#i watched it during adult swim in the early 2000s

[kusatta]

" how is it you get into these situations so often, ahmya ?" / @sozokami.

[showtoonzfan]

When it comes to Helluva Boss I really tried getting into it and wanting to love it because it seems like a interesting show and keep hearing so much hype on it. While the concept is a cool one and the animation is good as well as Viv art style being something uniquely different and some of the characters designs being nice enough, but despite those few decent qualities. All and all Helluva Boss to me just feels like any other very below average typical adult cartoon that to be honest reminds me of the type of adult cartoons that came on Comedy Central during the early 2000s that didn't last way too long or ones that came on Fox that only lasted for one season or a few episodes, the whole show just feels like a typical overly edgy adult cartoon that's trying so hard to be deep or have the same kind of mature depths of Bojack Horseman or even Tuca and Bertie except the writing is nowhere near on the same levels of those shows. Everything about Helluva Boss just feels like a total mess from the worldbuilding to the writing amongst other issues with the show also the creator and her nonstop baggage of ever-growing controversies. I can see and get why a show like this is popular and I see the reasons for it, but I don't think its the greatest when it comes to adult animation solely on the fact that it seems to can't figure out on what its wants to be or can't properly balance mature issues and themes alongside comedic moments. For a better show about demons also angels just watch Good Omens or Adult Swim Your Pretty Face is going to Hell seems to do a much better job at the whole hell thing and dealing with demons better then Helluva Boss.

Yeah that’s how I feel about the show. I have no idea why people say Helluva is different from all those early 2000’s adult cartoons because in reality it’s like every other borderline average adult cartoon you’ve seen. The constant swears, the gore, the edgy childish humor, it’s literally just Brickleberry or Paradise Pd but with pretty animation. It tries to have the same deep writing chops on part with shows like Bojack Horseman or Morel Orel, even something like Breaking Bad, but it clearly can’t accomplish that. It’s just…literally a kids show disguised as an adult show, and I don’t think Vivziepop realizes that edgy swearing and sex automatically equals “mature”. I and many others have said it, but this show wouldn’t be as popular if it had the same style as Family Guy.

[medea10]

Medea Rants - CARTOONS!!!

I’m taking a break from writing up anime reviews to talk about some news that dropped a few weeks ago that has my mind swarming with so much thought.

A few weeks ago, I’m scrolling through Twitter…I’m still not calling it by its other name and randomly came across this news about a new television channel coming. MeTV Toons. The minute-long video teased all of the old cartoons I used to love watching and still love watching.

The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Top Cat, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Underdog, Wally Gator, 2 Stupid Dogs, Johnny Quest, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Magilla Gorilla, Speed Racer, Freakazoid, Snagglepuss, Looney Tunes, Popeye, Droopy, Betty Boop, and so, so, so, so, SOOOOOO MUCH MORE!

HISTORY ABOUT METV: Depending on where you live, you might get a combination of different channels in your cable package. MeTV, Antenna TV, Cozi, Catchy Comedy, Get TV, Rewind, etc. Ever since their existence I’ve been drawn to both MeTV and Catchy Comedy (formerly known as Decades). MeTV has been known to play programming ranging from the 1940s to the 1980s give-or-take. It’s like what TV Land used to be like before becoming the MASH and Raymond network. Me personally, I’m usually watching The Three Stooges or All in the Family.

In recent years, MeTV has decided to play cartoons. Not a lot, but enough to gain attention. Ever since they started this, every Saturday morning I’m up watching the cartoons. Because I’m still used to the Saturday morning cartoon setup before it died. Mostly, this consists of Popeye, Tom & Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, and Bugs Bunny/Looney Tunes. On Sundays, they play The Flintstones and Jetsons. During the week, they also aired a show called, “Toon In With ME”. This was an hour-long program where the hosts would play the short cartoons I just mentioned above. I actually only watch this on rare occasions since it always airs when I’m heading off to work. Believe it or not, this program has been a huge hit. So, it’s no surprise that the hosts announced MeTV Toons on their program.

THE CONCEPT OF A 24/7 CARTOON CHANNEL: Cartoon Network and Boomerang. Y’all remember this, right? Back when Cartoon Network first started, it had all of the old cartoons from back in the day. But then, they started doing their own original programming. And that was okay, because we got Cartoon Planet and Space Ghost Coast to Coast out of the deal. Then we got original programming from the Cartoon, Cartoon era. And that was okay, because we got shows like Courage, Billy and Mandy, Powerpuff Girls, and Dexter out of the deal. But then, all of the older cartoons started disappearing and we get some mediocre cartoons out of the deal. Not okay! But also, we got things like Toonami and Adult Swim. So…I’m stuck here.

That’s when Boomerang came in! And that’s all I can tell you because I never got Boomerang in my cable package. BECAUSE XFINITY SUCKS! Apparently, in the early 2000s, all of those older cartoons I’ve mentioned before migrated to the Boomerang channel. It so would have been nice to watch that. I’m still disgruntled about that whole thing. Time passes and both of these channels are unrecognizable. Fast-forward to the 2010’s, Cartoon Network is playing some garbage called Teen Titans GO and Boomerang mostly plays…I don’t know. I just know it wasn’t the old cartoons. Just rehashes. I only came across it if it was playing in the breakroom at work since we had Dish there. Not going to complain that they were playing Pokemon and it just happened to have Tracey on that day.

YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE FROM MY TRACEY OBSESSION HERE! Think again.

Mwahahahaha!

Both channels have become shells of their former selves. And if you want to know the truth, I only watch Cartoon Network for Adult Swim and Toonami. That’s it!

Now that MeTV is doing its own 24/7 cartoon channel, I have so many thoughts in my head. Hopes and dreams, crushing reality thoughts, worry, and so much more. Most of all, I just want to actually see it with my own eyes. I don’t want to relive being 12 years old and seeing my favorite shows plucked off the air and put on a channel that I don’t even get. That’s not cool. I’m too old to be going through emotions I felt at the start of puberty. So, Xfinity! Do a sister a favor and hand over the goods. And MeTV, learn from the past mistakes of Boomerang and Cartoon Network. No original programming! Unless it’s something like Toon in With ME, none of that! Leave that shit to Cartoon Network and Max. And Teen Titans in any capacity must be BANNED! It’s for the greater good.

With that said, here are some scattered thoughts I have with the upcoming MeTV Toons channel.

UNDERDOG: I want to see Underdog. Plain and simple. Not that shitty-ass, bull-shit, pile of Taco Bell toilet leave-behinds movie that Disney made back in 2007. I. WANT. UNDERDOG. The show! Wally Cox saying, “There’s no need to fear, Underdog is here”. THAT! I WANT THAT! I want to see Underdog, Sweet Polly Purebread, Riff Raff, Mooch, Tap-Tap the Chisler, Batty Man, O.J. Squeeze, Rudy Guiliani’s doppleganger Simon Barsinister, Cad, I want to see everyone!

…

I ain’t fucking around here. Put Underdog on and LEAVE IT THERE ON THE SCHEDULE. Don’t be fucking with me and having it on for one day and then I never see it again. PLAY IT!

Sorry to get so postal here. But Underdog is my all-time favorite older cartoon. And as you can see by my collection of goodies here, I am a fan.

TIME-STAMP: Seeing all of these old cartoons finally getting a home, you have to ask what’s the cut off of how old the cartoon must be? I seriously would have been fine with them cutting things off at 1989. But then I see surprising entries like 2 Stupid Dogs, Freakazoid, and the cartoon series based off the movie that was based off the comic, The Mask. Wow, that certainly takes me back. Okay, perfect! All of the cartoons played here don’t go past the millennium threshold. This, I can live with. But then…

Xiaolin Showdown too?! Okay, this one was obviously not made in the 90s as it ran on KidsWB from 2003 to 2006. I’m a little excited as it does make me optimistic for more KidsWB programs. But it does make me a little suspicious seeing this one red herring. Nothing against the show at all, I just don’t trust any program after 1999 when you’re seeing the line-up I’m seeing. If it were me, the cut-off time should be this.

This is Christopher Walken dancing in the Fatboy Slim video Weapon of Choice. When this came out should be the cut-off point for any cartoon made to be put on this channel. With Xiaolin Showdown being the exception.

MOVIES: A good idea that Cartoon Network used to do on Saturday nights was play movies. Believe it or not, there are good cartoon movies that were made by people not affiliated with the Disney corporation. Why not do so here? A lot of Don Bluth’s movies used to play like An American Tail, Thumbalina, and Secret of NIHM used to play. Let’s do it here! How about some trippy-ass 60s and 70s movies like Gay Pur-ree and Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure?! A Boy Named Charlie Brown! Yes, do it! MeTV plays that one and Snoopy Come Home during Christmas time, this would be perfect. Hell, add the other two Charlie Brown movies here too. The Chipmunk Adventure! Yes, please!

A lot of the cartoons already on the docket for MeTV Toons have movies. The Jetsons have their own movie. Just stop before you see The Jetsons with the WWE. Tom and Jerry had a movie come out in the 90s. It was weird, but it was at least original. Just stop before you see Tom and Jerry crashing movie classics. Scooby Doo has a plethora of movies. I know the Boo Brothers and the Ghoul School movie has Scrappy Doo, but those were still solid features. Just stop when you see any movie that aired after Y2K. The Flintstones had many that have been made between the 60s and the 90s. This includes a musical, a cross-over, a wedding, and even Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm becoming parents. Seeing all the pictures on the MeTV Toons website put up Fred and Bamm-Bamm from the Christmas Carol movie. So, that gives me hope. Again, just don’t play anything made after 2000.

While you’re at it, try and see if you can get the rights to play The Brave Little Toaster. I promised I wouldn’t bring up anything Disney here, but this movie is very much a Disney film and yet, five years later is still not on Disney+. That’s a fucking crime. Somebody needs to play that classic.

ANIME ON METV TOONS: With this announcement, we saw one of the characters prominently featured in the teasers was Speed Racer. That is definitely an anime despite what we all thought back in the day when we first saw it. Should MeTV stop right there and just keep it with Speed Racer? Believe it or not, I say yes. Shocking, yes. There are so many anime series that could be added to MeTV Toons to bring back other kinds of nostalgia. MeTV Toons is playing shows that came from the KidsWB time. What played back then? Pokemon, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Yu-Gi-Oh! There are shows from FOX Kids time too. What was a show that played there? Digimon! And let’s not forget the Toonami classics like Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Gundam, and Tenchi Muyo. Would love the fuck out of that, but would also feel like it’d be too much and also hard to get as some of the anime companies are hard to negotiate with. Plus, Cartoon Network is actually bringing DBZ and Sailor Moon back.

But if they do put Pokemon on the schedule, I won’t be mad about that.

ADULT PROGRAMMING: I’m not saying to go full-on Adult Swim. Also, no on Squidbillies. I just like this picture. But some adult programming wouldn’t hurt. Excluded would have to be anything owned by Disney/FOX or Paramount. So, as much as I love shows like Daria and The Simpsons, NO! With that said, there are several shows worthy enough to be given a new home. Let’s start with Duckman! No? How about The Critic? If not that, how about Bob and Margaret? Nobody has seen this show for 20 years. Let’s make this happen. How about the short-lived cartoons that aired in the late 90s/early 2000s? The Oblongs, Baby Blues, Mission Hill, and…I hesitate even saying this one, Dilbert. Hesitation because the creator of Dilbert is a bit of a fuck-hole. But the show is okay! Let’s not go too far with adult animation. Fritz the Cat would be too far. And don’t even think about Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon. That’s a war crime in and of itself!

CONTROVERSIAL CARTOONS: Make no mistake about it, there are some cartoons that if made today would be cancelled by all kinds of groups. I’m kind of standing in this fork in the road wondering if it should air or not. Obviously the infamous “Banned Eleven” from Looney Tunes should remain that way and for good reason. But…two cartoons do come to mind and why people would find issue with it. First, is Johnny Bravo. You realize that Cartoon Network is doing it’s Checkered Past block and not once did it put Johnny Bravo on there. I think it’s the fact that he’s a womanizer. Like a human Pepe Le Pew! I can see MeTV Toons carrying Johnny Bravo as their parent channel does play Pepe Le Pew cartoons. The other cartoon I’ll mention might not get a warm welcome.

And it’s Batfink! The superhero bat with wings of steel. He’s Batfink! I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loved watching Batfink when it used to air on the short-lived Nickelodeon show, Weinerville. There’s just one itty-bitty, little, tiny thing…okay, it’s a fucking big crater. Batfink’s assistant, Karate. Yeah, that’s a collar-tug. Just look at him. Just listen to him. I can hear every anus clamp shut with this. The good thing about channels like Catchy and MeTV, they do put up disclaimers if they’re about to play something that could be seen as offensive.

HOPES FOR THE LOST MEDIA: I know I have a lot of treasured classics on VHS. Damn shame my old TV/VCR died last year. If you’re wondering how old I am, I’m this old.

I am (this) Disney Black-Diamond logo old. Moving on!

Seeing that this channel is actually bringing The Mask to it’s line-up gives me hope for other pieces of lost media from back in the day. Shows that aren’t on a streaming service, shows that never got a DVD release, and shows you can only find through old VHS copies. From Cartoon Network, there’s Cartoon Planet and all of the cartoons played on O Canada and What A Cartoon Show. From KidsWB, it would be a lot of the short-lived series like Detention, Histeria, and Generation O. And as for FOX Kids, there’s Life With Louie, Peter Pan & the Pirates, and Eek! The Cat.

Hey Medea, aren’t you forgetting the bad side to this? Angela Anaconda ring a bell?

Oh shit. That’s right. We also do run the risk of seeing things like Mega Babies and Angela Anaconda again. I guess this is a take the good with the bad.

AND FINALLY, SHOWS THAT WOULD BE AWESOME TO SEE AGAIN: Yes, what the website has given us has so many twists and surprises. So, I’m going to list off all the cartoons I didn’t see on the teaser and website. Here’s hoping they’ll get another chance to be seen.

The Tick Batman Beyond Time Squad Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law Count Duckula Gerald McBoing-Boing Dudley Do-Right The Banana Splits Bobby’s World Madeline Pee Wee’s Playhouse Camp Candy Static Shock Tennessee Tuxedo Earthworm Jim The Addams Family Hong Kong Phooey The Littles Space Ghost Coast to Coast/Cartoon Planet Life With Louie Alvin and the Chipmunks Sabrina the Animated Series Every property of Charlie Brown and Snoopy (fuck Apple TV+) Gumby Inch High Private Eye The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog/Sonic Underground Commander McBragg

I think I got everything out of my system. Will all of my hopes and wishes come true with the upcoming MeTV Toons. Hell no! But it’ll be nice if one or two of these happen.

[adultswim2021]

Metalocalypse #27: “Dethwedding” | April 1, 2008 - 1:15AM | S02E07

Hey it’s been a little while since we got to watch Metalocalypse. In this one, Pickles brother Seth invites Dethklok to his wedding, which already advertises the fact that the wedding “features” Dethklok. His video invitation is hilarious. Seth is dressed in his Sunday best set against serene backdrops while he brags about his sobriety. Pickles is mortified to the point of despondency. The other band members just think it’s very, very funny. 

The tribunal explains what American weddings are during one of their meetings. These scenes can be a pointless reminder that there is such a thing as the tribunal, and it also lends a false sense of gravity to the plot of each episode. It also serves what might be an accidental function of supplying future-proof context; let’s say there comes a day when the once-standard American wedding becomes an obsolete curiosity.

Or, let’s say this episode is being shown to a species of aliens who have no idea what a wedding is. You know the type of aliens I’m talking about: the kind that mock our god, oppressively holding up the Holy Bible and remarking “HUMAN PROPAGANDA”.* Just by satirically describing what a wedding is brings all those weirdos up to speed, even though it seems gratuitous. The tribunal actually declare that they will not intervene. Why would they? Dethklok’s just going to a wedding, for fuck’s sake. 

*I am actually making a very specific reference to a circa-early-2000s episode of The Outer Limits, where a robot does this. I don’t know the title of the episode, but Heather Graham is in it. 

Things are tense between Pickles and his brother. Seth immediately starts drinking again. He has scumbag friends who suck. Seth constantly asks for money. Dethklok perform a song with a little music video accompaniment (for us watching on television at least) featuring a married couple decaying and then eventually mutating into one another, getting all Cronenbergy. Dethklock get Seth a blender, which is just an item on his wedding gift registry. When Seth chews out Pickles for cheaping out, Pickles beats his brother up. Later, he feels bad, so he installs Seth as the head of Dethklok Australia, whose leader was recently assassinated by the Revengencers. Over the closing credits we see Seth thriving in his new position at the absolute expense of Sydney, Australia, which is practically in ruins while he surveys his land, doing a big smile like a tyrant would. 

This one is very good. Metalocalypse’s misanthropic sense of humor really shines. The show will often show spectacular examples of gore and mayhem, but nothing is treated with grim incapability like family is...treated. With. Fuck. You know what the whole not ending your sentence with a preposition thing is lame and bad. It’s not that I’m bad at writing. I’m taking a stand.

The show has been taken down from HBOMax since the last time I watched it. It’s currently streaming on Adult Swim. At a glance it seems like it’s streaming in its entirety. It may or may not require a cable log-in. Actually, I’ll check in a private browser. Hang on. Okay. I did it. It played! It’s also on DVD, which is nice, but my copy’s digipak has shattered disc hubs so the discs are not fully secure in the box. Not good. Is there a way to fix this? Wait. Let me google it myself. Okay. Huh. I found something called “adhesive-backed spider DVD/CD disc hubs” that literally might be the exact thing I’m looking for. Wow. Well, you learn something extremely important like that every day, don’t you?

EPHEMERA CORNER

Robert Zunes In (2007)*

Remember when I was asking about the Robert Osbourne host intros? I’m guessing these are what that wiki was talking about! Either whoever wrote that got confused (these were taken from a ZUNE that Adult Swim gave away I guess with select episodes of select shows loaded onto them), or they repurposed some of those intros for the April Fools stunt. Neat! Thank you Kon for finding this and showing me them. Thank you.

*JOKE STOLEN FROM LONDON ARBUCKLE BECAUSE I DIDN’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO ASK IF I COULD USE IT

[mrultra100]

I dunno about you folks, but given the recent news about Adult Swim’s new Checkered Past block (them broadcasting old Cartoon Network shows), along with today being 810nicle Day, it’s got me thinking about my childhood.

This is something I normally don’t bring up, as I usually don’t discuss my personal experiences, but I wanna get it off my chest. As far back as the mid to late 2000s, 3 big things were a factor of my childhood; LEGO, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, and, believe it or not, the city of Atlanta, Georgia.

The LEGO bit is rather obvious, given how I’m a huge Mixels fan, but I also recall liking Bionicle alot when it was being sold. While I don’t really remember alot of my past with that particular franchise myself, I do remember seeing the commercials for it back in the day. And to this day, I often find myself rewatching old promotional material for Bionicle on Youtube for nostalgia reasons. Why, I even dabbled around with the G2 sets back when they came out during the mid 2010’s. I guess my love for LEGO back in my early years was a huge reason why I latched onto Mixels from the very start. Like with alot of people that I know, Mixels and Bionicle are the two LEGO franchises I love the most, both as a kid, and even now as a young adult. Obviously, a few other themes from that time like Power Miners, Atlantis, and Hero Factory were sets that I liked alot, but for the sake of discussion, Mixels and Bionicle are what come to my head first whenever I think about LEGO.

Speaking of Mixels, the series that it got on Cartoon Network was, and still is, one of my favorite shows on the channel. I guess that serves as a nice segway into the CN portion, eh? Getting back into the topic at hand, given how I was born in 2002, I would eventually grow up with many of the shows from the CN eras of not only the mid-to-late 2000s, but also the early 2010s; Yes! Noods, and even a bit of the Check It era are when I had some pretty good memories with Cartoon Network, and the shows airing throughout all of that time stuck with me. Obviously, Mixels comes up again when I talk about this sorta thing, but shows like Chowder, Flapjack, the original continuity of Ben 10, Billy and Mandy, Adventure Time Regular Show, and plenty more are what I saw and loved back then. I even dabbled in a bit of Adult Swim too, as not only does Aqua Teen Hunger Force come to mind, me and my family even watched late-night broadcasts of King of the Hill. And I’m not sure if I’m remembering this right, but I might have even seen a tiny bit of Toonami as well. I dunno, it’s been a long time since that all happened

Lastly, the last thing of this 3 layered cake of nostalgia is me and my family visiting the city of Atlanta, more specifically, the Georgia Aquarium. My mind’s a bit fuzzy on when my first visit exactly was, but I’m guessing that was around in 2008. I was 6 back then, so it happened long ago. Even back at that age, I was a lover of marine life, sharks especially. I think the Georgia Aquarium was my first ever time seeing these beautiful creatures alive. Unlike a good chunk of people, I’ve always been fascinated by sharks and other marine animals, so you can probably imagine the sheer awe that I had when I saw a whale shark swimming around Ocean Voyager. Moments like that tend to stick with you for life. And ever since, I’ve had the pleasure of coming back again and again all throughout my late childhood and teen years. Even to this day, me and my family go to the aquarium for sleepovers every once and a while. No joke, I even teared up a little bit when the lights went off in the massive viewing window in Ocean Voyager, where me, my dad, and the sleepover group that we were a part of, when it got late. Seeing shadows dance, cruise, and flicker inside the inky depths was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in my life, mainly due to how it struck a chord with my nostalgia. While the Georgia Aquarium itself has changed to add in renovations, new galleries and animals, and other such things, my love and appreciation for the place has only grown within years, and I’ll always treasure it and the memories that I’ve had. Also, while we’re on the topic of Atlanta, did you know that Williams Street, one of the teams behind Adult Swim, is set within Atlanta? Things like that bring everything together.

Now, with all of that said, what’s the point of me going off on a discussion like this? It’s just me wanting to talk about certain things from my childhood that I, along with many other people, have had happy childhood memories. Given the state of the world right now, I feel like thinking about simpler times helps with feeling better. Adult Swim’s Checkered Past feels like the team in charge of the channel wants to not only bring back memories of the old CN shows that we all loved as children (along with introducing any kids today to said shows), but to also give these beloved classics the love and respect that they deserve. Cartoon Network, as it stands now, is in desperate need of repair, and it’s all Discovery’s fault. Given how he ruined both Discovery and Warner Bros with the WB Discovery merger, along with canceling certain films and shows before they could come out, filing Discovery and ruining Shark Week with pseudoscience nonsense designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator (I.E. braindead morons who spread conspiracies that aren’t true in the slightest) and reality show garbage that no sane person would willingly watch, David Zaslav is one of the few people out there that I unironically despise with all of my heart. I really hope someone in the near future comes out and finds a way to fire his ass for good. That bastard needs to go. Only then, things for WB and CN can find a way to improve for the better, along with many other studios going through similar situations.

Until that happens, things like Checkered Past serve as a way to rediscover the magic felt by all of us, and it’s a magic that I can attend to especially. Even with how I’ve grown and changed as a person, along with my tastes in media being refined and expanded on, I’ll always harken back to simpler times. I think we could all have a trip down memory lane.

[reggiejworkshop]

"Night Time Nostalgia Rush"

(Uploading my full description here. Apparently Deviantart think it was too long to post as it kept getting deleted every time I uploaded it, despite not having a limited word count! FML)

My earliest memories of watching TV were spent mainly on Cartoon Network throughout the 90s. I vividly remember the many nights I would sneak out of bed to watch TV in my older sister's room. I didn't get one in my room until much later. But I would stay up as late as I could, or at least until my parents found out I was up, watching all the shows the channel had to offer. The CN originals, the Hanna Barbara shows, the Looney Tunes shows, and MGM shorts. Sometimes my sister would wake up and watch them with me, I would fix myself snacks to eat during the commercial breaks, other times I would have a notebook to draw my favorite characters as I watched them. But it was always something I looked forward to just about every night.

That feeling lasted until the early 2000's when Adult Swim (which I liked) and other newer programs replaced the older stuff I loved. And while I did like some the stuff that came later, the channel was never the same for me. At that point, I had already moved onto Nickelodeon and Disney Channel more often.

I did get a brief revival of that feeling when I got access to Boomerang years later. It ALMOST felt like the CN channel from back in the day when I came across the older shows I liked. But I watched them with a better sense of appreciation for them and even caught other shows I somehow missed out on when they were new. But that gradually faded right up until that channel got rebranded. I'll save my full thoughts for that channel for another time.

Nowadays I don't watch CN that much anymore. Part of the reason is that I've branched out into watching other content, so I don't rely on that channel as much I used to in the past. Plus I've come to appreciate some of the newer stuff the channel has to offer nowadays, even if some of the new stuff is definitely not my thing. But at least its nowhere near as bad CN Real. Anyone who says the channel sucks now definitely was NOT around when this program was on in the late 2000's.

And while I can find a lot of these old shows to watch online or on various streaming services, doing that can never replace those memories of staying up late and binging them for the first time.

Since Toon June is just about over, I though I would close out the month with an attempt at doing the now popular CN Color Pallete Challenge. But instead of doing a typical fanart piece, I wanted it to be something a little more personal. I didn't want this an excuse to bicker about the good ol days, but rather to revisit a key part of my childhood.

[whereisten]

Dinner for Two

A Yuta fic that’s part of our Halloween Series!

Summary: A dinner at the high-end Osaka Moon leads you to the head chef and owner, Nakamoto Yuta.

Pairing: Chef! Yuta x female reader

Genre: romance, angst, smut, fluff, mystery, suspense, drama, crime, HORROR

Word Count: 7.8k 

Warnings: Mentions of alcohol/drug abuse, verbal abuse, mention of sexual assault, infidelity mention, deaths, and big, uncomfortable twist (the ending is not for the faint of heart, I’m warning you).

(A/N): Hiya! Well, this is probably the most disturbing thing I’ve ever written. Hope you enjoy! Haha actually, this story was inspired by Yuta’s iconic tweet: “I will eat you”. Well, if that’s not a spoiler...Thank you so much for waiting. I apologize for the delay! Please come back later tonight for another spooky tale...Also, my apologies, I didn’t get a chance to proofread. I appreciate your patience. :D 

_______

Life had dealt you some harsh blows but you found happiness wherever you could. Your management position at the vinyl store Neo Records gave you prime access to the best music in the world. Even if the employee discount was trash. You’d worked at the records store for a few months now. This followed you having moved out of your mom’s place. You’d lived with her and your beloved stepfather while you attended college but you’d had enough.

Your mom was a drug addict and her husband Scott only enabled her to continue her abuse. You couldn’t say anything to them because you were the child and they were the adults.

And, as they had always thrown in your face, they paid for a good amount of your tuition because financial aid and scholarships could only do so much for you.

Well, you’re twenty four now and still a child in their eyes. You couldn’t take your mother’s mood swings and Scott’s goading for her to thrash around and party all the time. If your mother wasn’t going to get therapy and refused your help, then you decided to leave.

You had a really good relationship with your dad. You’d wished you had gone to live with him but during your college years, he’d only made enough to send you some funds for your tuition. You appreciated what he could do for you.

However, now he was more financially stable and he wanted to support you so you could move out of your mother’s house. You’d live in an apartment not too far from your dad’s place so you could visit him as much as you’d like. It drove your mom crazy. She always tried to contact you and convince you that she was going to get help. It was a tale as old as time. She said she would get help but never did anything about it. Once she had you under her finger, she reverted back to her ways: skipping work shifts, neglecting household chores, and verbally abusing you. You simply texted her you were busy with work.

Your boyfriend Johnny has been a source of comfort for you over the past year. You’d met him at a club one night with your friends. You told him you didn’t want to go home that night and asked him if you could stay over. Looking back on it, you had been too trusting but Johnny had treated you kindly: he let you take his bed while he slept on the couch. He made you breakfast in the morning: banana pancakes and scrambled eggs. You had sex with him the morning after and you’d been inseparable ever since.

These past few weeks, Johnny had been busier at his new job at a marketing firm. You two were supposed to have a date night tonight but he cancelled two hours before you were to meet at Hal’s Pizzeria for dinner. After that, you were supposed to go to the movies together. You were always a big fan of the dinner and movie date.

You sat on the couch in your living room, feeling a little blue that Johnny was working overtime. So you scrolled through your phone while you watched episodes of an English-dubbed anime about volleyball.

You texted your best friend Carla about how Johnny cancelled at the last minute and she replied: Since you don’t have plans, then I have an opportunity for you.

You texted back, What’s up?

She replied, I had a reservation at Osaka Moon for tonight but I got called in for work. Wanna go? The owner is supposed to be hot as fuck.

You replied, Okay, want me to get his number for you?

She texted, Unnecessary. Thanks, y/n. We’ll go together next time.

_______

Osaka Moon was a high-end restaurant all your friends told you about. You decided to go on your own to the restaurant and have a date night with yourself. Being alone could be tranquil, you assured yourself. And you didn’t have to worry about looking so graceful as you ate so this could be great.

You dolled yourself up in a pale pink dress and some white wedges. It was an understated but elegant look. It was an expensive restaurant so you decided to go all out. You entered the Japanese restaurant and gave the hostess your friend’s name. She immediately sat you down at a table that overlooked the bay. It was a spectacular view. No wonder Carla didn’t want this reservation to go to waste.

It was a shame Johnny couldn’t be here with you right now. This place was so romantic. There were indoor fountains with koi fish swimming around. The ceiling was painted in shades of the sunset with birds flying through the clouds. The aroma of grilled meat and vegetables made you salivate.

A waiter took your order and you took out your phone to take pictures of the restaurant and the view. You wondered if you would catch a glimpse of the chef your friend had mentioned.

As you move your camera around the restaurant to get a wider shot of the place, you recognize someone through your phone. Johnny’s hair was slicked back and he was wearing your favorite suit of his: navy blue with a ruby red colored tie. His height made him stick out like a sore thumb. The sight before you made you wish he’d be a little taller so his head could hit the ceiling. For the sight left a bitter taste in your mouth.

Johnny had arrived at Osaka Moon with another woman. She was generically pretty and you hated her even more. She looked like the mean blonde girl of every early 2000s romantic comedy. She wore a revealing dress that exposed her cleavage very nicely. Why were you paying so much attention to her cleavage? Because of the necklace around her neck: a necklace that looked identical to the one Johnny gifted you last year. It was a rose gold pendant with a rose at the center. Johnny kissed the woman’s lips as he sat her down at the table. She placed her hands against his slimy face.

Son of a-

Hot tears started rushing down your face. You were sure your mascara was running. You gripped your glass of wine tightly. You were surprised you didn’t break the glass then and there.

First off, you went to the restroom and checked your makeup. A little mascara had run down your cheeks. You fixed your makeup and took a few deep breaths. You looked at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes were red. What were you going to do now? There was a chance he’d see you and you didn’t want to see the stupid look on his face when he realized he’d been found out.

And you didn’t want to imagine what other reaction he could have. All of this happening in such an extravagant place made you seethe.

Johnny made a fool out of you and his infidelity carved a hole so deeply into your heart, you wanted to scream. So you took a few more minutes to collect yourself. You imagined your entree would be out soon enough anyway. You quickly realized what you needed to do.

You made a beeline for the entrance of the restaurant and approached the first staff member you saw. He was a slender and striking young man. His long brown hair was tied up in a bun. His chiseled face made everyone’s heads turn. His heart shaped lips were perfect. And…

Why were you thinking all of these things when you’d just been cheated on?

Wait a second…

Why couldn’t you think this way? As of ten minutes ago, your relationship with Johnny was over.

The handsome man was talking to one of the hostesses. The hostess was biting her lips and making googly eyes at him. This was awkward but you were resolved to ask him for help.

You tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

He turned around and eye contact with him nearly sent you into the stratosphere. His eyes were the deepest brown and when he looked at you, you felt like you were his world.

His eyes were that intense.

“How can I help you?” He smiled, his perfect set of teeth greeted you.

“Hi...Um, what’s your name?” You start, awkward at the start.

He smiled even wider, “Yuta, miss. And yours?”

“I’m y/n. Can I make a special request?”

You didn’t know it then but Yuta watched you enter the restaurant earlier. He was stunned by your beauty and your smile. You looked like a princess as you entered his castle. He saw the wonderstruck look on your face as you were led to your table. He’d never seen someone so happy to enter his restaurant. The young man before you was the owner of Osaka Moon: Nakamoto Yuta.

So for you to come up to him and ask him for a favor? He was more than happy to oblige.

Yuta noticed how red your eyes looked and was concerned. He wondered what transpired when he had to go check on the kitchen staff and couldn’t keep admiring you.

Although your eyes had been red, there was determination in them, he noted.

“Of course,” he said as you moved closer to him and whispered in his ear, making you both a little hot and bothered instantly. You both felt a spark from the moment you met eyes.

Snap out of it, you told yourself. He was very attractive, yes, but your heart had been ripped out of your chest. You wanted revenge. You had to remember why you were talking to this fine man in the first place.

_______

You sat back at your table, undetected by the clusterfuck of a man you used to call your boyfriend. You made sure to focus on your meal, which had been orgasmic. The dish was called Okonomiyaki, a pancake with sliced pork belly and cabbage. The okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese mayonnaise, and dried bonito shavings sealed this dish as one of the best meals you’d ever had. Your compliments to the chef, whoever they were.

You realized it was go-time when the handsome staff member brought the food out for Johnny and his date. All eyes were on the young man who said he would help you. You wondered why. Has your plan been found out?

The young man deposited the dishes to Johnny’s table. His radiant smile never slipped from his face. Incredible, you thought. After what you told him about Johnny, he looked like he was about to pounce on him right then. Even so, he looked attentively at you and accepted your request.

“Here you are,” Yuta said as he put down the plates of sushi in front of Johnny and Blondie. “And a special treat from our chef…”

Johnny and his date oohed and ahhed over their plates. Until the young man deposited a plate that had sauce spelling “Cheater, Liar, Bastard” on it.

“This dish is for you, sir. Have a pleasant evening with Girlfriend Number Two, you son of a bitch.” Yuta gritted his teeth at Johnny. The expression on Yuta’s face then both terrified and aroused you.

Humiliating your cheating boyfriend and standing up for you...It brought a smile to your face.

Even if you still wanted to cry.

Johnny glared up at Yuta, “What the hell is-” He then does what he never does and THINKS. He panics and scans the restaurant, looking for you. He finds you seated at your table. You raise your glass at him as you take a sip of your wine. You flip the bird at him in the process.

He stands up from his table and runs over to your table. “Y/n…”

The other woman is right behind Johnny and  simply laughs. “This is her? From the way you talked about her, I expected a real threat...but it’s nice to see that I have nothing to worry about.”

So she knew? She was in on this? You mimicked the blonde’s laugh. “Oh, fuck off...both of you…How long have been together?”

“Three months,” the blonde smirked.

That hurt. A lot. Johnny must’ve started seeing Blondie around the time you’d celebrated your one year anniversary with him.

You guessed one year was his expiration date for relationships.

“Go…” You started. “Have a nice blissful year together. In nine months or so, he’ll find someone shiny and new..”

Johnny was at a loss for words. “Y/n, I am so-”

“Are you sorry?” You rolled your eyes. “Go to hell, Johnny!” You couldn’t hold back anymore as the tears came out.

Yuta came up behind Johnny and his date. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“How dare you?” Blondie asked. “I want to speak to your manager-”

Yuta crossed his arms as his lips quirked up. “You’re looking at him.”

The three of you stared at him with your jaws to the floor. This was news to you. You’d ask the restaurant owner for a favor? The audacity you had…

Your face heated up in embarrassment.

Yuta called over a few security guards to escort Johnny and his date out. Johnny couldn’t even look at you. A fucking coward. His other girl had more balls than he did.

Yuta put a hand on your shoulder and leaned down to speak to you. “Are you okay?” His anger dissipated at the sight of your tears.

You sniffled. “Yeah...Thank you...I-I’m so sorry for bothering you...I didn’t know you were the owner of this place…”

He squeezed your shoulder. “I was happy to help…”

You laughed. “You scared the crap out of me when you called him a son of a bitch.”

He played around with you. “Ah, you liked that? I’ve been working on my crime lord act...How do you think it’s coming along?”

You wiped your tears with your napkin. “Pretty good.”

You both laughed.

“Well, y/n...I hope you have a wonderful rest of the night.” He tipped his imaginary hat and walked away.

As you finished your meal, your waiter brought you a bowl of green tea mochi ice cream.

“Oh, I didn’t order this,” you started.

The waiter replied, “Courtesy of the boss, miss. Please let us know if there is anything else you would like. Your meal is on the house.”

“I’m sorry, what?” You asked in shock.

The waiter smiled. “Just following the boss’ orders.”

This night may have begun on a sour note but at least you could end it at this incredible place. And you were pretty sure you’d met a real life knight in shining armor tonight...

Before you left the restaurant, the hostess, annoyed, handed you an envelope. “Here.”

“What is it?” You furrowed your brows in confusion.

The hostess sighed. “The golden ticket. Have a good night, miss.” She returned to her stand with her coworkers.

You walked out the door and left Osaka Moon. You opened the envelope and found a handwritten letter.

y/n,

I’ll be upfront with you. I wanted to ask you out the minute you walked into Osaka Moon. But then I found out you had a boyfriend. And right after that, I found out he was a cheating piece of shit...So I’m at a crossroads here...Can I see you again? If yes, please call me at 555-127-1026.

Yours,

Yuta

P.S. The green tea mochi was good, wasn’t it?

_______

A week had passed. You and Yuta have been texting non-stop. He invited you to his restaurant to have dinner. The beef tenderloin he’d served you was out of this world. He made you laugh and shamelessly flirted with you the whole time. You told Yuta you weren’t ready to date so soon. You didn’t want him to be a rebound. You knew that once your heart mended a little more, you’d want to ask Yuta out. He was more than willing to wait for you.

You two had a lot in common: same taste in food, same taste in music, same sense of humor, and you both believed in astrology. No one was as unapologetic about being a Scorpio as Yuta was.

You and Yuta would share meals together frequently. Sometimes outside of his restaurant. And right after, you two would go to the movies like you wanted.

Two months have passed. Finally a couple, you and Yuta have just left the cinema. You’d just watched a midnight showing of Paranormal Activity 7.

“That was amazing,” you started.

Yuta snorted. “You are too easy to please, y/n. That movie was terrible.”

You slapped him in the chest. “You’re so full of it.”

Yuta chuckled. “Nothing beats horror movies from Japan. Just you wait…” He wrapped his arm around you.

You looked up at him. “Is that a promise?”

He kissed the crown of your head. “You bet it is.”

_______

“It is week nine into the investigation of Johnny Suh’s disappearance. Johnny Suh is a twenty four year old marketing consultant. He hails from Chicago, Illinois…” The news anchor says on the television screen.

You and Yuta are cuddled on his couch in his penthouse suite, watching the news. You were shocked when you first heard that Johnny had gone missing over two months ago. Even though you’d hated him with every fiber of your being, your heart ached for his family. You hoped he would be okay.

Yuta drove to you to work that morning and told you he would pick you up when your shift ended. He planned to surprise you with a backyard screening of “Ring”, one of the most popular Japanese horror films of all time. He’d set up a projector in his backyard so you two could watch the movie under the stars.

When Yuta arrived to pick you up, he saw you run out of the record shop and run away in tears. He ran out of his car to meet you.

“Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?” Yuta asked as he cupped your face in his hands and wiped tears away.

You sniffled. “Let’s go...Pl-please.”

Yuta was hesitant but he accepted as you definitely wanted to get the hell out of there.

The question on Yuta’s mind was...Why?

As he drove away from Neo Records, he asked, more softly, “What happened, y/n?”

“I quit,” you said.

Yuta nearly stopped the car so he could look at you. However, he couldn’t because the traffic was quite unpredictable so he couldn’t turn to face you. “What? Why?”

“I...I don’t...He...Uh…” You hiccuped between your tears.

Yuta gripped the steering wheel at the sound of “he”. “Who? Y/n, did someone do something to you?”

You were worried about how Yuta might react when you told him about how your boss, Mr. Fox, groped you during your lunch break. Mr. Fox had always been too friendly with female staff but you never thought he would cross the line. Until today.

“Mr. Fox touched...me…” You managed to say. You shut your eyes, awaiting the wrath of the Scorpio beside you.

Yuta was about to rip the steering wheel out of the car. “He did what?”

“He touched me, Yuta...And I...I didn’t know what to do...I don’t have proof...So I quit. I can’t be in the same room as him anymore…”

Yuta was furious. To see the woman he loved broken and helpless. You were his everything and you deserve nothing but the best the world had to offer. And to see you get treated like this? He wanted to beat the shit out of Mr. Fox. He wanted to see him cry and beg for mercy.

He didn’t want to frighten you with his anger because you were already shaken up as is so he turned into a store plaza parking lot and put the car in park. He turned to you and asked you, “Can I hold you?”

You nodded, “Y-yes…”

Yuta backed the driver seat up so you could crawl into his arms. He held you as you cried. His heart ached for you and he wondered what he could do to get you justice.

You were so thankful to Yuta. You knew he would be so upset once you told him. Your heart felt so reassured to see how passionate he was about you. He made you feel like you were his world. And you felt much better knowing that you had him by your side.

_______

A week had passed by after you quit your job at Neo Records. You couldn’t afford to pay your half of the rent so Yuta offered for you to move in. You were thrilled at the idea. You and Yuta were living like blissful newlyweds.

You were washing the dishes after you two had eaten some imported steak that Yuta had wanted to try out. It was incredible. Everything Yuta prepared for you was literal sex in your mouth.

As you stretched your neck to the left, Yuta wrapped his arms around you and nibbled on your neck. “y/n, you smell like raspberries…”

You froze and dropped the dish you’d been scrubbing into the soapy water.

Yuta turned you around quickly and pulled your cleaning gloves off of your hands and tossed them aside. He picked you up and sat you on the kitchen island.

“I love that you’re here with me…” He whispered.

The hooded look in his eyes made your panties soak. He lifted the skirt of your dress up like nothing. He sunk his teeth into the fabric of your panties and pulled them down, never losing eye contact with you. You loved how primal he got with you. He always left you with love bites. He always seemed to find new places to leave them so you can find them during a random part of your day and think of him.

“I wonder if your pussy tastes like raspberries, y/n...Shall we find out?” Yuta asks as he looks up at you. He was on his knees, looking like he was praying to his goddess.

You nodded fervently as you pulled your dress off over your head, only in your bra now. “Yes…”

He unclasped your bra so your breasts were exposed to the cold air in the kitchen. Your nipples were already hard at Yuta’s initial touch. He got up off his knees and began sucking at one nipple and rubbing the others. He bit your nipple and you cried out.

You grabbed at his growing member and he grunted. You unbuttoned his pants so his aching member could be free. You squeezed it harder and began rubbing up and down. Traces of precum coated your fingers. You worked harder to get him riled up. When he felt himself build up, you stopped and he looked up at you through needy eyes.

You kept going until he climaxed onto your arm. You licked his cum off of your arm slowly and it made his cock harder. He met you halfway and lathered up his juices. He loved the taste of his seed on you.

Yuta catered to your pussy which ached for his touch. His hot breath greeted your entrance before he inserted two fingers inside you. He coated his fingers in your growing essence. You adorned him with kisses and love bites. You bit behind his ear and he moaned at your velvet touch.

He laid you down on top of the kitchen island, throwing everything off of the table with a quick swipe of his arm. He straddled himself on top of you. He proceeded to give your entrance some kitten licks, enjoying when he teased you most of all. You got all bratty and needy and it always drove him up a wall.

“Yuta...please hurry,” you begged.

He tsked. “Good things come to those who wait, darling.”

At the sound of “darling”, you got even wetter.

He chuckled as he licked your folds and played around with your sweet spot. Never quite making contact and making you delirious with need. You gripped his hair, trying to maneuver him to hit your sweet spot already.

“You better not cum until I say so, y/n...Or else I’m going to get very angry…” Yuta said with a mischievous smile on his face.

Yuta underestimated his touch, you thought. The man was literal sex on two feet. You came quickly at the contact he’d made with your pussy.

He frowned at you, “My dear little slut, you’ve disobeyed me.”

You sighed blissfully. “You make me want to break the rules, Yuta.”

He laughed. “So I’m to blame for your disobedience, huh?”

You grabbed his face and kissed him, your tongue playing around with his. You kissed his neck and left marks against his collarbone as he teased his cock against your entrance.

He entered you now and you felt close to completion. He thrusted against you and you joined him. The slapping of skin against skin and your moans echoed throughout the penthouse. You were thankful there were no next door neighbors. You liked the feeling of this floor being just the two of you.

Alone with Yuta, you felt like the center of his universe. You felt like a queen. That no one else mattered quite like you did. Yuta always made you feel like the most important person in the world.

You felt the need to climax come back quickly but just as you wished for your release against Yuta’s member, he removed himself and pecked your lips.

Between your thighs, he gave you a dark stare. “I don’t know if you should cum again, sweets.”

You drooled. “Please…”

Yuta teased. “What was that?”

“Please,” you full on begged as you started to touch yourself. “I need you or else I’m going to finish the job.”

He gasped and laughed. “You’re unbelievable.”

You coated your fingers in your essence and popped your index finger into Yuta’s mouth. He sucked hard.

“How do I taste?” You asked.

Yuta didn’t let go of your finger and bit lightly against it to tease you further.

You sighed. “Well, if you don’t want to fuck me properly, then I can’t force you. I’ll finish off in the shower.” You got up off the kitchen counter and nearly lost your balance. You were already weak in the knees.

Yuta fought back a laugh. “I’d like to see you make it to the shower, jello legs.”

You gave up and laid on the floor, giving him a nice angle of your naked body. You stretched out and started teasing your own entrance, imagining Yuta was building you up again. And having him watch from above on the kitchen counter, you felt yourself grow even hotter.

Yuta got up off of the counter and straddled you again. Without warning, he entered you and went hard. Tears streamed from your eyes as you climaxed quickly. Yuta continued you to thrust against your pelvis until he came quickly after.

Yuta took you into the shower where you would continue to fuck and he gave you new love bites. This time, they were on your ankles.

_______

A month had passed and you’d taken over as manager of Neo Records. Mr. Fox had fallen off the face of the earth and was reported missing. It was odd. Another man who attempted to ruin your life had disappeared. You thought it was karmic justice but deep down, it bothered you.

Your mother once again resurfaced after months of radio silence. She wanted to invite you and your new boyfriend (who she was very upset not to have heard about before) over for dinner. Scott and his kids from his previous marriage would be there. You hated them, too. They were a bunch of enabling brats that were after their daddy’s money.

You couldn’t say no to your mother, especially after she found out about Yuta from your dad. It wounded her pride that your dad knew something she didn’t. Your dad felt horrible for letting it slip in conversation with her. He couldn’t dodge her phone calls. He always tried to pacify her and talk to her when she called. So he couldn’t help but mention Yuta.

You didn’t want Yuta to know about your mother and her side of the family, for it brought about deep shame, regret, and painful memories.

But this time, you couldn’t run away.

You and Yuta went over to your mother’s lavish home, your old home for seven years. Scott married your mom when you were a senior in high school. Scott came from old money but he never worked a day in his life. The undeserving ass wipe, he was.

Your mother pretended to be the picture of domesticity as she cooked her once-in-a-decade dish of lasagna. You loved it, you hated to admit it now. You begged her to make it so many times when you were a kid. She always said she would but would always get distracted. Distracted with her new boyfriends or paying a debt. Sometimes you were truly on your own even if your mom had been physically beside you.

You and Yuta sat at the table with Scott and his kids. They prodded Yuta with questions about his ethnicity, his restaurant, his political beliefs, basically everything you can think of that would make anyone’s significant other runs for the hills.

Yuta took it like a champ. He answered them as politely as possible and whenever the question was too offensive to get an answer, Yuta masterfully deflected.

Your mom brought out the lasagna and served everyone. She gave an extra helping for Yuta. “I hope you like it, Yuta.”

Yuta nodded. “Thank you, Ms. y/l/n.” He took a bite of it. “It’s delicious.”

Your mom smiled brightly and gave you a look of encouragement.

You forced a smile.

Your mom could tell you were faking it and her smile faded. “You still hate me, don’t you, y/n?”

Oh no, you thought, not here…

“I make this nice dinner for you and your perfect boyfriend...Who is clearly way out of your league...And you’re moping around like a sad, pathetic little bitch.”

“Mom, please stop-”

“You don’t tell me what to do! I am the parent. You are the child. Get that through your thick head. God knows what poison your father has been feeding you about me but he’s wrong. I’ve never been better,” she says as she downs her third glass of beer in the past thirty minute.  

She was already this inebriated so you imagined she drank before you arrived and drank more while she was cooking the lasagna.

You looked down at your lap and Yuta grabbed your hand. He squeezed it.

“Your mother has been coming with me to church, y/n,” Scott began, “She’s been conversing with the Lord and she’s been on the mend. Why can’t you see that?”

Your other hand that wasn’t holding Yuta’s had balled up into a fist.

Scott’s oldest daughter added, “Your mom’s amazing, y/n. She’s more of a mother to me than my actual mother is.”

That’s rich….Your mom always acted so sweetly with Scott’s kids to get on his good side. It was sickening. And to hear this bullshit come out of their mouth...You were about to reach your breaking point.

“Yuta, let’s go,” you said.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Scott asked.

“Anywhere but here,” you said, “Excuse us.”

“Y/n, if you leave, I will never talk to you again!” Your mom wailed as she gripped her glass tightly.

You snapped, “Well, mom, that just might be the nicest thing would ever do for me.”

Yuta started. “Y/n-”

“Go to hell!” Your mom yelled.

“I’ll meet you there!” You yelled back as you stormed with Yuta right behind you.

Back at your place, you hid in your bedroom while Yuta ordered some takeout. You laid your face down on Yuta’s pillow and smelled the scent of his shampoo mixed with his cologne on it. It gave you great comfort.

Yuta joined you and sat beside you on the bed. “The food will be here in half an hour.”

“Thank you,” you mumbled against the pillow.

Yuta sighed as he laid down next to you. “How are you?”

“Humiliated,” you answered.

“Y/n...I am so sorry…”

“Are you kidding? I’m sorry I took you with me in the first place...I...I could’ve kept you from all of that…”

“Your mother insisted, y/n. We had no choice.”

“Yup, that’s how it always is with her and fucking Scott. I fucking hate him. If it weren’t for his money and her obsession with him, she wouldn’t have gotten to this point, Yuta…”

Yuta rubbed your arm. “I know, y/n…”

You sighed. “I know there’s nothing I can do...It just sucks. I try not to let it get to me...Since it’s something I can’t control...But seeing my mom like that...It’s really fucking unfair.” You sob into your pillow.

In between your sobs, you said, “I wish Scott would go away...Somehow…”

Yuta hugged you as you cried. He wanted nothing more than to take your pain and suffering away.

_______

A month had passed since the disastrous dinner. Your mom was good with her word. She hadn’t contacted you or your dad. You’d told him about the falling out and he consoled you. He understood your pain more than anyone. He encouraged you to keep living your life and being happy with Yuta and so you did.

Yuta’s birthday was coming up so you wanted to surprise him. He told you he was meeting a client downtown so you got to work.

You wanted to take Yuta to all of his favorite places over town and you wanted to make scavenger hunt out of it. The clues would take Yuta to places that had to do with your relationship. It was a way of celebrating how much of an amazing boyfriend he’d been to you. The ultimate prize of the hunt would be a key...a hotel room key to the Lotus Hotel.

As you shopped for art supplies for your scavenger hunt one night, you’d noticed Yuta on his way somewhere. He had a couple of shopping bags with him.

You decided to follow him and catch him by surprise. However, Yuta was headed to a more abandoned part of town, where there were only warehouses.

You got behind a bunch of abandoned cars and watched Yuta make his way into a warehouse, where his car had already been parked. Half an hour passes and Yuta comes out of the door with bags stained red with blood.

You furrowed your brows in confusion. What the hell were those?

You noticed the shifty look in Yuta’s eyes and quickly, you grew scared. Terrified of being caught.

Calm down, you told yourself, it was probably meat for his restaurant. What else could it be? You felt incredibly stupid for spying on him like this. In fact, you felt ashamed.

You waited for Yuta to leave in his car. You crept into the warehouse and tried looking through the windows. You saw nothing but butchers’ paper and a basket of random items.

Except one thing stuck out to you. A gold Rolex. It was obnoxiously large that you could never forget about it.

It was Scott’s. It was one of a kind. He had it custom-made to be the only one in existence. And now it was just sitting there in a random warehouse…

But why? What was it doing in this warehouse that Yuta came out of?

Your stomach lurched at the uncertainty of it all. You needed to get the hell out of here so you ran off.

Not realizing you’d forgotten something.

_______

Yuta made you spaghetti and meatballs after work the next day. You’d been awfully quiet and he wanted to know why.

“Something bothering you, sweets?” He asked.

You played with your food and took a bite of one of the meatballs. Damn, it tasted good, you thought. It was savory and not like any other kind of beef you’ve tasted. You had to ask Yuta where he imported his meat from because there was nothing quite like it.

Still, you couldn’t look Yuta in the eyes.

“Y/n, look at me, please…” He started.

You forced yourself to look at him and just as you were about to speak, your phone rang.

You were shocked to see that it was your mom. You dreaded answering it but if it could deflect from the confrontation you were about to have with Yuta…

You answered, “Hello?”

“Y/n!” Your mom sobbed. “Scott is missing!”

Your heart nearly jumped out of your chest. “What?”

Your mom wailed. “I don’t know what to do, y/n! Have you seen him at all since you came to visit?”

Your mind immediately went to the gold Rolex at the warehouse. “No, mom, I haven’t seen him.”

Yuta watched you with curious eyes. You averted your gaze and got up from the table. “Mom, please calm down...The police will find him. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”

Your mom laughed. “When has the police ever done what they’re supposed to do?”

You sighed. “Mom, I’m so sorry...If there’s anything I can do…” You felt awkward for saying this because you absolutely hated Scott and part of you wanted to say good riddance...But you couldn’t. You couldn’t add salt to your mother’s wound.

You mom replied, “If you see or hear anything about Scott, call me. Please.”

“Okay,” you said, “Bye mom.”

Your mother hung up.

You turned back to Yuta, who watched you carefully from the table.

“Your food’s getting cold, y/n…” Yuta mused aloud.

“Right…” You said as you sat back down. You took another bite of the spaghetti and meatballs.

“What was that about?” Yuta asked, concerned.

“My mom called. Scott is missing…” You said as you looked down at your food.

“Oh? Well, that’s terrible,” Yuta said. He looked upset enough.

But you knew him. You sighed, “Yuta, you’re hiding something from me.”

His eyes widened. “Finally, I was waiting for you to say something. It’s been driving me crazy.”

“What?” You asked.

He pulled something out of his pants pocket and it was your charm bracelet. His birthday gift to you from last month...You’d completely forgotten about it. “You dropped this on the way home.”

Your mouth opened in shock.

“How long were you watching me for, y/n? It must’ve been troublesome to be hiding in the rubble across the street…”

You lost your appetite completely. “You knew?”

“I knew you were tailing me yesterday…” He said as he picked at your plate and took a bite of your food.

You started pathetically, “I wanted to surprise you…”

Yuta nodded. “But instead I surprised you…”

“Yuta, what was in those bags?” You asked. “And what were you doing with Scott’s watch?”

Yuta bit his lip and rubbed the back of his head. “Well...Since we’re this deep into the relationship, I think I should be completely honest with you, y/n.”

The look in Yuta’s eyes was something you didn’t recognize. It wasn’t playful. It was more...evil.

“Do you remember our first meal together, y/n? How savory it was? How it was unlike anything you’d ever tasted?”

You didn’t know where this was going but you responded anyway, “Y-yeah…”

“Did you ever stop to think if it was really beef tenderloin?” Yuta asked.

Your eyes widened. “N-no…”

“Come on, y/n. It’s me...You can be honest…”

“Was it veal?” You asked, grasping at straws.

Yuta shook his head and a smile was fighting to come onto his face. “Nope...I grounded him up real nicely for our first meal together…” He muttered that last part.

“Him?” You asked.

“But who else, y/n? Think.”

You and Yuta ate together for the first time after...Your breakup with Johnny.

“Yuta...What are you…” You began.

“I think I’ve made myself pretty clear.”

You laughed skeptically. “Yuta, I know you love to tease but be serious for a second…”

Yuta’s face darkened. “I am serious, y/n.”

You shook your head. “You mean to tell me...Y-you killed Johnny?”

Yuta nodded. “Why, yes...Slit the bastard’s tire before he left the restaurant. Followed him home. Made sure Girlfriend Number Two was going up to her apartment and I got him right where I wanted him…”

“Yuta…” You couldn’t believe what he was saying. This had to be some cruel joke. And the fact that he was being so specific with these details meant that he wasn’t lying.

“So, yes, y/n, I killed Johnny and I ground him up. No evidence of that bastard’s existence is left now…And do you want to know why?”

You cried. “Yuta, stop it.”

Yuta wiped the tears from your eyes. “Because we ate him. You and me, y/n…”

You gasped in horror. You sobbed as you backed away from Yuta. “You’re a fucking liar, Yuta. Stop it!”

Yuta sighed. “Why should I stop there? That scumbag, Mr. Fox? Remember the day we made the sweetest love in the kitchen? And we had ‘steak’?”

“Yuta, no!” You fell to the floor. “Stop it! I am begging you.”

“You need to know the truth, y/n…”

You shook your head. “You killed them...And you killed Scott.”

“Ding ding! We have a winner!” Yuta rejoiced.

“You’re crazy…” You cried out.

Yuta’s smile faded as quickly as it came. “Y/n, you don’t mean that. You love me. Just as I love you. I’ve loved you since the moment we met…”

You cried harder. “Yuta…”

Yuta got onto the floor with you. “I did it all for you, y/n. So you could be free from them all.”

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. Yuta was a murderer and...you couldn’t even think the word...

And you...you ate their remains...Johnny’s...Mr. Fox’s...and…

You looked up at the plate of spaghetti and meatballs and came to another realization. You ran into the bathroom and threw up in the toilet.

You gagged and coughed as you held your hair back.

You’d just eaten Scott’s remains.

Your world was crashing down on you. Yuta, the love of your life, killed three people. And that was only accounting for the people you knew. You had no idea what his past was really like. Yuta cut them up, ground them up, did everything a butcher would do with their body parts. Yuta fed them to you. He ate them knowingly and unapologetically.

And the worst part?

You enjoyed every morsel…

And you craved more.

Yuta entered the bathroom and held your hair back for you as he caressed your back. “There, there…”

Tears from vomiting ran down your cheeks. “Yuta...You really shouldn’t have done those things…”

“Do you really mean that, y/n? Johnny made a fool out of you and lied to you. He humiliated you and he didn’t stop his new girlfriend from insulting you. He was scum. Mr. Fox was the most vile of them all. He touched you without consent. Rapists should perish from the moment they think of touching someone...At least, give me that much, sweets…”

As disturbing as everything Yuta had said sounded, you couldn’t help but agree with him.

“And Scott...You wished to make him go away...And your wish is my command, my angel.”

You got up from the toilet and flushed the contents down. You went to the sink and brushed your teeth. All the while, Yuta watched you.

“Y/n...The consumption of human flesh has been a custom in my family for generations...These days, we can’t just pick and choose our victims. We must have an honorable reason to kill them. You gave me three victims. A feast. It’s what sustains me, y/n…”

You spat the toothpaste out of your mouth and swished your mouth with some mouthwash. “You...you’re serious?”

“I need to consume human flesh at least once a year or I will die, y/n...Why do you think my parents died so young?”

You thought about it. “They gave up on human flesh?”

Yuta nodded somberly. “I don’t want to die, y/n. Now that I’ve met you, I can’t afford to…”

“But why did you feed them to me?” You asked.

“To absorb their power. To move on,” he said, “It’s my family’s belief that once you ingest the meat of your enemy that you will overcome the barrier that they’ve created for you.”

You stood there, silent. You were afraid of what he would probably bring up next.

“You enjoyed it, didn’t you?” He asked, finally.

You averted your gaze and stared at the sink. “I...did.”

Yuta met your eyes through the mirror. “I know, y/n...And there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Not with me.”

Tears escaped your eyes. Yuta was right. It’d felt...amazing. Empowering. And each of them were the best meals you’d ever had…

“Yuta?” You started.

“Yes, darling?”

“Never keep anything from me again,” you commanded.

_______

It had been a year since the news broke out over Scott’s disappearance. Johnny and Mr. Fox’s missing person cases had gone cold.

Since Scott was out of the picture, your mom had a mental break and was admitted into a rehabilitation facility. She is continually seeking treatment and is turning away visitors. She wrote you a letter, reflecting on her past mistakes and how she’d failed you as a mother. She apologized profusely and promised you that she would try to be sober.

And that’s all you’d ever hoped for from her. You knew that it would be a difficult journey. But the desire for change was the first step in the right direction. And you had a feeling your mom was going to succeed.

You married Yuta. Your father gave you away at the wedding. You were happy. You and Yuta traveled the world together. You had adopted two rescue dogs. To your friends and family, you and Yuta were the dream.

When you’d returned from your honeymoon, Yuta had bought a house for you two to start a family together. The first night in your new house, Yuta bred you.

You two laid in bed together. Yuta hugged you and asked, “So, has anyone screwed you over recently?”

You laughed. “Nope. Sucks for you, doesn’t it?”

He rolled his eyes and nipped at your ear. “A Nakamoto man’s gotta eat, y/n...Any ideas?”

You nuzzled into his neck. “You can always eat me.”

Yuta got a hard on at those words. “You’re too sweet for me to eat. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, y/n…”

You traced your fingers down his happy trail and asked. “Well, we can go hunting this week. I’m sure there’s some privileged college fuckboy that is beyond redemption…”

“You know what, y/n? There’s so many things I love about you but it’s your optimism that gets me hot.”

“Oh yeah?” You teased as you kissed him.

“I love you,” Yuta said between kisses.

“I love you, too,” you replied.

[Fin]

[lizardsfromspace]

My only hardcore anime phase was in the early 2000s but I didn't really watch Toonami or anything after school, but I did have a TV in my room and often couldn't sleep so I spent most nights in middle school watching weird late night TV on low volume

It wasn't only anime I watched (I was obsessed with a syndicated game show called Street Smarts for instance; I would rush to mute every sex line ad - in other words, basically every TV ad at midnight - out of fear my family would overhear, even though I already had it barely louder than a whisper and often strained to hear anything) but it meant I watched a lot of early Adult Swim, and caught some anime like Cowboy Bebop that way

But oddly enough my biggest exposure to anime during my hardcore anime phase was from TechTV's anime block, Anime Unleashed. It introduced me to Serial Experiments Lain, which is not an ideal show to watch alone late at night when you're twelve, especially when she sees the goddamn alien in the door and you're already paranoid at night (hence the lack of sleep) and you jump out of your skin

The peak of my anime phase was so scattershot that I missed most of the iconic anime of the era, but have deep memories of things like Boogiepop Phantom and Blue Gender. I don't know what an Inuyasha is but I vividly remember watching Gate Keepers 21, which was a darker and edgier sequel to an anime that they didn't show, so I had no idea it was regarded as a...darker and edgier sequel to another anime

In conclusion anime ain't no Mickey Mouse, it ain't no Looney Tunes

[lady-of-disdain]

Inuyasha isn't children's media dipshit. Inuyasha has blood and gore and aired on toonami/adult swim. Grow the fuck up. Its a fucking anime. Learn to tell the differences between fiction and reality. Please develop a fucking brain.

LOL! This sounded like me when I was 12-15 and defending the “cartoons” I was watching to my friends who were too mature for animated television, and were making fun of me for watching this stuff.

“Look there’s cussing! It’s totally made for a grown-up audience!”

First of all, as someone who was an avid Adult Swim viewer back when it was first created (am I dating myself yet?) I can confirm that just because ‘Adult’ is in the name doesn't mean the programming block was actually marketed for adults. (Well yes to adults too, but we’re talking adults in the late 90′s and early 00′s that were into fart jokes. So like Beavis and Butthead alum.) Advertisements for the late-night programming would start airing between 3 to 5 PM ON CARTOON NETWORK (generally not the time most adults were tuning in), around the time that middle-schoolers and high-schoolers were home.

But even then, saying an anime aired on Adult Swim doesn’t mean the target audience of that anime were adults. Back in the late 90′s and early 00′s western tv networks were having a hard time figuring out when to air Japanese anime. Shows were generally given a “test run” on Adult Swim in their Toonami block, which aired earlier than some of the rest of their ‘spicier’ programming. According to the Toonami Wikipedia page: 

“Toonami initially ran as a weekday afternoon block on Cartoon Network until 2004, when it transitioned into a Saturday evening format until its closure four years later. Cartoon Network's block was primarily aimed at children aged 9–14.”

Other anime that aired on Toonami: Fullmetal Alchemist (TV-PG), Yu Yu Hakusho (TV-PG), Trigun (TV-14), Sailor Moon (TV-14), Voltron ‘84 (TV-Y7), Dragon Ball Z (TV-14 in its original unedited form, TV-Y7-FV in the edited version), and Gundam Wing (Not Rated but suggested 13+ in the unedited version, TV-Y7 in the edited version)

 Inuyasha 2000-2004 (TV-PG)

(These are the US television ratings listed on IMDB)

If the shows were popular enough, they were either also picked up by other networks or if they could be edited to get a younger rating would be aired earlier in the day. My little sister (who was about 9-10 at the time) and I watched Inuyasha after school, during the day. ;)

BUT WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT INUYASHA RIGHT? We’re talking about Yashahime.

IMDB doesn’t have a rating yet, but on Hulu, it’s rated TV-14. That means safe for children aged 14 and above.

Does this mean that children under the age of 14 won’t be watching it? OF COURSE NOT. Sailor Moon is rated TV-14, and I was watching Sailor Moon in 5th and 6th grade. Sailor Moon was being marketed to girls between the ages of 10-15 in the 90′s.

But marketing in the 90′s is different from today right? And Yashahime being a sequel to a show that aired in Y2K means that it’s marketed only for adults that grew up with it right? For example, my sister who watched it when she was 9, and is now an adult, with a now 9-year-old child of her own......OH WAIT!

No. Yashahime is trying to cash in on the same children’s media nostalgia trap that Pokemon struck gold in, that Disney is trying so hard to cash in on with their terrible live-action remakes, and that many other 90′s kids media sequels, remakes, and reboots are trying to do today. Not only are they trying to catch the attention of the adults that remember these properties, but more importantly adults that now have kids that are the age today that these adults were back when they watched the originals, so they can share this property they loved as kids with their own children.

And we don’t just have proof of the nostalgia marketing strategy that so many of these properties are using, and that we all KNOW they are using. We can also go off of the general marketing strategy, and air time that Yashahime has to know what age range this show is being marketed for.

In Japan, Yashahime is being aired on Yomiuri TV in the early evening instead of late at night when anime traditionally marketed for older viewers airs, and alongside other children’s/young teen programming like Detective Conan (Case Closed). In fact, both of those shows are in the perfect time bracket for both adults just off work, and children before it’s too late for bed so that the family can watch it together. (Also makes sense that Case Closed it being aired with it since that show originally aired back in the early 2000′s too I think).

So in the sense that Yashahime is being marketed, and aired with the intention that children should, can, and will watch it, yes, it is children’s media.

[yandereplumsim]

Ophelia Nigmos (all !)

Nonnie is trying to finish what the vaccine started... Aka kill me.

❤️: OTP

Johnny Smith. They're so cute together, I can't break them apart. I once tried to have the JRO three way relationship, but it wasn't really working for me.

💔: No OTP

Ripp. I'm sorry but after that experience I really can't ship Ripp and Ophelia, at least not on my game, I still enjoy it on others, but is a pass for me.

���: Sexuality

Straight. I have never found a ship for her with a girl that (or outside Johnny and Ripp) called my attention.

😊: Friends

Beside her friendship turned into love with Johnny, she is good friends with Ripp, she almost sees him as her younger brother.

💀: Enemies or Rival

Pita Florica (The Sims 2 psp) , I brought her to Strangetown just for this. Thru Pita dislikes her more than what Ophelia dislikes her.

She doesn't like Tank.

🌷: Flowers or plants they like

Ophelia loves plants, specially cactus and their flowers because they're colorful and bright and they give her strength. She loves going to Johnny's house because of his green garden. But the one plant that own her heart is her little cow plant that she has started growing recently ❤️

☀️: Favourite Season

Spring time, is not too hot as summer, and is the perfect time to practice gardening.

🌧️: Favourite Weather

Raining. In the desert it doesn't rain as often as she would like, but after the rain the desert blooms in colors.

🕯️: Favourite Aromatic candle

Lavender and Jasmine. As I mentioned earlier, Lavender helps with anxiety and Insomnia, while Jasmine is found to be anticeptic and sedative. All things that Ophelia needs. Beside Jasmine is a night Blooming flower so.. . Fitting.

🥘: Favourite Food:

Ophelia on my game is a vegetarian, which makes sense, as is a healthier diet... And it has an irony with her meat eating Cowplant. Favourite dish might be vegetarian chili with meat or Shawarma.

☕: Favourite Drink

As a get go Green Tea. Chai Latte at the coffee shop... But most importantly, Ophelia makes sure to drink 2 lts of water every day, not from the tap.

🍦: Ice-cream Flavour

Don't ask me why, I just know that is pistaches... Like I can feel it in my bones.

🍕: Pizza Topping

Garlic. She prefers Gaelic bread over pizza actually, but if it's pizza she will add some dried Garlic over it.

🍟: Snack

Cookies. Something that she picked up from living with her Aunt Olive.

🍿: Movies they like to watch

Hollywood Golden age movies... Because they're the only ones that the Strangetown Car Cinema would show.

📺: TV Show they like to watch

Medical series like Gray's anatomy and Doctor House (I need Simlish versions of these) but only the early seasons. The gardening Chanel.

🎵: Music they listen to

90s/2000s Alternative Rock

⚽: Sport they like or play

Walking from the house to school and back is enough exercise for her. She used to swim when she was little, but not anymore.

📚: Books they like to read

The Medical enciclopedy, the vademecum and some Herbal journals that aunt olive owned. She might read some old short sci-fi romantic book if found appealing.

🕹️: Video Games they like or Play

Whatever videogane is working at the Strangetown arcade that week.

🎻: Musical instrument

She knows how to play the organ and was the person in charge of playing the piano during the Strangetown High School events. Ripp has been begging her to form a band ever since.

🎨: Favourite Colour

Lavender, indigo, burgundy & black

👠: Shoes they like

Sandals, convers & docs

👕: Clothing style

As a teen I would say late 90s early 2000s grunge, with ripped baggy jeans, t-shirts, cardigans and slip dresses. As a young adult her fashion is mutating more into the Gothic boho style.

👜: What's always on their bag

Gel Alcohol and desifectant. She carries a little farmacy on her bag. (all Around the sims Cold misery set)

📰: Section of the Newspaper they read

The Gardening section.

💻: Website they visit the most

Google search, looking up possible symptoms. YouTube "top 10 medical conditions" videos or Gardening Tutorials.

📱: Social media they use the most

Instagram, because of Ripp.

📗: Favourite School Subject

Biology and Natural science classes were her favorites during high school.

📕: Less Favourite School Subject

The P. E. class, no Metter how many (fake) doctor recipes she presented, the teacher refused to acnowlage her medical conditions and forced to take part on classes.

🎓: University they attended (or not)

La Fiesta Tech.

🎒: University Major

I'm on the fence between Biology and Paranormal... But definitely leading toward Biology as I want to put her on the Natural Science career later on.

🔮: Something Random

She's witch.

[aion-rsa]

How Final Destination Went From Real-Life Premonition to Horror Phenomenon

https://ift.tt/30jSLcc

The year 2000 was a scary one for horror films and not always in a good way.  

While American Psycho and The Cell offered up visually striking nihilistic thrills to genre fans, the majority of horror movies released at the dawn of the new millennium were at best forgettable and, at worst, lamentable – yes, we’re looking at you, Leprechaun in the Hood.  

This was the year of duff sequels like Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Urban Legends: Final Cut and, though it is painful to admit, Scream 3. Horror fans were screaming out for something different, something exciting. They found it with Final Destination.  

Discarding the stalk-and-slash thrills that had enjoyed a revival in the years following the release of Scream, Final Destination centered on a group of high schoolers who end up avoiding a fatal plane crash thanks to a premonition, only to discover there is no escaping death’s plan as one by one they are offed in a variety of brilliantly inventive “accidents”.  

Released in March of that year, Final Destination was a sleeper hit with word-of-mouth helping the film to clean up at the box office, earning $112 million off a $23 million budget with more than half of that coming internationally.  

To date, it has spawned four sequels as well as a variety of novelisations and comic book spin-offs while a franchise reboot is also on the horizon.  

Read more

Movies

The Final Destination Movies, Ranked

By Sarah Dobbs

Jeffrey Reddick has worked on several films during his career to date but he’s probably best known as the creator of Final Destination. It’s something he has come to terms with.  

“It’s probably going to end up on my gravestone, it’s such an ironic title,” he tells Den of Geek.  

“Sometimes I’ll be out and I will hear someone say ‘you just had a Final Destination moment’ and it will make me smile. The whole thing just took on a life of its own.”  

Nightmarish Origins  

A screenwriter and director, Reddick recalls how his neighbors in rural Jackson, Kentucky, would laugh when his six-year-old self would tell them about his plans to work in the movie business.   

An avid writer and reader of Greek and Roman mythology, he recalls spending his formative years watching horror movies with his friends. His mother was only too happy to indulge his burgeoning interest too, knowing it kept him out of trouble elsewhere.  

Reddick’s life began to change after he saw A Nightmare on Elm Street.   

“That film cemented my love of horror. I was this 14-year-old hillbilly from Kentucky but I decided I was going to write a prequel. I went home, banged it out on my typewriter and sent it to Bob Shaye.”  

The legendary head of New Line Cinema initially dismissed Reddick’s draft out of hand, returning it with a note explaining the studio did not “accept unsolicited material.”  

Undaunted, Reddick sent the script back with a note telling him “Look mister, I spent three dollars on your movie and I think you could take five minutes on my story.”  

Shaye was impressed and struck up a bond with the youngster that saw him sending everything from scripts to posters to Reddick during his teenage years.  

When Reddick moved to New York to study acting, age 19, he was offered an internship with New Line, which would become a full-time role despite acting being his “main passion.”  

“Diversity in casting was not a thing at that time,” he recalls.  

“My agent was like ‘I don’t know what to do with you as an actor. We can’t put you up for gangsters or pimps and you don’t rap and you don’t play basketball.”  

“So  I figured, screw it, I will just write stuff and put myself in it.”  

Reddick was present at New Line during their company’s early 90s creative heyday and credits the experience with helping him get Final Destination off the ground.  

“I learned a lot about how to get a movie made. I knew that to make a movie that connected with an audience you had to tap into something that was universal. Death is the ultimate fear.”  

As luck would have it, the idea actually came to Reddick while on a flight back to Kentucky.  

“I read about a woman who was on vacation and her mother told her not to take the flight she was planning to take home as she had a bad feeling about it. The woman changed it and the plane she was supposed to be on crashed.”  

At that point however the idea wasn’t Final Destination. It wasn’t a film either. It was an episode of The X Files.  

The Truth Is Out There  

“I was trying to get a TV agent at the time and they recommended I write a spec script for something already on the air. I was a huge fan of The X Files and thought about a scene where somebody has a premonition and gets off the plane and then it crashes and used that as the plot.”  

“It was going to be Scully’s brother Charles who had the premonition. He gets off the plane with a few other people but they start dying and Charles blacks out every time there is a murder so people suspect he is doing it.   

Read more

TV

I Still Want to Believe: Revisiting The X-Files Pilot

By Chris Longo

“The twist at the end was that the sheriff who had been investigating alongside Mulder and Scully the whole time had actually been shot and flatlined at the same time as the plane crash.  Death brought him back to kill off all the survivors, including Charles.”  

It would have made for a great episode except it was never submitted to The X Files. Reddick showed his spec script to some friends at New Line who were so impressed, they told him to develop it into a treatment for a feature, which was eventually purchased by the studio.  

Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide were brought onboard to develop the story and set about tweaking his idea.  

“Originally the cast of survivors were adults because I wanted to explore more adult themes but Scream had come out and teenagers were hot again so New Line got me to change it”  

In a twist of fate, two established writers from The X Files, James Wong and Glen Morgan, were brought onboard to rejig Reddick’s script.   

“My version was definitely darker and more like A Nightmare on Elm Street,” he says.  

“In my script, death would torment the kids about some kind of past sin they felt guilty about. They would then die in these accidents that ended up looking like suicides.”  

For example, Todd’s death saw him chased into the family garage by an unseen specter where he accidentally ended up rigged in a noose triggered when his dad opens the automatic garage door.   

Death is all around us  

Ultimately that death scene and several others were ultimately scrapped in favour of what would prove to be the franchise’s calling card.  

Reddick credits Wong and Morgan with coming up with the idea of having the film’s key death scenes kicked off by a Rube Goldberg machine-like chain-reaction that would see everyday things colliding to create a lethal scenario. It was nothing short of a masterstroke.   

“It created this notion that death is all around us,” Reddick says.  

“Death would use everyday things around us. It made it more universal and allowed us to set the deaths in places where people go all the time. The payoff would be fun but it was the build-up that had you on the edge of your seat.”  

There was one major sticking point for the studio though: the presence of death, or rather the lack of.  

“I fought really hard to make sure we never showed death because for me, if you didn’t show it, it could be something someone, no matter their belief system, could project onto our villain. That was a tough sell for the studio. They would be like ‘this doesn’t make any sense, you can’t see it and you can’t fight it’ but that’s the point, it’s death.”  

“Luckily both James Wong and Glen Morgan were very insistent we never show it and tie it in to a specific belief system.”  

Reddick credits the move with helping Final Destination become “an international phenomenon”.  

“It struck a chord with people around the world. It broke out beyond the horror audience.”  

Casting dreams   

When it came to casting, Reddick had a clear idea of who he wanted in the lead roles, even if the studio’s opinion differed drastically.  

“I had a wish list with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst as my two leads but New Line was like ‘well…’”  

He might not have got his first pick but Final Destination boasted an impressive cast of up-and-comers who had already made waves among teen audiences.   

Devon Sawa had starred in Idle Hands, while Ali Larter was known for Varsity Blues and Kerr Smith was a regular on Dawson’s Creek. There was even room for Seann William Scott, fresh from his breakout turn in American Pie who was drafted in on the recommendation of producer Craig Perry, who told Reddick “you’ve got to get this kid, he’s going to be huge.”  

Even so, Reddick was left a little unhappy.  

“One of the conversations we had early on was like ‘Just remember this is set in New York, which is one of the most diverse cities in the world so let’s make sure we have some diversity in the cast’ and they were like ‘oh we will’ and then there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t white in it.”  

New Line chief Bob Shaye did find a way to make amends on some level at least, casting Candyman horror icon Tony Todd in a cameo role as a mysteriously foreboding mortician.  

“He called me up and said they had got Tony Todd and I flipped out. He is an icon. Such a talented, serious actor.”  

As well as co-write the film, Wong took on directorial duties while each of the film’s death sequences would require careful planning, his first aim was to have the film start with a bang by creating as terrifyingly realistic a plane crash as possible.  

“We want to do for planes and air travel what Jaws did for sharks and swimming,” he declared in one interview.  

Yet the film would later garner criticism for its eerie similarities to the explosion and crash of TWA Flight 800 off East Moriches, Long Island, New York in 1996 where 16 students and five adults died.  

“There was some criticism that the movie was written to exploit this real-life crash,” Reddick recalls.  

“I even realised later they used footage from one real-life crash which I wasn’t particularly happy about.”  

Indeed, much of the news footage shown in the film actually came from the 1996 crash.  

That didn’t stop the film becoming a major hit and spawning a sequel within three years.   

Final Destination meets Game of Thrones  

Reddick returned to write the treatment for Final Destination 2, determined to move the franchise away from its teen Scream origins.   

“We had tapped into that zeitgeist and didn’t have to do that again. I wanted to expand the universe and subvert it, so I had it open by following a bunch of teens who are then killed off.”  

Once again, divine intervention led to divine inspiration for the opening set piece.  

“Originally, I was going to have it open with some kids going to spring break and they stop off at this hotel and there is a fire but the producers were not sure. Writers always say you should go out and live life – life informs you and a lot of inspiration comes out when I go out for a walk.  

“I was driving back to Kentucky to see my family and I got stuck behind a log truck and the idea just came to me. I pulled off the highway and called Craig and was flipping out with this idea for a log truck on a freeway.”  

The resulting freeway pile-up that leads to multiple deaths is one Reddick ranks as his “favourite scene in the entire franchise.”  

“The second film is my favourite. I wanted to create a sequel that didn’t feel like a remake of the first. It went in a more fun direction – but it’s still scary.”  

That first sequel also represented the last of which Reddick was formally involved in, though he remained very much in the loop as the Godfather of the franchise, revealing that producers had been “looking at scripts before Covid hit.” 

He also revealed that, at one point, things looked to be heading in an altogether different and thoroughly fascinating direction.  

“There was talk about setting a Final Destination back in Medieval times. Like Game of Thrones in Final Destination. Craig Perry worked with a writer and they talked about the idea and put a teaser trailer together [which has leaked online].   

“I would go and see that movie in a heartbeat but the studio said that the reason Final Destination was so popular was that element of deaths in normal, everyday situations.”  

Future Destinations  

Reddick hasn’t given up on a return to the franchise though, hinting at a “unique” idea he has for a new film that is simply too good to reveal yet.   

In the meantime, he has been busy writing and directing Don’t Look Back, a film that shares some surface similarities with Final Destination and is painfully relevant to society today.  

“It’s a mystery thriller about a group of people who witness someone getting fatally assaulted in a park and don’t help the person and somebody films them and puts it online. The public turns on the witnesses and someone or something is coming after them.”  

Eager to make more horror films and celebrate diversity in his work, Reddick remains immensely proud of Final Destination and the impact it has had on audiences.  

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“It’s cool. To have one movie that is going to be talked about after you die is a life goal. If that’s what I leave behind as a legacy that’s enough – but I still want more.” 

Don’t Look Back is available on DVD & Digital from 14th June

The post How Final Destination Went From Real-Life Premonition to Horror Phenomenon appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[lupin-the-3rd-case-files]

It All Begins

Not really sure if anyone will ever read this blog but I want to do it for my own sake. I’m here to talk about a series I’m very passionate about: Lupin the 3rd. Lupin the 3rd is a long running anime franchise originally written by Monkey Punch detailing the exploits of the titular Lupin (grandson of Arsene Lupin) and his gang of thieves.

I’ve been a fan of Lupin the 3rd since back in the days of its first airing on Adult Swim back in the early to mid-2000′s. I don’t quite remember the exact year but Adult Swim ran Lupin the 3rd Part 2 during their late night programming. I was was in high school at the time so I couldn’t stay up to watch it every night but I would try to catch it whenever I could. I fell in love with the cartoony antics of Lupin and his crew.

Unfortunately I never got to see much else of Lupin after that until college when I got even heavier into anime than I was before. I had more free time, it was the height of the fansub era right before Crunchyroll established itself, and I had a pretty good internet connection that let me...acquire anime. Legally, of course. While I was watching all of the Gundam franchise, Madoka Magica, Steins;Gate, Gurren Lagann, Tatami Galaxy, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and countless other series, I rediscovered Lupin the 3rd in the form of Castle of Cagliostro.

It was a different kind of Lupin from the Part 2 tv series, but it was a welcome one regardless. I’ll gush about it more when it comes time to talk about it, but Castle of Cagliostro was the spark that reignited the fire for me. After that I started rewatching Part 2, and a number of OVAs and movies that came out. That being said, I never watched *all* of them. 

So, about 10 years later, I’m in my 30′s and Lupin is having a resurgence in the west thanks to Discotek media. They’re constantly releasing new Lupin the 3rd home videos that never got to see western releases. For a North American fan, they’re a blessing. In that time there’s been three new tv series, and a new film series with a darker take on the franchise, not to mention two crossovers with Detective Conan/Case Closed. 

It’s 2am on a Saturday morning and I’ve contemplated it for quite some time now, and I’m finally deciding to do the deed: I want to watch *all* of Lupin the 3rd. It’s not an easy task, as there’s a lot of it. However, I have seen all of Gundam minus one tv series (fake fan alert), and that franchise has much more content than Lupin does. Discotek is also releasing Part 3 on bluray soon which has never seen a western release, and Part 5 will be coming out in October on bluray as well. And to top it all off, we’re getting a Part 6 later this year assuming Covid doesn’t fuck that up too. 

It’s a great time to be a Lupin the 3rd fan, so what better time than now to sit down and watch it all. And that’s where this blog comes in. I want to chronicle the adventures Lupin goes on in his series. Each blog I plan to detail what Lupin was after, and if he succeeded. One of the funnier aspects of Lupin is that he doesn’t often come out on top, usually getting scammed by Fujiko or losing all the money in an unfortunate accident. I want to chronicle what Lupin gets out of each adventure, and I’m going to try to put a monetary value to it. I want to see how much money Lupin actually makes over the course of the franchise. 

I will also probably type up my thoughts about each entry as I want. That’ll be easy with the OVAs, movies and specials. I’ll probably do it less with the tv series otherwise I’ll be working on this blog the rest of my life and not every episode needs commentary. I may also not do every episode individually, I’ll probably group some together.

I’m going to be starting with the OVAs and Movies, except for the Takeshi Koike films which I’ll instead do after we get to The Lady Named Mine Fujiko. I’ll also be watching the tv specials unless they coincide with a specific tv series (such as Italian Game and Part 4). It’s easier for me to push through movies and OVAs rather than tv series, so this will be the easiest path for me to start. Once we finish those we’ll do the TV series starting from Part 1.

I hope to actually keep up with this blog, and I hope you’ll all join me in this adventure.

[lechevaliermalfet]

The Tip of the Spear – A Long Look at Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

Note: Some spoilers ahead

When it comes to the general anime fandom, I was here before the rush.

I don’t say this to be some kind of hipster, to brag that I was into anime before it was cool (I mean I was, I guess, but that’s irrelevant).  I’m just establishing a context.  I was here for the rush, and I got to watch it happen.  It was pretty interesting.

For myself, I came in during the Fox broadcast of Ronin Warriors (known in Japan as Yoroiden Samurai Troopers), somewhere back in the mid-90s.  I don’t recall exactly how old I was, maybe 13 or 14 at the time.  At any rate, I was at an age where I was starting to get the impression from other people that I should be done with watching cartoons, so I was very self-conscious about my interest in the show. But something about it grabbed me despite that.  I caught most of the episodes out of their proper order, as I dipped into it here and there as I could throughout its multiple runs.  Meanwhile, my friend Josh taped the whole thing; those tapes are either gathering dust in his parents’ attic, or more likely lost by now.

It wasn’t technically the first anime I’d ever seen – that honor goes to the hacked-up 1980s American version of Voltron – but it was the first one I ever saw while explicitly understanding that it was Japanese in origin.  (When I was watching Voltron at age five, I probably didn’t even know what Japan was).  From there, I got swept up into the uncensored and uncut stuff: Ninja Scroll, Macross Plus, Ghost in the Shell, and a whole host of others.  Back then, everybody was talking about Ranma ½ and lamenting the absence of Rumiko Takahashi’s earlier classic, Urusei Yatsura, in English; there were arguments and flame wars about which of the three different Tenchi Muyo! continuities was best, and perpetual laments about how the OVA series at the time remained unfinished and with no ending in sight; the classics of the day were movies like Akira and the original Vampire Hunter D, and I was developing a weird soft spot for Fist of the North Star; I was recording shows like Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture, Galaxy Express 999, and Green Legend Ran from the Sci-Fi Channel, movies which tend to be forgotten today for one reason or another.

I was new to the fandom, I was excited to explore it, and I was at that stage of fandom involvement where I was beginning to build up a store of experience and my own knowledge regarding what was out there, while at the same time having little enough of said knowledge that everything was still new and exciting.  It might have been my favorite time as an anime fan.

If you were at that stage of the fandom – progressed past just watching whatever was on TV to buying stuff at stores and looking up new things online – then Gundam was something you just kind of heard of.  It was hard to really get into at the time, given that none of the various series (and there was just over twenty years’ worth of series by the time Gundam Wing began airing Stateside) had yet been licensed for U.S. release.  Anything you were going to get, you had to get via fansubs, and this was at a time when those were pretty much exclusively viewed via VHS cassette (which had been copied from laserdisc and sent by mail).  You were aware of the show, and its influence could be felt throughout the medium, but for the average fan who only had access to what was licensed for U.S. release, it was basically never more than the background radiation of the mecha genre, and of anime in general.

That all changed in 2000 with Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

The Crest of the Wave

There were a lot of factors that led to the anime boom of the late 90s and early aughts, and I don’t think you can single out any one of them as being solely responsible.  But if there’s one that was mostly responsible, it would be Cartoon Network’s afternoon Toonami block, and a bit later on, the late-night Adult Swim block.  At the time, Toonami seemed to be largely dedicated to shows that had been popular in the 80s – Voltron, Robotech, and Thundercats, to name a few – whether this was the general intent, or just happened to be the schedule when I first tuned in just prior to the boom, I’m not sure.  But there were two shows that appeared later which launched Toonami into the stratosphere of popularity.  One of them was Dragon Ball Z.  The other was Gundam Wing.

Of the two, Dragon Ball Z showed up on the block first, in August of 1998.  It had aired on network TV before this, but Toonami was where it finally took off.  It was (and remains) the more popular by a fairly wide margin, having introduced Western audiences to the long-running shounen fight shows that have been a staple of the fandom ever since.  Bleach, Naruto, One Piece, and countless others all probably owe their success in the U.S. directly to Dragon Ball Z’s run on Toonami.  And its popularity makes a lot of sense, when you think about it.  There’s a large cast of characters with easy-to-understand motivations and personalities that are expressed in their dialogue, their actions, and the way they fight.  Really, it’s like pro wrestling, just with a different aesthetic.

Gundam Wing, which originally aired in 1995 in Japan, began airing in the U.S. about a year and a half after Dragon Ball Z, in March of 2000. It catered to a very different mindset than Dragon Ball Z’s martial arts fantasy.  While it also had a crew of varied and easily identifiable characters, it coupled this with a convoluted plot, complex and changing motivations among its cast, moral quandaries, philosophical soliloquies, and giant robots.  And it is a fundamental law of the universe that you can almost never, ever go wrong with giant robots.  Basically, it zeroed in on the audience that likes their anime complex, weird, and melodramatic.  

Of course I was a fan.

And while it didn’t quite enjoy Dragon Ball Z’s stratospheric success, it certainly did well enough.  Bandai supposedly sold out of Gundam Wing model kits in the wake of its Western debut, and they were so impressed at how Toonami handled the series that they borrowed some of their promotional materials when it came time for Bandai to give the series a home video release.

For reference, this was around the time that Bandai was entering the Western market directly, and Gundam Wing (produced by their subsidiary Sunrise, Inc.) was part of an impressive opening salvo that included, all in the span of about a year, Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop (two of the three “cowboy shows” that were huge at the time), The Vision of Escaflowne, and of course, Gundam Wing itself.  When it came to the American market, Bandai came out swinging.  The strength of these shows contributed to the rising popularity of the medium.  With its position in the Toonami block and an additional late-night broadcast, Gundam Wing was probably the most prominent of all of these.  

Now, you can argue that other shows from around that time were better, certainly.  I’d personally argue that Cowboy Bebop is a better show, and certainly a more consistent one.  Escaflowne might also be in the running, though it lacks the weight of cultural phenomenon, doesn’t quite stick its landing (thanks to being greenlit for fewer episodes than originally planned), and its soap-operatic melodrama might be offputting to some.  And The Big O was more of a cult success in the end.  

But Gundam Wing was in the sweet spot.

For one thing, its content was the most TV-friendly.  Cowboy Bebop couldn’t really be aired in an afternoon programming block, on account of the violence and mature themes of the show; it would either be inappropriate for or uninteresting to the younger-skewing segment of Toonami’s audience.  It was popular right out of the gate in the U.S., but it was popular with the usual anime crowd, which meant home video only, which sort of precluded it from being a gateway show in quite the same way.  Outlaw Star, for its part, had to have some footage removed here and there, including an entire episode late in the series run which was essentially just a half-hour of cheesecake (but also, frustratingly, host to one very important plot point).  Escaflowne likewise needed some censoring (and had been grabbed by Fox, anyway), and The Big O was a little too cerebral to have universal appeal.  Gundam Wing, meanwhile, was very TV-friendly, with most of the censoring needed for afternoon airing amounting to a few tweaks of dialogue here and there.

But in addition to the above, its qualities came together in a way the aforementioned shows’ didn’t, or at least not as visibly.   It had a complex plot that kept its viewers guessing, and it reached for a certain sense of depth (the level of success it achieved is debatable, but…). Yet I think what it really comes down to is how it portrays its characters.  

All of the main characters are what I can only describe as “catchy”.  On a superficial level, they are all immediately distinct and iconic. Their designs are simple and basically distilled down to something that’s instantly recognizable (even if it’s as ridiculous as the main character’s usual outfit of bike shorts and a tank top). Their personalities are likewise distinct, with each one embodying certain archetypes and tropes.  At a glance, with a superficial or “zoomed-out” view, you can get a basic handle on the characters. Their design, body language, attitude, and way of speaking immediately marks each of them out as a particular “type”.  At the same time, they have some actual nuance to them when you look closer.  It’s not super deep, but it’s there.  And they play off each other well, once they meet and start interacting.

In addition to all of the above, Wing also helped kick off the Cartoon Network’s much-loved and fondly remembered Adult Swim block late at night.  Very little of the material shown in Gundam Wing could be considered really objectionable, but some of the dialogue wasn’t quite fit for an after-school cartoon block whose target audience included children and young teens.  It might be fine for Japanese audiences in that demographic if the main character made repeated and explicit (and guaranteedly ineffective) death threats to various people throughout the show, or if another character gleefully proclaimed himself to be the God of Death, but American audiences had (or were perceived to have) different ideas.  But since most of the objectionable material was a matter of dialogue, the problem was as simple as making a few key alterations to the script, all of which were ultimately inconsequential.  The one character now threatened to destroy people, and the God of Death was now the Lord of Destruction.

So the Cartoon Network got to have it both ways.  They got to air the slightly bowdlerized dub during the day to access the younger audience and build popularity, while at the same time earning credit with the purist crowd by airing a more true-to-the-original version of the dub late at night, during what they then called the Midnight Run.  I will bet cash money that this was directly responsible for the birth of the Adult Swim block not much later.

Overall, Gundam Wing served as a more complex, slower-paced, and character-driven yin to the bright and colorful slugfest of Dragon Ball Z’s yang.  The two together propelled the popularity of Toonami, and helped add momentum to the building anime boom.

The Times They Are a-Changin’

The greater Gundam franchise is comprised of a multitude of TV shows, OVAs, and movies

Gundam Wing positions itself as an alternate continuity to most of the preceding Gundam series, with the lone exception of Mobile Fighter G Gundam (which was itself another continuity).

G Gundam aside, the multiple classic Gundam anime that had come before Wing were set in what’s known as the Universal Century timeline, with several different series belonging to it.  Per Wikipedia, we have:

Mobile Suit Gundam (43 episodes, or a trilogy of compilation movies)

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (50 episodes, or a trilogy of nigh-incomprehensible compilation movies)

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (47 TV and 2 OVA episodes, and no compilatio movies, because fuck you, I guess; also the “ZZ” is sounded out as “double zeta”)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (theatrical film)

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (6 OVA episodes)

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (movie)

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (13 OVA episodes, or a compilation movie)

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (51 TV episodes, and once more no compilation movies, because fuck you still, I guess)

That’s… kind of a lot, really.  You can tell where the people who say that Gundam is Japan’s answer to shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who are coming from.  And this is just the Universal Century stuff that came out before Gundam Wing, running on and off through a period that lasted from 1979 to 1994.  Wing was followed not long after its initial Japanese airing by a twelve-episode OVA titled Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, which – you guessed it – resumed the Universal Century timeline.

Anyway.

You can probably understand how it might be difficult to keep existing fans tuned in and also draw in potential new fans. At some point, you start to see diminishing returns.  You’ll have fans who love Gundam… but how many are hardcore enough to follow it through the literal dozen-plus various TV series, OVA series, and movies that have been made up to the present in order to be able to make sense of the next thing that comes down the pipe.  Each new show will inevitably see you shedding some of the fanbase as more and more people hit their limit for Gundam and tap out.  And that’s just talking about the existing fans.  Try to imagine bringing new fans into this increasingly byzantine saga.  And yes, they are in fact making more Universal Century series (and have been the whole while).  

Intimidating really is not the word.

So that’s another reason Gundam Wing was perfect to open the American market up for the franchise as a whole: accessibility.

The older Gundam shows wouldn’t have found much of an audience in 2000.  The first Mobile Suit Gundam series is very much a late-70s product, and it shows in every frame.  Even for the standards of the day, production quality wasn’t always up to scratch, with one episode forbidden by series originator Yoshiyuki Tomino from ever airing again.  That’s not to say that there would never be a market for it in the States, just that there wouldn’t have been enough of one in 2000 (or before) to keep the series going.  The timing was wrong.  Mobile Suit Gundam looked old and stilted because it was old and stilted, and that wasn’t going to fly at the time.  I suspect that for a show of its vintage, you’d ideally want a considerably larger fanbase than what existed at pretty much any point before the turn of the century, so that you could actually rely on a large enough number of people within it to be interested in older anime, and turn a profit by selling it.

Gundam Wing, meanwhile, was only about five years out from its Japanese airing when it hit the Toonami block.  This was in a day when most anime came to the U.S. a year or more after their original Japanese release in the first place.  It wasn’t quite the best-looking anime out there, but it was up to the lower end of the standards of the day.  And it stood alone, so there was no need for the audience to try to understand everything that came before it.

So it came to pass that America’s introduction to Gundam – and the West’s in general – came not from Amuro Ray and Char Aznable’s battles in the wide tapestry of honor and brutality of the Universal Century setting, but from a team of five handsome and improbably young terrorists sent to Earth with little more than the initial objective to fuck shit up but good.

The Bishounen Who Fell to Earth

With high expectations, human beings leave Earth to begin a new life in space colonies. However, the United Earth Sphere Alliance gains great military power, and soon seizes control of one colony after another in the name of justice and peace...

The year is After Colony 195…

So begins almost every episode in the front half of Gundam Wing, outlining the uneasy and uncertain unity between Earth and the space colonies.  Earth’s seizure of the colonies involves, among other things, a communications blackout between them in an effort to divide and conquer.  But Earth’s will is more directly imposed by their military, which occupies most of the colonies.  Prominently featured in its arsenal are the intimidating mobile suits.  These large, single-occupant, generally humanoid manned robots strike a balance in military terms between the mobility and maneuverability of infantry, and the strength and firepower of artillery.  A sort of metal gear, if you will, connecting these two parts of the overall military machine...

Hang on, I’m writing about the wrong giant robot-featuring anti-war franchise.

Anyway, the mobile suits render most conventional weaponry trivial, and the expertise and training needed to pilot one ensure that no scrappy resistance movement is likely to be able to get their hands on them and use them effectively to meet the Alliance on an even footing.

But the colonies have had enough.  Acting separately according to a previously agreed-upon plan, five of the colonies develop mobile suits called Gundams, so named for their construction from an alloy called gundanium, which can only be made in space – as opposed to the “mere” titanium or neo-titanium of the rank-and-file suits – and send them to Earth disguised as meteorites.  This is the opening phase of a larger resistance plan called Operation: Meteor.  The Gundam pilots’ purpose is to destroy a variety of military targets and generally wreak havoc, ultimately to distract from the real final objective, which remains a mystery for much of the series.  

Each of the five pilots of these Gundams is initially unaware of the others.  They are, in effect, terrorists, each operating as a cell of one.

The five pilots are very young, with an average age of about fifteen. When I watched with @squeemcsquee, she joked that they make up a sort of “boy band of mecha anime”.  And, really, I can’t even be mad, because she’s not wrong.  Even the show’s creators acknowledge it:

Heero Yuy: the Leader or “face” of the band.  Interestingly, though he’s the main character, he’s not really the strategic leader of the group.  Easily the most damaged, and probably the most completely dedicated to his mission, to the point that he attempts self-detonation two separate times during the first half of the show (one of these being the first episode) with zero hesitation. He deals with his emotions by essentially denying that he has any. He pilots Gundam 01, “Wing Gundam”, which has an overwhelmingly powerful beam cannon, beam saber, and shield, and transforms into a jet mode for optimal aerial combat maneuvers.

Duo Maxwell: the Funny One.  Easily the most personable of the group, and the one whose reactions are the most consistently like a sane and normal person’s.  He jokes, he flirts, and generally has a positive attitude the whole way through.  In contrast to his generally upbeat outlook, he frequently calls himself the God of Death (or Lord of Destruction if you were watching the daytime dub). In keeping with the grim reaper/shinigami aesthetic, he pilots Gundam 02, “Deathscythe”, and its later rebuilt version “Deathscythe Hell”.

Trowa Barton: the Cool One.  Cool both in just generally being cool and in his constantly calm, collected, and logical approach.  Despite his detached demeanor, he’s one of the more compassionate pilots. Extremely acrobatic (the show gets a lot of mileage out of that stock footage of him twirling through the air).  He also has a knack for infiltrating enemy organizations so convincingly that the other pilots worry that maybe he really is with the enemy.  Pilots Gundam 03, “Heavyarms” and the upgraded “Heavyarms Kai”, with a fighting style that basically amounts to “stand there and fire all the guns”, and let me tell you: Heavyarms has a lot of guns.

Quatre Raberba Winner: the Sensitive One.  Probably the leading (or at least most frequent and consistent) candidate for Innocent Cinnamon Roll status.  Quatre is a rich kid whose inherited wealth somehow hasn’t gotten in the way of his sense of justice and his compassion for others.  He frequently asks his enemies to come to their senses and surrender before the fighting breaks out, and feels immediate remorse over the consequences when they inevitably don’t. Has a tendency to ask “Oh God, how did I fuck up?” whenever anything goes wrong, even if it isn’t his fault, and even if that really shouldn’t be the first priority.  Despite blond hair and green eyes, is understood to be Arabic (it’s been pointed out that there are Arabic peoples that can have this appearance).  He also has a small private army at his disposal, known as the Maguanac.  Pilots Gundam 04, “Sandrock”, which has a pair of shotel sickle-swords as its main weapon, and virtually no long-range capabilities to speak of.  

Chang Wufei: the One Nobody Likes.  A martial artist whose picture should be at the top of the TV Tropes page for Arrogant Kung Fu Guy.  He is obsessed with his idea of justice, and of wiping out evil wherever it may hide; naturally he’s the perfect arbiter of these qualities.  He has a hard-nosed and overly simplistic notion of honor, preferring to engage his enemies face-to-face, and perpetually (and loudly) agonizing about how battles against weak opponents leave him feeling unfulfilled.  He’s willing to resort to a variety of dirty tricks if needed (at one point proving one character’s assertion that their soldiers are so well-trained that they’ll never die in combat horrifically true, by blowing up their barracks while they sleep), but angsts about it severely whenever it becomes necessary.  Pretty blatantly sexist at various points in the story.  Pilots Gundam 05, “Shenlong” and its rebuilt version “Altron”, both of which he calls “Nataku”.

But although the pilots are the focus of the story, their Gundams are also a vital part of the show.  Cynically, you can easily point out that the various mobile suits make for countless merchandising possibilities – and you’d not be wrong.  One of franchise creator Yoshiyuki Tomino’s longstanding headaches whenever he was at the helm of a series was balancing his own need to tell a serious story and convey a message against the producers’ demands for more robots to help sell model kits.  And Gundam Wing certainly didn’t disappoint in that regard.  Off the top of my head, I can think of ten different distinct mobile suits featured in the series (if we count upgrades), not including the rank-and-file mobile suit models.  But the appearance and abilities of the Gundams are important in how they help express the personalities and natures of the characters who use them.

Wufei’s Nataku has the greatest agility and maneuverability of the lot, with a high enough degree of articulation and focus on up-close combat that it can replicate Wufei’s own martial arts skills.  More to the point, it emphasizes his need for face-to-face confrontation.  Its primary weapon is a spear, with its ranged capabilities limited to its “Dragon Fang”, an extendable arm on the right side that can strike quickly at unexpected distances.  After the Shenlong version is scrapped, its mid-season Altron rebuild has two dragon fangs with improved reach, and more ranged weaponry, but these are essentially in place to supplement the close-combat capabilities that his fighting style favors.

Quatre’s Sandrock Gundam, meanwhile, is also focused on close combat, but in a different way.  It lacks Shenlong/Altron’s speed and maneuverability, instead relying on careful planning and a deliberate approach to combat, reflecting its pilot’s more methodical and careful nature.  Its lack of ranged weaponry makes it impossible for the pilot to distance himself from combat or the effects it has, preventing him from deadening his response to the horrors of battle by repeatedly exposing him to them.  Its largely defensive capabilities hint at it being better-suited for a commander rather than a front-line fighter, and Quatre eventually emerges as the natural fit for this role among the five pilots.  It also is designed to allow the pilot to escape when put into self-destruct mode, making it unique among the five.

Trowa’s Heavyarms and (and the minor Heavyarms Kai upgrade), meanwhile, are all about long range, to the point that its one real close-combat option is an arm-mounted knife.  It’s instead designed to use overwhelming firepower to obliterate foes at range, which seems superficially fitting for the pilot’s detached, hyper-pragmatic approach to fighting.  This also allows it to act as long-range support for the other Gundam units when they’re fighting together.  However, its overwhelming force seems in some ways to be at odds with the pilot’s personality.  Trowa himself is highly acrobatic where Heavyarms is very much a “stand and shoot” kind of machine, and he’s much more subtle than his Gundam’s design might suggest, with highly developed skills at infiltration and espionage which come in handy throughout the series.  However, when it’s eventually brought to light that there was a different pilot intended for Heavyarms – a man whose limited camera time suggests a personality perfectly in keeping with the Gundam’s sheer force – this begins to make much more sense.

Duo’s Deathscythe (and the later Deathscythe Hell rebuild) is the fastest of the five, though it lacks the maneuverability of the Shenlong/Altron.  It compensates for its lack of ranged options with stealth capabilities which include radar jamming and, later, outright cloaking.  To the extent that any giant robot might be capable of going undetected, Deathscythe manages it nicely.  Its capabilities allow it to sneak into the middle of enemy territory and then wreak havoc with a suddenness that matches the spontaneity of its pilot.

And finally, the Wing Gundam piloted by Heero Yuy is, like the pilot, the most balanced of all models in terms of combat ability.  Equipped with a powerful beam cannon for long-range work, a beam saber and shield for up-close battles, and the ability to transform into a jet mode for aerial combat as well as its anthropoid form for fighting on the ground, the Wing Gundam has an answer for every problem, a perfect match for its pilot’s own adaptability.  Both the pilot and the machine are best suited out of all of the five for operating entirely on their own.

The Gundam pilots’ real enemy is not the United Earth Sphere Alliance, but rather the Organization of the Zodiac – OZ for short.  OZ serves as the military arm of the Romefeller Foundation, which is a sort of openly acknowledged illuminati.  Romefeller is operated by aristrocrats and other assorted obscenely wealthy oligarchs who all dress in military uniforms that, in the real world, went out of fashion sometime before World War I, and these elites run pretty much everything that happens within the Earth Sphere.  But OZ is the tail that seems, by the time Gundam Wing opens, to be wagging the dog.

OZ is headed by the improbably young and impossibly charismatic Treize Khushrenada, whose number one soldier and sort of personal champion is a young man with long, platinum-blond hair going by the name Zechs Merquise.  Known here and there as the “Lightning Baron” (and later on, “Lightning Count”), this enigmatic masked figure is a warrior among soldiers, obsessed with battle and with the notion of fighting with honor and principles.  But his sense of honor has plenty of room for ruthless efficiency, and he’s known for this as much as anything else.  Zechs is Treize’s ace in the hole, the only soldier in his ranks capable of meeting the Gundam pilots on an even footing.  In fact, he makes his introduction taking on Wing Gundam with nothing but an OZ Leo and essentially coming out on top, a truly remarkable feat given that the Leo’s defining characteristic is the way the audience becomes rapidly accustomed to seeing it blown up again and again (and again, and again, and…).

In the middle of all the fighting, though, there are those with more high-minded ideals.  Enter Relena Darlian, a young lady of an age with the Gundam pilots, and the daughter of the Alliance’s Vice-Foreign Minister Darlian.  The elder Darlian pushes for peace and disarmament of the Earth Sphere Alliance, and reconciliation with the oppressed colonies; naturally, he isn’t long for this world.  But upon his death, Relena learns that she is his daughter by adoption, not by blood.  Before he was the vice-foreign minister of the Alliance, he was a member of the senate of the former Sanc Kingdom.  Said kingdom was ruled by the Peacecraft family, who, as their name somewhat implies, were dedicated to total pacifism.  The kingdom was wiped out some years ago by the Alliance military for opposing their expansionist policies.  Relena, as it turns out, is the daughter of the now-dead king of that nation, orphaned and adopted upon the Sanc Kingdom’s destruction at such a young age that she can’t remember it.

She’s also in the awkward position of having witnessed Heero and Wing Gundam making landfall.  Since she’s seen Heero and can positively identify him as a Gundam pilot, he’s obligated to kill her.  Yet he’s interrupted by the ambulance she calls (thinking him to be just a regular downed pilot at the time), and ultimately escapes.  When they meet again – because of course they would; it’s that kind of show – he promises to kill her, marking the beginning of a pattern we’ll come to identify as the show goes on.  To wit, that any named character Heero explicitly states he’s going to kill is guaranteed to live.  Unaware that she’s protected by narrative contrivance, and perhaps due to all of the recent turmoil in her life, Relena actually invites Heero to make good on his threat more than once, and repeatedly protects him from other dangers even as he’s sworn to end her life.

As a divisive character in an already-divisive show, Relena takes a little getting used to.  Her behavior in the beginning of the series is… erratic, let’s say.  But strangely, it didn’t seem as bad on my most recent watching of the series as I had remembered from the first broadcast.  Perhaps she just came across wrong at the time the show was made, and values (or at least opinions) have changed.  At any rate, she evens out as the series progresses, and it does seem fair to attribute her strange behavior early on to the fact that she’s definitely going through some things.

In the meantime, the Gundam pilots go about their mission of destroying OZ targets in an effort to cripple Earth Sphere’s war machine.  Enemies who go up against the Gundam pilots get wrecked over and over again.  The audience quickly grows familiar with panicked shouts of “It’s a Gundam!” followed immediately by the enemy getting obliterated in curb-stomp battles.  The Gundams’ durability and strength makes them more than a match for the run of the mill mobile suits fielded by OZ.

Then Zechs Merquise gets his hands on a prototype Gundam named Tallgeese, whose design inspired the more standardized and mass-produced OZ suits seen throughout the series.  You can even see the Tallgeese’s “DNA” in the Leo, which is ultimately a kind of stripped-down and simplified take on the elder mobile suit’s design (this is more obvious in a brief shot of the Tallgeese with its “helmet” removed).  Once Zechs gets his hands on this prototype, the odds are considerably more even.

Each of the Gundam pilots, having been given no information about the larger plan, are initially wary of the others when they eventually meet, occasionally coming to blows before they manage to sort things out.  Gradually, friendships emerge, and the fandom in due course promptly launched fleets upon fleets of ships. However, the weakness of the colonies’ approach of sending their pilots without any view of the larger operation becomes horribly clear when the pilots are manipulated into sabotaging a burgeoning peace effort within the UESA by decapitating their leadership in the mistaken belief that they are eliminating OZ’s leaders instead.  The resulting coup allows the Romefeller Foundation, and in particular OZ, to essentially take control of the entire Earth Sphere government.

The result is a shifting of alliances, where OZ position themselves as peace-bringers after the UESA effectively collapses, and the Gundam pilots are painted as terrorists, which... isn’t exactly wrong, but certainly lacks some nuance.  With their actions now disavowed by the very people for whom they fight, the pilots are caught between a rock and a hard place.

Further complicating matters is the introduction of mobile dolls, a new variety of mobile suit guided by limited artificial intelligence rather than human pilots.  OZ’s wide adoption of these mobile doll units seems a humane move in the short term, sparing the lives of soldiers who would otherwise be at risk in combat.  But in fact, this merely means that now the only people who die in war are almost always those caught in the crossfire and collateral damage.  In fact, this problem threatens to grow worse.  The perceived humanity of using the mobile dolls instead of human pilots encourages the elites to more readily embrace war as a tool of statecraft, ignoring the harm done to noncombatants since that has no impact on the elites’ bottom line.  Waging war becomes an almost trivial, rote affair.

But there is a faction within OZ which finds this to be abominable, and which views the risking of human lives to be absolutely vital to warfare.  There is a matter of honor, but perhaps more than that, a notion that it is the commitment by soldiers of their very lives that ensures wars are not lightly waged.  And so the true nature of the conflict that emerges is less about why this war is fought, and more about how and why wars are fought at all.

And the Gundam pilots, and Relena, and even Zechs Merquise in his way, all struggle against this backdrop to find a path to peace through some means other than conquest.

“The Three Beats of War, Peace, and Revolution Continue...”

Set about a year after the end of the TV series, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz serves as a sort of coda for everything that’s come before.  It was originally made as a three-episode OVA series, then recut with added footage into a movie.

I watched it recently for the first time in a decade or more (I had the original Bandai release on DVD from years back), and it’s much more entertaining and interesting if you have a good working knowledge of the series.  It doesn’t stand alone very well, unfortunately. There’s a ton of fanservice – not the cheesecake kind – for people who have seen the series, and it relies on the viewer’s prior knowledge of people and events involved.  So of course, it all kind of falls flat without the benefit of familiarity.  The budget has also been ramped up, to the point where I found myself thinking that this was what the original series had always seemed like, in the rosy view of fond memory.

Notably, the Gundams have all been redesigned with a much greater amount of detail (and with some details changed, always for the more elaborate), though this is presented as being the way they’ve always really been meant to look.  This is reinforced by later materials (mostly released in Japan only) which showcase them in their new designs during the events of the TV series.

Endless Waltz is set around Christmastime, with the wars between Earth and the colonies over and a new age of peace dawning.  Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a Gundam movie if this was really the end of things.  So we see that a new faction of soldiers have risen up under the guidance of one Dekim Barton, head of the Barton foundation which originally funded the construction of Trowa Barton’s Heavyarms Gundam.

Their “real” leader is ostensibly a young girl named Mariemaia, presented as the illegitimate daughter of Treize Khushrenada, who had orchestrated the conflict that played out during the TV series.  Whether she really is Treize’s daughter is questionable, a situation made all the more worrying because of her youth and the malleability that tends to come with that.  Of course, Mariemaia is a figurehead and nothing more, but she exists as a powerful symbol for her followers.  She proposes to finish carrying out the desires of her late father by reigniting the war between the colonies and the Earth, recently unified as the Earth Sphere United Nation.  The soldiers following her are those who feel cast aside; having fought in the wars prior to this point, they now find themselves without a place in this new world of peace, and are filled with resentment.  

For added political power, the Mariemaia Army also kidnaps Relena.  She is once more going under her adoptive father’s surname as Relena Darlian, rather than Peacecraft, and, as he served the UESA before her, she now serves as the vice-foreign minister of the ESUN.  She mirrors Mariemaia in a way.  Both were used as political symbols to help unify the world during a major conflict.  The difference, of course, is that Relena was perfectly aware of what was happening, and was able to turn the tables on her manipulators.  Mariemaia, at seven – young even by the standards of this show’s movers and shakers – isn’t.

Interestingly, Relena spends most of her time talking to Mariemaia as if they’re on the same level.  Whether it’s an act or an honest attempt to engage her as an equal, either way it ensures that Mariemaia is more willing to listen, though she usually ignores Relena’s advice in favor of her own dangerously black-and-white view of things.

Meanwhile, there are also the Preventers, a group dedicated to putting out the fires of smaller insurrections before they break out into a conflagration of rebellion.  But the Mariemaia movement seems to have popped up without their knowledge, and they find themselves ill-equipped to handle it by the time they become aware.  Thankfully, the Preventers are led by Lady Une and Lucrezia Noin – capable figures from the TV series who worked closely with Treize and Zechs, respectively, and who are very familiar with the shenanigans of the Gundam pilots – and they know just who to call…

Naturally, it can’t be quite so easy.  The Gundam pilots have chosen to send their Gundams into the sun for final disposal, feeling that there is no purpose for such fearsome weapons in an age of peace.  Or at least, four of them have.  Chang Wufei, proud warrior that he is, sympathizes with the Mariemaia soldiers’ feelings of being cast aside, and joins their cause.  The remaining pilots, then, have the difficult task of trying to infiltrate and sabotage the Mariemaia Army while also retrieving their mobile suits before they reach their final destination.  And in so doing, they discover the true final intent of Operation: Meteor, of which their deployment to Earth was the first phase, in what seems to be another age.

If Endless Waltz has a greater theme or purpose, it’s to highlight that peace cannot be given, and must not be taken for granted.  It must be earned, and it must be maintained, often at no small expense from those who seek to enjoy its benefits.  It’s a simple message, and it tends to get a little lost in all the giant mecha battles and explosions, of which there are very, very many, all highly enjoyable. For the most part, it often feels like “The Boys Are Back In Town”: Gundam Wing Edition.

Of course, that means it’s still a lot of fun to watch, with its embellished Gundam re-designs and much improved animation.  It’s a little like a victory lap for the series.

The Glory of Losers

Gundam Wing had and continues to have its detractors, and they are nearly as loud (and often as obnoxious) as the worst of its fans.  This is pretty standard in any kind of geek circles once a thing reaches a certain relative threshold of popularity, and Gundam Wing definitely hit it. 

Among other things that set Wing apart, there’s the fact that the show’s planners and creators have been open about the fact that they wanted to target more of a female audience than previous series had (and previous franchise entries had a surprisingly large contingent of female fans in the first place).  The cast isn’t full of very pretty boys and young men who occasionally take rose-scented baths just because, after all.  So it’s tempting, in light of this knowledge, to point out the phenomenon of how we generally tend to view media marketed at girls and young women.  But beyond pointing it out, that line of argument goes a little outside my areas of expertise, I think.

That said, there are valid criticisms to be leveled at the show.

One of the most common ones has always been that Gundam Wing is primarily focused on five overpowered bishounen (six, after Zechs Merquise gets his own Gundam and takes his mask off) who get into frequently pointless over-the-top battles in a borderline-nonsensical plot involving characters whose personalities seem at times almost like satires of popular mecha anime tropes and archetypes, and whose allegiances can and do shift seemingly at random.  Then you top that off with some very awkward acting from the English dub cast (largely the fault of direction rather than the actors’ ability; most of them have done much better work in other shows before and after this), and that doesn’t help.

There’s some truth to this.  Gundam Wing was designed very commercially at least in part.  Any time a show is engineered specifically to capture a particular demographic, you should ask yourself why.  (Spoiler: The most frequent answer is so that the show’s creators can sell them shit).  And the Gundam pilots (and Zechs) do seem a little overpowered compared to the rank-and-file OZ soldiers and other conventional military types who spend most of the show getting blown up.

But despite the truth of the above, that criticism does somewhat gloss over the fact that despite being ostensibly overpowered, the main characters frequently lose the battles they fight, to the point that Duo mentions during the course of Endless Waltz that they’ve gotten pretty good at fighting losing battles.  It also ignores the fact that, well…  I want to say that the villain wins, but it’s more nuanced than that.  

Gundam Wing doesn’t really have an overarching villain in the strictest sense.  There absolutely are villainous characters, but they all wind up being pawns of some kind.  Many of them, almost always the most prominent, come to a sticky end, having been given exactly the right amount of rope with which to hang themselves.  As for the chessmaster orchestrating all this, the closest thing the series has to an overarching villain, he wins.  He gets absolutely everything he was working for, and the heroes basically fit themselves – unwittingly, perfectly – into his grand plan.  

In that way, it’s strangely reminiscent of Watchmen.

So while the main characters come off well in battles – their arrival pretty consistently inspires an immediate collective pants-shitting on the part of their enemies, followed by a decisive and comprehensive beatdown – the net effect of their actions hovers so close to zero that you’d need some high-precision instruments to measure it.

Their victories are moral, and mostly immaterial.  

Another criticism has often been that Gundam Wing isn’t really representative of the series as a whole, which prior to this tended to be more sober and down-to-earth in tone, more focused on the nitty-gritty of warfare.  And perhaps it was difficult for most of Gundam Wing’s fans to see how it was out of keeping with the broader messages and themes of the overarching franchise, since it was the first part of said franchise ever to be licensed for the Western audience.  And being set in an alternate continuity from those series, it was self-contained enough that there was nothing obviously “missing” that anyone felt a need to go looking for in search of a more complete understanding, or a better idea of “what Gundam is really about”.  So for a substantial part of the Western anime fandom, especially at the time, Gundam Wing was Gundam, full stop.

There’s some truth to this criticism as well, but as more and more time has passed, my answer to that has increasingly become summarized by three simple words: So fucking what?

The existence of Gundam Wing as some kind of aberration from the main or “true” Gundam series does not in any way detract from the larger franchise’s messages.  It does not somehow render all of the previous series nonexistent or irrelevant, or misrepresent some crusty neckbeard’s notions of What Gundam Is Really About (tm). It’s just a Gundam show that’s different from the pre-established norm.  Most of this criticism reeks of either “Liking the ‘wrong’ parts of Gundam” or “Liking Gundam in a way I disagree with”, either of which amounts to the same ugly, ugly thing: fandom gatekeeping.  That’s a shitty attitude to have about anything, and I say this knowing that I’m just a poor sinner like everyone else, and have been (and probably am now, and certainly will be in future) guilty of this exact thing about something at various points in my life.  But that doesn’t make it right, and doesn’t change the fact that good, bad, or otherwise, there’s no harm in just liking a thing.

If anything, the broader-scope Gundam nerds should be thankful to Gundam Wing.  Its success opened the door for more of the franchise to come westward when it would have been largely unable to do so on its own merits, thanks to the combined problem of age and complexity that I mentioned earlier.  From a business perspective, Gundam Wing was the perfect stepping-stone to get the rest of the franchise some exposure in the West thanks to its broad appeal and self-contained nature, the lever to wedge into a gap and pry it open.

So what do I like about the show?  Well, I’ve had a fair amount of opportunity to think about that recently.  

As a brief aside: One thing that jumped out at me as I watched this time around – the first in literally twenty years – is that there’s little to no detectable cheesecake fanservice throughout.  Nobody in this show is designed to titillate, save perhaps for the pilots.  It’s a breath of fresh air compared to a mecha show like, say, Darling in the Franxx, which is shockingly dull for an anime that is so blatantly about sex that I keep being surprised when it doesn’t transition into flat-out pornography.  

While the cast is overwhelmingly male, its focus on male characters was (as previously mentioned) designed to appeal to a female audience.  So the characters’ relationships take precedence over any notions of power fantasy – a fact further reinforced by the previously mentioned tendency of the main characters to regularly lose battles.  And the women in the show all give a good account of themselves when they’re the focus of the action.  Sally Po is a competent operator who always has a level-headed approach to whatever situation she finds herself in, fighting smarter rather than harder, and never getting in over her head. Lucrezia Noin, Zechs Merquise’s right-hand soldier, is a ferociously skilled mobile suit pilot who could probably go toe to toe with the Gundam pilots themselves were it not for the fact that she never gets to use anything but the bog-standard mobile suits which, in less capable hands, spend most of the show getting blown up.  And even then, she gives far, far better than she gets.  Lady Une might be an absolute bastard in the beginning, but she has a plan and sticks to it, and let’s be honest: Anyone who eliminates a man who’s outlived his usefulness by throwing him out of a plane midair and then shooting him in the head on the way down is a special kind of badass.

And then, of course, there’s Relena.  Poor misunderstood Relena, who spent the entire early aughts in the anime fandom being the butt of multiple jokes and memes that all essentially boiled down to “Durr hurr, she’s crazy!”, expressed with varying levels of cleverness. Relena, who spends the show’s 49-episode run going from inviting Heero to kill her as a way of getting his attention and trying to get him to open up, to being perfectly willing (and surprisingly able) to personally take down her father’s assassin, to becoming an absolute badass pacifist.  When she’s maneuvered into a position of absolute power in order to act as Romefeller’s puppet late in the series, she neatly manages to turn the tables on her manipulators, and shows that she holds more of the strings than they think.

And people wonder why Gundam Wing was “inordinately” popular with a female audience at the time.

All that aside, there’s the show itself, taken as a whole, to consider.

At AnimeIowa in 2019, I actually won a copy of the deluxe Blu Ray boxed set in a raffle at the Right Stuf panel, which was one of the highlights of the convention.  I’d been wanting to get the series on DVD or Blu Ray for years by that point, but that’s never exactly been a cheap proposition.  So the windfall was a very pleasant surprise.  It was also a nice bit of synchronicity, as that same convention, nineteen years prior during the height of Gundam Wing’s popularity, was my first ever.

More pleasant still was @squeemcsquee ’s interest when I won it.  Not that we differ hugely on the things we enjoy, but there are a fair number of places where the Venn diagram of our interests has no overlap.  Shows about giant robots have been traditionally a bit outside her wheelhouse, though she was game to go with me down the rabbit holes of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gurren Lagann (themselves a kind of yin and yang of mecha shows), and enjoyed them both.  But I was worried when it came to Gundam Wing.  It was rougher around the edges in some ways than either of those two shows, and that made me anxious to show it to her. 

(Evangelion is weird and awkward, no question, but its weirdness and awkwardness are, however questionably executed, entirely premeditated).  

I was nervous about her reaction to the iffy dub, the occasional ridiculousness of the characters, the way the show tends to take itself very, very seriously, even as it borders on the absurd…

Eventually, we started watching the series together, and I remained nervous for a while, and occasionally touchy when it came to her jokes about the characters. 

I have always been highly self-conscious about the things I like when other people are around to see them, and perhaps judge.  And although I knew better than to expect judgment in this case, the part of my brain that ramps up the anxiety doesn’t, and never has, reckoned with such trivial concerns as reason, logic, or the lessons of more recent experience.  And I suppose it doesn’t help that I come from the tail-end of a generation whose reaction to most media of any kind was deprecation and ironic detachment.  The reaction I was used to getting from Gundam Wing, even from its fans, was “Oh, that show with the five pretty boy robot pilots and the crazy chick,” accompanied by much snickering and rolling of the eyes. But that kind of thing tends to go down easier for me when I know it comes from someone familiar with the item in question, from a place of real appreciation.  This is partly because, for myself, I tend to enjoy things sincerely.  I’ve never quite gotten the hang of liking things ironically.

And as we watched, I was rapidly reminded that I liked Gundam Wing sincerely, while she was still feeling it out, and so her jokes came across wrong.

To be honest, a certain amount of my liking Gundam Wing has nothing to do with messages or storytelling craft, and instead comes down to a matter of pure nostalgia.  It was a big deal to the fandom at large, at the beginning of a time when anime fandom in general was an especially big deal for me.  I can’t recall any particular aspect of the show that especially impressed me when it was new in the U.S., except maybe for “Rhythm Emotion” by Two Mix, which is used for some of the more momentous battles in the back half of the series.  The nostalgia is more a matter of a sort of general warm, rose-tinted memory of the times.  I remember friends hyping it to me, and I remember sitting downstairs at my parents’ place watching it late at night, or else having it on in the background while I tried to teach myself how to write – really write.  I remember catching the episodes all out of order, having a very, very general idea what was happening, while still being foggy on basically all of the particulars.  

I remember buying Gundam model kits at that first AnimeIowa in 2000, which at the time was a small convention that Wikipedia tells me had around 300 attendees.  Which is really, really weird, because I would swear blind that there were at least 500 Duo Maxwell cosplayers alone.  Later still, I remember playing RayCrisis: Series Termination on the PlayStation when I came home to my parents’ house in the winter of 2000, and realized some of the sound effects from it had been lifted from Gundam Wing (or perhaps both things lifted from a common source).  

All of that was very positive, and when I started to hear @squeemcsquee​‘s jokes, all of it felt in some obscure way like it was under attack.

But as we pressed on through the series, she went from interest in it as a kind of historical artifact to enjoyment of it for its own sake.  We shotgunned the last dozen episodes or so, and if I had any doubts about her disposition after that, the cheesy grin that greeted the reappearance of a presumed-dead character in Endless Waltz put them to rest.  And that made it easier to joke about the show, knowing that the teasing came from a good place.  And that, in its turn, made it easier to just plain enjoy it, and like it for what it was and is.

There is a core of real quality to Gundam Wing.  Buried under all the questionably telegraphed character turns and out-of-nowhere plot developments are the twin messages about how, win or lose, wars must be waged with a certain decorum, and also about how war is terrible, perhaps the most terrible thing there is.  And it is because of these things that, perhaps paradoxically, the human factor must not be removed from it.  We risk cheapening it, otherwise.  And this is not the cheapening of something great and noble into something tawdry – though noble acts can and do occur on the battlefield, and they say something important about humankind – but rather the trivializing of something horrible to the point of forgetting its horror, and thus risking the pursuit of it to our own lasting harm.

And this is no idle message.  It’s a rare work whose ideas are more relevant to later generations than to those contemporary with it, but Gundam Wing, of all things, finds itself in that unlikely position.  In an age of increasing drone strikes killing civilians and failing to kill their targets, it seems as though Gundam Wing’s message about the automation of war is more relevant than ever.  And so once again, we see Treize proven correct, that – good or bad – war is perhaps a fundamentally, unavoidably human thing, and it is only fitting that humans should fight in it.

[shark-myths]

@alienfuckeronmain tagged me to deep-search my soul with these questions, and it is the exact distraction I was looking for! no pressure to do this one, pals, but i tag @carbonbased000 @leyley09 @shoeboxofphotographs12 @glitterandrocketfuel @allkindsofplatinumandpercocet @setting-in-a-honeymoon @toorational and anyone i’ve forgotten!

1. Do you prefer writing with a black pen or blue pen? does anyone like blue pens? who is this product made for

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or city? the city, cuz i spent 7 consecutive years very broke in rural areas with homophobia neighbors and having things to do is so thrilling. but i imagine one day retreating into the desert and living far from my nearest neighbors

3. If you could learn a new skill what would it be? I have learned all the skills I am interested in right now, because learning new things is an a+ quarantine activity. maybe the ability to do physics? i would like to be proficient in physics and i am deeply not

4. Do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar? Never

5. What was your favourite book as a child? all of them! I have always read like i’m running out of time and often get stressed when i think about how few books i will be able to read in my lifetime. as a child I reread Lord of the Rings and Robin McKinley and the Holly Black Tithe series the most, and i was OBSESSED with those gold-paged books with ribbon bookmarks that were diaries of girls from different historical periods, and i have never been able to read historical fiction since.

6. Do you prefer baths or showers? I hated baths passionately until my chronic pain reached a tipping point, and since then i have learned to really enjoy the long hot soak with a drink and a book. (i didn’t like showers either until very recently. life support tasks felt like a huge waste of time until i got a partner who helped me figure out how to enjoy them)

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which one would it be? i have always wanted to be one of tolkien’s elves! I want a long life filled with learning languages and reading books and existing in green peaceful spaces, and then i want to be able to die when i am done.

8. Paper or electronic books? I like paper better--I’ve been building a library slowly my whole life--but my kindle has been life-saving during the pandemic when i couldn’t go to the library.

9. What is your favourite item of clothing? right now i’m doing all my work remotely and clothes feel meaningless, but i have a plain black tank top that i feel really comfortable in

10. Do you like your name or would you like to change it? I don’t like my name at all--it’s Kaylie--because it is so aggressively peppy and feminine. it doesn’t sounds like an adult’s name; it evokes exclamation points and pigtails. i have always wished for a severe, no-nonsense name like joan, or a pretty but to-the-point name like eva.

11. Who is a mentor to you? Leslie Knope

12. Would you like to be famous and if so, what for? I used to fantasize about being a famous writer, and now in my field i do wish i had a name that mattered or was considered esteemed or expert in something in some way. I would love to have a research job where i had paid time to publish! but i don’t want it enough to work on it outside of my capitalist mandatory labor hours, because i don’t have enough time for my loved ones as it is

13. Are you a restless sleeper? lately yes, since my cat died in january i have slept like absolute hell

14. Do you consider yourself a romantic person? not really, but i am a thoughtful one

15. Which element best represents you? earth

16. Who do you want to be closer to? physically i want to be closer to my long-distance pals like @alienfuckeronmain @newleafover @time-less @immoral-crow @leyley09 (leyna let’s have a movie night when i’m done moving???)

17. Do you miss someone at the moment? pretty much all my friends i used to regularly hang out with, sam who moved to seattle, sam who lives in madison, all the people i listed above

18. Tell us about an early childhood memory. I used to play going to work. i’d pack up a backgammon case as a briefcase, grab my stuffed gorilla, and go write in notebooks and move pieces of paper around

19. What is the strangest thing you have eaten? I am an extremely boring person and all I eat is popcorn and bread

20. What are you most thankful for? having an able body that works to support me and keep me whole, having a partner who makes me feel truly cared for 

21. Do you like spicy food? yep!

22. Have you ever met someone famous? once at c2e2 i met george r.r. martin and no one else cared he existed because got wasn’t a show yet, so i awkwardly went up to him and proclaimed my love for his work, and then he trapped me in a long conversation about vampires

23. Do you do you keep a diary or journal? a journal! i have since i was pretty small, they take up a full shelf of a bookcase

24. Do you prefer to use a pen or a pencil? pen, and i have lots of Special Pens that i only use for a particular purpose or project, because i am a huge raging...

25. What is your star sign? virgo

26. Do you like your cereal soggy or crunchy? crunchy and without milk

27. What would you want your legacy to be? personally, that I wrote things that meant something to the people who read them; professionally, that i removed barriers to accessing healthcare for trans and gender expansive people

28. Do you like reading, what was the last book you read? see above--I completely adore reading. last book was Sisters of the Vast Black and currently i’m reading The House in the Cerulean Sea and it’s totally charming. I’ve been reading really quality science and nonfiction writing too, please send me your recommendations

29. How do you show someone you love them? I make them breakfast, I tell them so constantly, I send them things in the mail, I bring them small interesting gifts, and I say every nice thought I have about them out loud 

30. Do you like ice in your drinks? not especially, but it’s fun to chew on 

31. What are you afraid of? surgery

32. What is your favourite scent? smoke from blown-out candles, lavender, laundry detergent my loved ones use

33. Do you address older people by their name or surname? whatever they’ve told me to call them? this seems like common courtesy

34. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life? I do so much less clinical work and work fewer hours in general, I would run for office so I could influence policy and stop wasting my fucking time on the ground level, I would spend more time writing, I would spend so much more time with my family, I would devote the time to running longer distances again in a way that doesn’t aggravate my busted knee

35. Do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean? the ocean!

36. What would you do if you found £50 on the ground? oh i would definitely spend that on something stupid and self-indulgent i wanted, like a pete wentz hoodie

37. Have you ever seen a shooting star? YES! when i was kid every summer i’d be sent to jesus camp, which thank god because that’s what got me into fanfiction, and it was in the middle of nowhere, wisconsin, and you could see the entire milky way and shooting stars blaze across that thing ALL THE TIME, and it shook me to my foundation every summer and for a time i mistook that feeling for faith in god instead of wonder at the infinite being and possibility that is our generous universe

38. What is the one thing you would want to teach your children? i have none of my own but my partner has a 5 year old, so quite against my intention i have become a parent-adjacent person. i try to teach him about emotional accountability for the effect of his actions on others

39. If you had to have a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it? the next tattoo i want is a big snake crawling up my mostly bare left arm

40. What can you hear now? my laptop fan

41. Where do you feel the safest? when i’m protecting someone else

42. What is the one thing you want to overcome/conquer? my relationship with my body

43. Of you could travel back to any era, what would it be? i’d really like to be a gentleman of leisure in a jane austen novel

44. What is your most used emoji? the purple heart

45. Describe yourself using one word. earnest

46. What do you regret the most? not going to a 4-year university and having a #college experience. it’s one of my most stinging regrets because it was not a decision i got to make for myself

47. Last movie you saw? what is a movie theater? what does it feel like to be in one? the last movie i watched is charlie’s angels from the early 2000s because that was an unexamined sexual awakening for me--lucy liu being efficient in leather has never left me, efficiency is the single trait i most attracted to--and i wanted my boyfriend to see how bad it is

48. Last tv show you watched? either Kipo and the age of the wonderbeasts or star trek tng!

49. Invent a word and its meaning. instead i will say that i think the most beautiful english word is ache. my favorite way of creating things is transforming and remixing what already exists, which makes writing with words someone else invented the ideal challenge and pastime 

(i really loved doing this! it was nice to talk about myself at the end of a workweek. thank you @alienfuckeronmain !)

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #76: “King Dead” | December 17, 1999 | S06E08

King Dead is not just the final “real” episode of Space Ghost that I’ll be covering (I WILL cover GameTap at a later date, which are fake episodes), it was also the final pre-Adult Swim episode of Space Ghost, and for what felt like a while this WAS the de-facto final episode of Space Ghost ever. I for one, was blissfully unaware that Space Ghost would ever resume production. There were no episodes of Coast to Coast produced in the year 2000, unless you count the alternate versions of “Snatch” and “Fire Ant”. I sure don’t, and you shouldn’t either.

Without being particularly piped in to Space Ghost ghost spaces I remember feeling dread that this could be it. What a dream to learn that Adult Swim was on the horizon, and with it a whole new season of Coast to Coast along with support from Space Ghost-esque quarter-hour absurdist programming. It seemed like a dream, like something to blog about, in fact. 

This one has guest H. Jon Benjamin. It just so happens he’s in the very first scene of the very first official “Adult Swim Show”, Home Movies. And what a ferryman he is. He is very funny and charming as a Space Ghost guest, and he has one of my favorite moments in any episode, which is the part where Zorak and Moltar disguise him as a lamp, and you see him nervously chortle as the buffoon Space Ghost doesn’t suspect a thing. I wonder if he talked about Home Movies during his full interview, or if they filmed his interview far too early for that to have happened, or if Home Movies was already doomed or what. He does talk about Dr. Katz, and Space Ghost even morphs into him at one point. He did that before, I think in Brilliant. But, when god closes a door.

The plot of the episode is Space Ghost fires Zorak and Moltar, so they start a band and then take over Space Ghost’s apartment, and he gets pissed off about it. They produce a video tape to list their “Unreasonable Demands” Zorak’s line “I want a pet I can love, but don’t have to take care of!” is one of my favorite jokes. The fact that it resembles an action movie trailer is also hilarious, and the fact that they fail to actually list their demands (other than the pet thing, I guess) is simply wonderful.

Also wonderful: the weird part when Moltar just begins fading from existence for no reason, and briefly acknowledges it with a panicked “Woah, where’d I go?” and then fades back in. It’s such an obtuse gag. Could it be based on Clay just earnestly asking this as he tested his headphones in the booth, and they stuck it in there for fun and friendship? Maybe! That would be funny if true, right???! 

Also, shamefully, I need to admit something: I never got the “--king dead” joke until maybe a few years ago. It’s Space Ghost saying that Zorak and Moltar will be “FUCking dead, and it’s just cut off at the beginning of the episode so he’s only saying “King Dead”. So subtle I didn’t even register it as a joke. Or, I’m stupid as fuck. Who’s to say? 

Other stuff that’s good (I’m in the mood for this): Space Ghost ignoring the distress call placed by Zorak claiming to be a woman in danger (as part of a ruse to rile Space Ghost). Space Ghost believes it’s a woman, but resigns himself to her fate by bluntly stating “she’d be dead before I got there”. They draw him out instead by threatening his cable television, and Tad becomes incensed when he finds out Zorak and Moltar have his cable on but aren’t watching it, which Space Ghost thinks is “wasting” it. 

Brak and Tansit take over for Zorak and Moltar respectively. Moltar shines in this episode; not only does he disappear, but he also has good ideas for band names and he yells at Brak that he ain't on Cartoon Planet. Way to put that bitch in his place. He will never be the star of a show ever again! Goddamn, this one has so much great shit in it. I left out like FIVE killer lines. Okay, one more: (sternly) “looks like your movie is going direct-to-video”.

[geist-fledermaus]

Get To Know Me!

Since I’ve received quite a few followers here and there, I might as well do this!

What is your full name?: Beryl (Sorry, I don’t like my whole name)

What does your name mean?: It’s a gemstone. 

Are you named after anyone?: My großmütter, Beryl Rae Jensen

Does your name make any interesting anagrams?: Not really?

If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to?: Fuck if I know. Probably something basic so I’m less easy to find. 

Where are you from?: North Pole, AK (I shit you not)

Where were you born?: North Pole, AK

Where did you grow up?: North Pole, AK

Who did you look up to growing up?: My father.

What are your best characteristics?: I can draw. 

What are your favorite things about yourself?: I can draw. 

Which of your parents are you closest to?: My dad.

Which of your parents are you more like?: My daaaad.

What relative was important to you growing up & why?: Tbh My dad was my super hero, he took care of me and my sister, worked 3 jobs, and took care of mom while she went through cancer. He’s the most important lmfao.

What is one thing that you’ve never revealed to your parents?: I’m Pagan.

What would your parents have named you if you were the opposite gender?: Bert Raymond... 

What is your best physical feature?: Eyes or chest. :/ 

What is your biggest accomplishment?: Being locally recognized as an artist, especially on local TV. 

What is your biggest fear?: Being forgotten, being alone. 

What is your biggest regret?: Not pushing myself even more with art. 

What is your eye color?: Various blues with inner green circles. 

What inspires you?: Other artists. 

What is the most important thing in your life?: My fiance! @boywasgirl

What has required the most courage of you in your life so far?: To not give up. To not quit college and drop everything I’ve worked hard for. 

What is your favorite flower?: Sunflowers!

What is your favorite weather?: Rainy weather and thunder/lightning storms!

Who is your favorite actor?: I have a few, but I love Johnny Depp and Jason Momoa. 

Who is your favorite actress?: F u c k. I adore Emma Stone, Emma Watson.. uhh.. Emilia Clarke! That’s just to name a few. 

Who is your favorite celebrity?: Oh fuck. Idk. 

Who is your favorite musician?: They’re a band but I love Bring Me The Horizon, Oliver Syke’s voice and lyrics hit me hard. 

Who’s your favorite person in the world?: @boywasgirl

Who are your best friends?: @armageddonne @darkdragoonxiii @vixenchildxd69-blog and my bff Alisha! 

What is your favorite childhood memory?: My sister breaking the fucking garage door like a dumbshit. 

What is your favorite color?: Black or seafoam green~ I also love other greens and blues! It’s so damn hard to choose. 

What is your favorite cultural activity?: Uh. Axe throwing? Idk what counts as a cultural activity when it comes to me and my family haha. 

What is your favorite drink?: For waking up, Monster or pomegranate and orange redbull kickers, I love mountain dew, anything with peaches and mango as well. 

What is your favorite fairytale?: HAHA. I looove reading about the Tales of Grimm. I can’t just pick one. 

What is your favorite food?: Pizza or Taco Bell.

What is your favorite holiday destination?: Anywhere but Alaska. I love to explore. I REALLY want to travel to Germany, Norway, Ireland, England, and most of Western Europe. 

What is your favorite ice-cream flavor?: Strawberry Cheesecake or Mint Chocolate

What is your favorite music genre?: Fuck. I have so many. I love a lot of metal subgenres, alternative rock, punk, old 2000′s emo bands, EDM, rap, I don’t even know how to label all of my favorites but there’s a lot to unpack there. If you’re curious just shoot me a question ahaha! 

What is your favorite physical activity?: Swimming!! 

What is your favorite quote?: “Keep listening to music because it gets you through everything, I promise.” - Mitch Lucker, former vocalist of Suicide Silence. 

What is your favorite snack?: Peach Rings, Brightside Skittles.. Uhh. MY MOM’S CLAM DIP AND RUFFLES CHIPS? 

What is your favorite song?: Throne - BMTH or Mis//Understanding - We Came As Romans.

What is your favorite sport?: Swimming, Hockey, Volleyball and Fencing. 

What is your favorite time of the day?: Early afternoons or late nights. 

What is your favorite type of clothing?: Goth/Alt fashion. 

What is your favorite way to pass time?: Gaming or drawing. 

What is the name of your favorite restaurant?: Family Diner (It’s in my town. It’s really chill and laid back.)

What is your all-time favorite town or city? Why?: I really enjoyed Denver, CO. It was filled with really colorful, intriguing personalities. There was so much to explore, everyone was so open and sweet. 

What is your height?: ... 5′2″

What time period would you love to live in?: Viking Era. 

What did you do for fun as a child?: Drawing. 

Who was a role model in your life?: My dad! 

Did you have any childhood pets?: I grew up with 5 cats and 4 dogs! 

When you were young, what did you want to be?: A mortician. 

What family traditions were important to you?: I can’t even remember many.. I loved during gatherings how we’d play Spoons, wrestle, and be reckless though. 

What was your favorite childhood memory?: Ahah! Shenanigans with my “Twin” Kyle. 

What was your favorite childhood possession?: My Gameboy Color! 

What challenges did you experience when you were young?: Almost losing my mother, trying to speak English, being bullied heavily. 

What is a defining moment from your childhood?: My mother coming home from the hospital finally. 

What do you do for fun?: Play video games and draw. I’m pretty boring. 

What are your hobbies?: Drawing, Painting, Digital Art, Gaming, Dancing, Singing.

What is something that you’re really passionate about?: My art.

What is something you could spend hours doing?: Drawing

What is something you wish you did more often?: Draw. 

If you had to watch a documentary, what would you want it to be about?: Anything WW1/WW2 related or Forensics/Serial Killer related. 

What do you always have on in the background?: Lofi Hiphop or random videos on youtube that catch my eye. 

How do you feel about travel?: Fuck yeah, where are we going and for how long? 

What is a guilty pleasure you enjoy?: Fuckin’ watching Serial Killer documentaries. 

How have your interests changed over the years?: Nah, I’m still the same. I’m pretty bland. 

Which sibling are you closest to?: My sister, Erika! 

How close are you with your parents?: Close but not too close.

How has your relationship with your parents changed over the years?: For the worse.

What is one of the most important lessons that you learned from your family?: You cannot trust anyone. Not even your own family. 

When does your family cause you to stress?: All the damn time. All they need to do is send me a text and I immediately begin to dread. 

What does the word family mean to you?: Something that I never got to fully have but I experienced. It’s also something I can create on my own accord. 

When you envision your ideal family, what do you see?: Honestly me with my partner/partners, kids, animals, and friends. 

How vulnerable is your family with each other?: Everyone is always on guard and they’ll be mean if you even show some form of sensitivity. 

What is a family trait that isn’t necessarily the healthiest?: Being a snitch, gaslighting, gatekeeping, misogyny, yelling if you even show an inkling of emotion. I could go on. 

What relatives had the biggest impact on you growing up?: In a negative way, almost all of my family. The only two I really loved growing up were my dad and sister, Erika. 

What do you watch on television?: If it’s cable I go to MTV, Forensic Files, or Adult Swim/Anything with cartoons. 

What is one of your favorite movies?: To Hell And Back, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, Dracula Untold (For some reason I just really like it, don’t judge). 

If you could have free tickets to any event, what would it be?: A BMTH concert PLEASE. Or anything that’s a EDM/Rave environment. ;_;

What is your favorite form of media?: Youtube tbh. 

What role does music play in your life?: A huge role, BMTH got me through a lot of hard times. 

What is one of your favorite books?: Corey Taylor’s Seven Deadly Sins. It’s a riot of a read and makes me laugh. 

How often do you watch sporting events?: Here and there, especially at bars if they have Hockey going. 

What would your ideal weekend getaway look like?: Road trip to Anchorage and staying at my mom’s cousin’s estate in the mountains. I only got to go there a few times and the view is absolutely captivating. You can see the waters, the city, all the lights.. fuck I’d love to draw that. 

Who are popular figures that you love to learn from?: Fuck if I know LOL. 

What celebrity/musician would you love to meet in real life?: Oliver Sykes and Maria Brink tbh.

If you wrote a memoir about your life, what would it be called?: “Well, That Happened.” A memoir of a dumb bitch LOL. 

What fictional world would you want to travel to for a day?: FUCK. I’d love to just be in a simulation like the girl in Porter Robinson’s music video of Shelter. Just being in a drawing simulation where I can run around and create anything and everything around me. But if we’re talking actual worlds.. I’d probably love to be in Avatar The Last Airbender’s world. I love that series so much. 

What room in your house most represents who you are as a person?: The Office. It’s got art supplies, our gaming PC, all of my schoolwork/homework, the drawing tablets.. 

How clean a person are you?: Tbh I am pretty clean, it’s just cleaning huge messes/unpacking that I hate. 

What is a pet peeve that you have?: STOP CHEWING WITH YOUR FUCKING MOUTH OPEN. 

What behavior do you do that is most likely a pet peeve to others?: Uhh. Idk. Nail biting? Loud laughter? forgetting to turn off lights? Idk. 

What phrase or word do you overuse when you talk?: “I’m so sorry” “I m a g i n e” 

If you could only eat at one restaurant for the rest of your life, what would it be?: Fuck. Hahaaaaa. I’d probably love to just sit and eat at the Family Diner. I love their Reubens. 

What is something about your personality that you like? Don’t like?: I like that people feel comfortable running to me when they need a friend. I don’t like a lot about me, though.

What would your friends be surprised to learn about you?: I am ambidextrous and I know German/Englisch and some French! I want to learn Norwegian even more and Gaelic! 

Where do you see yourself in a few years?: West coast where it’s rainy with those that I love, pursuing my career finally after all these years of hard work. 

Thanks for reading this if you finally made it to the end! If there’s other questions you want to ask, don’t hesitate! ^^ Hopefully you learned something about me!