from other countries but the film demures from playing to the worst of the feelings and opinions of the man. Focusing instead on his religious propriety and its unwelcome place in a land with other beliefs makes for a more universal villain but a less complex one.

There are only two aspects of Wolfwalkers to nitpick as a grown adult casting the critical eye on the film. The first is that the story felt somewhat formulaic and had just one thing too many shoehorned into the allotted running time. Less is sometimes more.

Secondly, I felt from watching Wolfwalkers that the film wears its influences a little bit too clearly. Setting aside the clear similarities to The Secret of Kells, shades of Pocahontas and the Hunchback of Notre Dame emanate from antagonist Oliver Cromwell. Robyn’s story is also uncannily like that of Jake Sully in Avatar among many others. One wonders if such influences are a deliberate hedge or a simple coincidence.

That being said, one influence that is less easy to spot is also one that others often make blatant. Wolfwalkers is arguably the more political, optimistic, family-friendly Irish version of Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki’s ability to influence needs no explanation, but it is nice to see his films being a source of reference for more than just story and animation.

All in all, Wolfwalkers is another winner and coming from someone who was initially pessimistic about the film, this is a good sign that others can be won over as well. Independent film is in an extraordinary period of growth and films like Wolfwalkers make recent news, such as Disney’s announcement of dozens of movies without a shred of originality, all the more insufferable. Wolfwalkers is the kind of film that I, as a parent, want my child to watch with an eye to seeing that sense of wonderment and awe spark in their eyes without having to worry about the pretensions of a brand’s corporate marketing department at work behind the scenes. Eminently worthy of your time, Wolfwalkers is on Apple’s streaming service now.

Originally published at https://animationanomaly.com/2020/12/16/wolfwalkers-review-another-one-for-the-ages/

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #370

“breakdowns, obscenities, it’s all i wanna be”

Do you have any bad habits you aren’t working on changing? If so, do you ever think you’ll try to break them? Downloading music, for one. I really should just start using Spotify... but my iPod has over 1k songs on it and I just seriously don't want to got through all the trouble. When was the last time someone surprised you with their reaction or behaviors? Hm. I dunno. What kinds of videos do you like to watch on YouTube, if any? I watch SO many different kinds. It used to be pretty strictly let's plays, but I've definitely expanded my watching interests. Now I'm really into watching educational reptile and tarantula husbandry and keeping channels, I watch one woman who is like my weight loss idol (Jordan Shrinks, she is amazing), there's a few vloggers, I enjoy some World of Warcraft channels, and then there's a couple urban exploration guys I like. I also occasionally watch some beauty YouTubers just for their personalities and the art of it. Have you ever reached out to a crisis center for mental health support? If so, how was the experience? Yes, but they were so busy that I didn't connect with anyone before I finally gave up and ODed. When was the last time you did something you were afraid to do, and how was the outcome? Ummmm I don't really know. What is one positive thing you believe about yourself? I care a lot about other people. What is something you have been through that has made you stronger? The breakup. It brought me to the lowest of lows, where every day was a struggle to survive. It taught me I can endure through almost anything, even if it doesn't feel like I can. Other than money, what is something you wish you had more of in your life? Happiness, contentment, being in love, motivation, energy, activities, travel... There's genuinely a lot. IIs there anything that you tend to ignore for the sake of your sanity? I'm very bad at ignoring things. If something is bothering me, it's going to put up a beastly fight to be at the forefront of my mind. What is something you wish was different about your family? I wish we were closer and better off monetarily. What keeps you going lately? The hope for a happy, satisfactory future. Have you ever been in an unconventional relationship (long distance, polyamorous, same gender, age gap, etc)? if so, what challenges did this relationship present, and were they worth overcoming? I've been in a long-distance relationship with another girl. I think the hardest part was that there was not being able to physically be there for each other when one of us was really struggling, and sometimes communication was an issue, not being able to read body language when we voice chatted or hear the tone in which we "spoke" when texting, though I'm pretty sure that's an issue with any online relations. I also feel it's difficult to really build and experience your chemistry with one another when you're not physically with the other person. I still think all these challenges were worth overcoming, though. I in no way regret the relationship and got only good things out of it. What is the most unhealthy relationship (whether friendship or romantic) you’ve ever had? What made it so unhealthy? Do you still talk to each other? I'm kinda torn between Jason and Colleen, but I think my bond with Jason was ultimately more unhealthy because it went beyond love: he was an obsession. Having him with me was the only thing that brought me joy, and I lit-er-a-lly could not imagine my future without him. Like that concept just didn't exist; it was entirely impossible in my head. On his end, he failed to communicate what he was going through emotionally, which only contributed to the damage. I never knew he was struggling because of me. Without realizing it, I put so much pressure on him to make me happy, so to answer the last question, no, we don't, by his decision - and I don't blame him. Have you ever been abusive in any way? Were you able to change or make amends, or, in general, what do you think people should do to make amends in that situation? A neverending battle I have with myself is if how I treated Jason after the breakup was qualifiable as emotional abuse, specifically with messaging him things like "thanks for sending me to the ER" and shit. My therapist reassures me that it wasn't abusive because I wasn't being deliberately manipulative, but rather genuinely hurt and convinced I had been wronged and wanted him to know and acknowledge it. She agrees that it was wrong, which I entirely agree with, but sometimes, I'm still convinced I was abusive. I fucking hate answering this question, so hurrying up: I don't know if he's forgiven me. As for how others could reconcile, that's not for me to say. I know sometimes the answer is to NOT make amends and completely stay away from their abuser. It's not my right to tell others how to cope with their abuse. Have you ever forgiven someone for being abusive or allowed someone toxic back into your life? Did this person change for the better or not? My former best friend Colleen was toxic as all fuck hell, and I let her back in way too many times. No, she never changed. I honesty doubt she ever will, given her pride. When was the last time you did something “meant” for children? Do you think it’s okay for adults to do these things (ie. watch cartoons, have stuffed animals, dress in cute clothing, etc), or do you think there’s an age beyond which it becomes unacceptable - and if so, why? Hmmm... I know this was semi-recent, but whatever it was is evading me at the moment. I personally have zero issue with adults engaging in activities like that; let people do what they enjoy if they're not harming anyone, especially things as innocent as dressing how they think is cute, etc. I would far rather people "act like children" (not emotionally, you know what I mean) than run around the streets selling drugs and shit. What was the last thing to “trigger” you (as in, in a true mental health sense, I’m being serious here) and how did you cope with it? What kinds of things do you tend to find triggering? What do you do either avoid or face your triggers? When I was riding to the sleep study section of the health plaza, where the hospital is, my anxiety spiked quite a bit, recalling all of my ER stays for being suicidal. It didn't help that the psych hospital I visited most is also in that whole jumble of buildings. I dealt with it by reminding myself I was in that area for a very different reason, and Mom reassured me that where I would be staying was more like a small hotel room than a hospital bed, which was true, so that helped. Regarding the next question, I'm not gonna lie to ya, I have a stupid amount of PTSD triggers: certain music, shows, fandoms, places, smells, even tastes of certain foods. I tend to stay away from my major triggers, but I'll *sometimes* fight the tiny ones, because I want that sense of ownership of myself back. If you’re diagnosed with anything, do you feel that it accurately represents what you’re experiencing? Yes. What are some minor physical discomforts that really bug you (eyelash in your eye, a wedgie, rumpled socks, etc)? I'm VERY sensitive to feeling anything in my nose, and it leads to me needing to blow it a lot. I also can't stand having holes in my socks, but since I wear flip flops essentially everywhere, I don't experience this much. Are you ever afraid to admit to liking something because you’re afraid other people will judge you for it? What is the worst that’s ever happened as a result of you liking something different from the crowd? What about the best thing that’s come as a result of a unique interest? Y E P!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing really bad has happened because of admitting my interests, other than hearing things along the lines of "I don't get it." It's very odd, just how horribly receptive I am to judgment about things I like when I don't recall a time where I was ridiculed for anything. But anyway, the best thing to happen from sharing interests for me is making a new friend that likes the same thing, and I will IMMEDIATELY be closer to you than most people I associate with once you've helped me past that vulnerable spot of mine. Have you ever remained good friends with an ex? Yeah. Do you have a negative view of mentally ill people, or are you mentally ill yourself? Do you ever call others crazy, insane, etc? Do you ever call yourself those things? I'm mentally ill and empathize heavily with those who suffer themselves. I absolutely do not have a negative look on mental health sufferers; we don't choose to be victims. I'm definitely not a big fan of abusing terms like "insane," because I've fucking been there, and it's not a term to take lightly. I've thrown 'em around before, but I try to avoid it. I don't call myself any of those things nowadays, but in the deepest trench of my depression and PTSD, I honest to God think I fit the definition of "insane." Does it bother you to have people comment on what you’re eating, or do you not care? What are some comments that would bother you, if any? Do you ever comment on what other people are eating or make assumptions about their intakes? YES. JUST DON'T FUCKING COMMENT. I get EXTREMELY self-conscious when my mom does this sometimes when I occasionally need a small snack to hold me out overnight, and I absolutely never will say something to someone else. It's just rude, imo. Well, I guess if someone was really destroying their health and I was close to them, I would out of concern and be very gentle, but when regarding most people? I'm keeping my thoughts to my damn self. Do you like Redbull? I've never tried it and don't want to. I'm not an energy drink fan. Who is the last person you spent money on? My mom. I remember I bought us fast food when we were out once. What are you looking forward to in the next 4 days? G U Y S!!!!!!!!! I GET MY TATTOO TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!! :'''') Also on the same day, I start my TMS therapy, which I have high hopes for. Have you ever gone a whole day without eating? No. Do you sometimes use your music player to help you fall asleep? No, but I did that for years back in middle school. Have you ever had a crush on someone “too young” for you? No. Do you shave your legs more than once a week? Haaaaaaaaa. If you could cuddle with anyone right now, who would you pick? I really wish I could cuddle my late pup Teddy again. :/ I was thinking about that recently. Are you tanned? God no. I never am. Do you try to wear dresses whenever you can? No. I wish I was in a shape where I was comfortable wearing spring dresses again... I had this floral skull one in high school that I adored. Are you wearing something that belongs to someone else? No. Have you ever been called a bitch? Yes. Did you like the person you last kissed when you kissed them? I loved her. Who did you have a meaningful conversation with last? Sara. Do you have feelings for someone? Yeah, but they're like... on a leash, you could say. I don't let 'em run free and wild, and I know that even if nothing comes of those feelings again, it's fine. Are you trying to avoid liking somebody at the moment? I think Jason will be this answer for a very long time, if not forever, given the trauma and all. I have to remind myself frequently that I love his memory, not him, because I don't even know him anymore. It's been YEARS since we spoke. Just like I've changed incredibly, I'm sure he has, too. If you saw life in black & white, would that be okay with you? I mean, it would suck, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. When you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, what kinds of things are you likely to do? How often do you find you have trouble sleeping? I do exactly what you shouldn't do and get back on the laptop. I'd say I most often get on WoW and refresh the auctions I have up because that tends to tire me out because I do that shit manually to avoid any addon mishaps, and I have a looooot to put up as a gold farmer. What was the last lengthy packet you filled out? Something to see if I qualified for a sleep study. Are you a patient person? What is one way you have a lot of patience? What about not very much patience at all? I am NOT patient, at least regarding more trivial things, like sitting in waiting rooms. I do have patience though with other people with more serious things, like getting someone to open up to me. At what time during the day do you tend to feel your best? What about the worst? When I first wake up. It's a "fresh start" and it's nice to feel rested. Plus, I open a fresh can of cold soda as my "coffee" for lack of better word, haha. I'm in my worst mood probably late afternoon/early evening, by which time I am incredibly bored and just dulled down. What was the last thing you did that you wish you could take back or do differently? The last thing... I dunno. How frequently do you stay overnight somewhere that isn’t your own home? What things do you miss about home when you’re away? Do you tend to get homesick easily? Pretty much never. I do miss my room and its privacy when I'm away from home, but I wouldn't say I get homesick all that easily, so long as I have WiFi, haha. Do you tend to eat more in the beginning of the day or at night? Do you have a tendency to snack when you’re bored? If so, what kinds of snacks do you normally go for? Not necessarily the beginning of the day, but definitely more than at night. I am BAD about snacking when I'm extremely bored, but at the very least I'm conscious enough to try and find something semi-healthy, like granola bars, fruits, a scoop of peanut butter, but I also sometimes just eat like... a slice of bread or a tortilla. Horrible choice. I'm a carb fiend and I hate it. If you have any dietary restrictions, do you ever miss foods you can’t have? If not, what’s something you haven’t had for a long time that you wish you could eat again? I thankfully don't have any. I've been craving cheesecake like a madman lately. :< The spicy shrimp fritas from Olive Garden, too. Is there something you still can’t do even though you’re an adult or might be expected to do this thing? I don't have my license, and my driver's permit is even expired. I'm terrified of driving. I also don't have a job, and I can't cook. When was the last time you congratulated someone? Were you happy for them, indifferent, jealous? Uhhh I think someone on Facebook had a baby. Of course I was happy for them. What was the last milestone you reached in your life (graduating, buying a car, starting a family, etc)? What milestone are you going for next, if any? Um... I haven't reached a true milestone in years. Hell, I don't think since I started recovery from the breakup. Do you enjoy getting comments or messages? How likely are you to leave comments or messages for other people? Yeah, it makes me feel cared about. It really depends on the platform on how much I leave other people comments, and I'm extremely shy about messaging, but I'll do it sometimes. When are you most likely to scream (either out of fright, anger, or whatever)? Do you scream or yell often? When was the last time someone screamed at you (or in your presence)? Frustration, for sure. I've screamed into a pillow more than once. I definitely don't yell or especially scream often. I'm sure the last person to yell at me was Mom, but I don't remember about what. What would you say is your STRONGEST emotion? Maybe not the most frequent, but the most intense? And what emotion do you feel most weakly, even if you might feel it more often? I'd saaaay... maybe love. When I love something/someone, I love HARD. I think I experience joy the weakest; it's very muted for me. And lastly, what are you listening to? Is this a band you listen to a lot "The Heretic Anthem" by Slipknot. I wouldn't say I listen to them a lot, but I have been more than usual lately.