#it ended up sounding like an anime intro in the most stereotypic way

[blue-eyed-giant]

back to my dreamcatcher posting bc TITLE TRACKS DON'T SUCK ANYMORE???? THE CONCEPT IS ACTUALLY GOOD AGAIN??? GOOD PROMO FOR A GOOD B SIDE??? i couldnt care less abt who wins an award at shows but i want them to win at least one show so that i can see their live encore even tho it is near impossible bc uh enhypen and newjeans

[tomezatos]

LAST EPISODE Thoughts in No Particular Order,

(and from memory because I had one thousand million bajillion thoughts while watching the episode and I 100% guarantee I have forgotten half of them)

when Tome appeared on screen in her new uniform I screamed her name at 100 decibels in the highest pitch I have ever heard my voice reach I feel so fucking insane my GIRLLL does she even know what she’s done for my LIFEEEEE but also jesus christ I’m sorry to my parents for breaking the sound barrier and also their eardrums god forgive me

similarly high pitched was my scream of “SERIZAWA CAN ANSWER THE PHONE!” when. serizawa could answer the phone. bcause like. yeah. woaaagh

“Tome? Serizawa? Anyone home?” bro those are this man’s husband and daughter......

also speaking of Serizawa I am so proud of him for embracing his role as protector and guardian. he has come so far from his days of morally dubious self-loathing terrorism and I would place my life in his hands so willingly

THE FADE FROM SHOUJO TSUBOMI TO REAL TSUBOMIIIII the symbolization of the shift from the one dimensional framework of stereotypical main-and-love-interest relationship between her and shigeo to the truth of a connection based on honesty and acceptance!!! they are literally the blorbos of ALL TIME of all time........

tsubomi symbolizes shining acceptance for him tsubomi symbolizes a world where you can be your true self and not have to hide god god god god their friendship has so much meaning despite only realizing post-canon tsubomi takane I would readily die for you

just as it was so important that reigen see shigeo and not just mob it was important that reigen purposefully let his true self be seen. the healthiest love and care between humans necessitates that you let yourself be known as your worst, as your most destructive, as your most flawed and messiest self. and then you have to trust that you’ll be loved anyway. both shigeo and mob were already fully aware that reigen had no true powers but he needed to admit it himself; he needed to say it out loud so they knew that he would be honest with them. it’s a level of vulnerability that has always been dangerous for him, but just as shigeo had left himself vulnerable by taking over, reigen had to reciprocate that vulnerability to maintain their friendship. with no walls between them they could finally have true trust and connection and that is the most terrifying but also the most important and most wonderful thing in the world

it’s just them standing messy and torn and sharp and covered in dirt in the middle of a ruined city of their own making and it’s just them it’s just reigen and mob and shigeo, in the end. but they’re friends and they’re friends and they’re there for each other. they’re still friends and they’re there for each other. I am going to cry

the parallel frame of the two of them standing looking at each other where the background is gold and it mimics the sequence from the season three intro where shigeo is growing up but this time it is their real selves and not just the easy, idealized view of their relationship argahgrhgj. wahdhrvjf. waghf. agrh. a

ALSO the incredible fluidity but also the harshness and brutality and VIOLENCE above all the violence of the way studio bones animated the scene where reigen is trying so hard to reach shigeo and he just gets FUCKED he gets completely annihilated and smashed into everything and it’s hard to watch? that’s so so brilliant it is the messiness and violence of shigeo that mob and the viewer didn’t want to acknowledge but you have to see it. you have to see it and reigen has to see it and he is going to have to love it anyway. the show ever wtf

ALSO THE LOVE AND ATTENTION IN HOW THEY ANIMATED SHIGEO CRYING you can really see how much the animators respected and loved the manga there’s so much care put into it and the lineart and the coloring and the fluidity it’s so human it’s so real shigeo I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you so mcuj

speaking of shigeo he’s justt an angry teenage boy he’s an angry messy teenage boy and he can be selfish and destructive and hurt and pained but he’s not evil the show won’t treat him like he’s evil you know he’s not evil he’s just angry and he’s allowed to be angry and he’s so real I love him i love him I LOOOOVE You shigeo . god

like the choice to outline him in red which is so clearly a violent and destructive color but also he’s just shigeo it’s shigeo it’s your boy you’ve known him all along and it’s still him. he’s worried about his crush rejecting him

ALSO MY FAVORITE PANEL GOT ANIMATED FINALLY. *fist-pumping in the air* RITSU AND TSUBOMI FLOATING IN THE AIR <3333 thank you thank you thank you. the two most important characters in the world and in the story I WILL appreciate them. kisses them both on the forehead thanks for the whole narrative. #girl

speaking of. ritsu I LOVE him pointing and laughing at shigeo on the telephone pole so good it’s so good. ritsu kageyama is the number one character MOST objectively entitled to do literally anything to whoever he wants however he wants however much he wants forever. ritsu deserves to do anything. anything he wants. im bso proiud of him

ALSO THE RANDOM SCENE OF THE HAYSTACK WIG FLASHBACK WJAT WAS THAT. WHAT was that why did bones add that what was. am I forgetting that was that in the manga w. damn no matter what happens ritsu is too real to forget how much of a loser his friend was huh. honestly. fair! but RIP though

he’s not even mean about it he doesnt even say anything u should be thankful terOH YEAH WAIT TERU

TERU’S HERE HE’S BACK!! MY funny rich little capitalism mathboy. mine. and I like his hair actually!

REI UNIFROM REI UNIFORM REI UNIFORM REI UNIFORM REI UNIFORM REI UNIFORM REI UNIFORM!!!!!!

THANKS SO MUCH FOR FEEDING THE AWAKENING KIDS FANS OUR SCRAPS WE R STARVING

alsooo the fact that teru is positioned with his awakening lab kids in the ending sequence CRIES my god FRIENDSHIP IS THE POINT OF IT ALL...

RITSU SMILE!!!!!!!! EVERYONE SHUT UP

also ritsu and tome both making fun of reigen crying oh my god they r so right so cool so true 10/10 I support them bully him harder

also im still crying about tome graduation

heck what else?

OH SHOU yes yes okay SHOU AND SERIZAWA man. it’s so complex. them going from cornered child and neglectful adult (and shou canonically hating serizawa at that point) to genuinely healing and being able to sympathize and befriend each other. just a quiet background detail but such a meaningful quiet background detail I feel like I’m melting

tsubomi’s post-canon phone call outfit is so cute. the giant plushie is v cute. she is so cute. and also I love her did I say that btw have I mentioned that i love tsubomi takane did I say that. have I said that yet. I love tsubomi takane so much

lastly............... shigeo expressing himself. sincerely this series means so much to me and shigeo means so much to me. god.

excuse me to cry forever please

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[toooldforfandom-liveblogs]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power S01E05 - The Sea Gate

I'm guessing this is going to be the "mermaid princess" episode. Not a lot to talk about before the episode so let's do this!

Is this the old group of "Princesses"? Wait, it had a specific name. Ah, "Princess Alliance"

The only obvious ones seem to be the flower dude on the left, maybe water below him? And the spider web woman on the right reminds me of either Spinnerella or Netossa (who's who?) and... now that I look at the names, it's probably Spinnerella. But would she be the daughter of the one in the mural or is she somehow inmortal? Can't discount the possibility considering we don't know much about the princess lore yet.

That sounds just slightly bitter enough to sound like something happened in their ranks. Last episode Perfuma mentioned that something terrible had happened, was it the death of the King? That could explain Angella's reluctance.

These holographic maps are the vane of my existence every time they show in anything because I always have the same thought: "who stayed up programming the arrows to show at exactly the right time during the presentation"

...Mermista. Of course. I'm not sure if I like it more or less than "Perfuma," but neither are winners.

Also, the subtitles are like a third of what Glimmer said and it's killing me inside.

That's the face of someone put in the spot.

Who cares about She-Ra. Without Adora's practical thinking they'd get nowhere.

Floating boats are awesome so I'm not going to question this at all.

There are some really nice designs here.

Hello man from the Opening. He's on the title screen so he can't be _too_ much of a scoundrel.

Hey, that reduces the amount of intro episodes I expected by one.

Bow looks so serious declaring it the coolest name he's ever heard that I definitely believe him.

I can't decide if I want him to stop talking forever or to continue talking for as long as he can. The perfect mix of slimy and charming.

This is so much better than what I expected (using She-Ra to win)

...crab woman! Love her design.

OH MY GOD, one line and she's already so much better than I expected.

* skips to Scorpia carrying Catra on her shoulders *

I'm waiting for her personality to change during a fight but so far Scorpia is amazing.

Between Sea Hawk and Scorpia this is already a great episode.

Everything about this guy is amazing, _especially_ the faces he gets from Glimmer.

No, no, I need at least one shanty from poor Sea Hawk.

Look at that sad face. I refuse to believe there won't be at least one chance for him to sing.

* standing ovation *

This really reminded me of Korra.

Sea Hawk is such a useless man and I love him.

Glimmer is wondering what she did do wrong in a past life to end up surrounded by meat heads.

Great way to save animation budget.

Catra is somehow trapped in an evil version of The Office.

Glimmer really can't get a break, huh?

...I really want to see more of their relationship.

This episode is 3 for 3 in wonderful new characters.

"time for old sea hawk"

...he's like 20, tops.

Aw, that was cute. Now to never see Sea Hawk again until all the other characters are introduced.

Poor guy, wasn't even doing anything and gets arrowed.

Oh, okay, I'm really glad her magic powers are more than "is a mermaid"

And as we learned a couple of episodes ago with She-Ra, Bow is afraid of strong women. Foolish, foolish man.

arson

Glimmer's VA is so good.

"Super tall, buff and powerful and possibly linked to the First Ones? [groans] Who'd want that???"

Aw, not even the slightest offer to join their side.

She-Ra breaking hearts left and right.

There's something about Scorpia looking like she's just thinking "it's a nice day out" that I find really funny. And cool, it cements that (most of) the horde are just people.

Aw, that raptor looking dude is always taking care of his friend.

Aw, he remembered Glimmer's name. Character growth~

I mean, that's a pretty good reason.

I have to admit after last episode I was a bit worried about the new characters since Perfuma was... _fine_ but not great. But wow, this episode really showed me how wrong I was to doubt this show.

Three new characters and they are all wonderful in their own unique way.

Sea Hawk is the standard "Han Solo" but just enough of a loser that the usual associated sliminess goes all the way back to funny and charming.

Scorpia was a complete surprise. From her appearance in the OP I expected a stereotypical villain, the typical gruff captain that yells too much and throws at least one one-liner every battle while shaking their fist at the sky. Scorpia is not that. Of all the Horde characters we've met so far, she's the one that embodies "just normal people trying to get to the end of the day" feeling the most. I like that. Of course, I don't doubt she's a nightmare to fight or that she's going to end up doing terrible in the name of the horde (or maybe not) but I really like that dichotomy.

And Princess Mermista was just funny the entire episode. She didn't get that much more depth than Perfuma but I found her "apathetic teenager" schtick a lot funnier. I mean, look at that screenshot above, her expression is hilarious!

Not a lot else happened. The gate plot... existed, Catra still doesn't get why Adora gave her the horde up and she probably never will, Raptor really takes care of * checks credits * Kyle(?), something really bad happened in the past but it's still a mystery, She-Ra fighting that sea-serpent was amazing... and I think that's it. Until next time!

[biblio-bitch]

Teen Titans 1x01 Blind Reaction

I haven’t watched the OG Teen Titans yet. Sue me. I wasn’t allowed to watch cartoons as a kid so I’m playing catch-up here. As usual, spoilers and cursing under the cut! Also. apologies for the short sentences, it was like 3 am.

A disclaimer: This is entirely for fun and a lot of the comments I make are based on my preferences for media as well as the way I, as a writer, would have written things.

If I say something you disagree with (more likely in my analysis posts than my reactions) then I am more than happy to hear your opinions so long as you are respectful! 

If you followed me for Detroit Evolution content I promise I’ll post the rest soon. Formatting and proofreading takes ages. I also might start liveblogging my adventures in screenwriting so look out for that!

That being said, let’s get into it!

[In brackets is added post-watch.]

Holy old animation Batman. It feels like Phineas and Ferb.

BB Sounds like Phineas.

The cheesy intro tho

Seriously which Robin is this cause I think it’s Dick but Idk

“Titans Go!”

The theme song is iconic

Love the OG Raven design

Is the theme Japanese?? It kinda feels Japanese

I love that Starfire’s outfit isn’t like literally a bikini it’s nice since she’s designed like a sixteen year old

Epic fight scene™️. Makes me feel like something’s going to go wrong.

“I am stronger than I look” fuck yeah Star get his ass

Honestly wtf Rob you’re like twelve and you don’t have powers??? Also is he wearing steel toe boots?? I thought they were converse at first. Seriously Batman, what’s with the child soldiers??

Cyborg?? I love him

Ouch that was a fail

Ok the bo staff is a Tim Drake signature as far as I know so wtf???? Which black haired mf is this???

It’s Dick. I googled. [I love DC and I realize that most of the Robins were designed before having diverse characters was a thing but literally they all look the same. Like personally I’d love to see a Romani or other non-white rep for Dick.

 {I gleefully return to this post with news that Dick is canonically Romani! He’s been played so often as white, including in the new Titans, which I will be making a post about, but he was confirmed to be poc in Devin Grayson’s Gotham Knights. He’s part Romani on his mother’s side. She, according to Tim Seeley’s twitter, is an immigrant. He was originally presented without a confirmed ethnicity! My apologies for being uninformed about this. I stated Romani specifically here before knowing because I had seen people talk about him as such and really enjoyed it.}

 Maybe a mixed Jason? I feel like Tim is white mostly bc he’s rich IN GOTHAM,,, but like I never turn down the possibility of poc characters. Damian is canonically middle eastern so if I ever see a live action Damian not played by a middle eastern brown kid I’m rioting.]

What a petulant child. Blaming each other. Now they’re fighting. [This part feels very overdramatic to me personally. I do think that if this wasn’t animated it would be toned down quite a bit. That being said? I do think it’s in character for Dick, especially late Robin-era Dick, to have outbursts like that, especially as a character that I see as needing a lot of control.]

Oh wonderful. He quit. That’s overly dramatic.

Oh goddamn it Slade.

I’m not supposed to know he’s Slade yet tho huh. [Rip the element of surprise with that, I have a habit of learning everything from things before investing my time in it, and my obsession with other versions of DC comics isn’t helpful in this situation. Also the 25 pages of AO3 I’ve read about the Bats gives quite a bit away.]

Oh ew that’s a plasma monster

He looks like fuckin,,, Underbelly! that mf from the Red Hood/Arsenal comics. [Underbelly is the personification of the criminal world. I got through four RH/A comics as of posting this so once I finish that storyline I’ll probably post about it]

“It’s pointless to get upset about Cyborg” breaks glass. [I personally really fw Raven being like ‘master of meditation i feel nothing’ but then these dumbasses get all up in her brain and she ends up loving them like honestly that’s amazing]

“I’m fine” fucks up that punching bag. Master of emotions this bitch. [I don’t think that this little tantrum is entirely because Cyborg left. Again, Dick was raised by Batman, and neither of them are too good about losing control and fucking up. This to me is very much a mix of guilt for having driven away a friend and teammate, anger at Cyborg for leaving, and also anger at himself for a perceived failure. Bruce really needs to get his kids therapy bc the complexes are really shining through.]

Now they’re sad like bitch ur the one who kicked him out???

He’s eating something and it’s gross.

“That stuff can’t be good for you” Robin,,, sweaty,,,

The puns. Jeez Louise.

Immensely powerful half demon lady and the best you can do is some cans?? [Again with the things you shouldn’t know, Theo. Yeah I get that she’s still a kid and the demon lady thing isn’t exactly revealed yet, but I maintain that the barrels -- which I realized that they’re barrels not cans -- could be improved upon]

“You giant zit”??? A Child [Seriously how old is he because it’s concerning that he seems as young as he does. @ Bruce wtf did you do to your kids]

Phase three what an ominous asshole

Again with the puns Rob like jeez just fight this mf

Star,, you’re an alien?? Why are you screaming??

Both eyes on the road while flying Raven

He just extends the bo again bro what kinda bat bullshit is this

Cyborg saving the day!! We gotta love that. “Still got the sonic if you still got the boom” what kids I love them

I love that he just,, brought Cinderblock with him. He’s just that powerful.

Wtf is up with this knockoff Alfred mf with Slade? Also?? What stereotypical villain shit Slade step it up. [Titans (2018) Slade is like,,, so much better at this. Hell, even Arrow Slade is more nefarious.]

[I know it’s stupid to say this about an antagonist from a kids show vs two YA/Adult shows but like?? Titans Slade had the Motive, and Arrow Slade was Deep. In my defense here, I’m only on Ep 1, I’m sure he gets more interesting as the show progresses.

My non-sleep deprived rating? 9/10. Points off for melodrama but points on for nostalgia and attention grabbing. I’m not really into kids shows so I did my best to be fair despite that. Personally I think it’s a little much on the fighting especially for a pilot and it definitely seemed a little bit rushed. But, the animation is fun, I love the way each character is distinctive in costume and personality.

Keep in mind I prefer watching things with writing/pacing like Arrow, The Flash, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the new Titans TV show and all of my ratings are going to be skewed based on a preference for stronger and darker material. 

With that in mind, I did enjoy the episode and I do want to continue watching. I think if I had watched this as a 10-11 year old, it would’ve been amazing.]

[mysterylover123]

BNHA Rewatch: Season 1, Episode 1: Izuku Midoriya Origin

mysterylover123

First episode! I love this episode (well, the two-parter, anyway, as a whole. First chapter I guess). One of my favorite intros to a series ever.

First scene! My ship! And their terrible, awful, rocky starting line. I hope the final scene of the series is some kind of callback to this, with an ironic twist on it. But yeah, this is Deku and Kacchan at the start of the series, at their most flawed. Deku being all hero with no super, Kacchan being all super with no heroism. But that’s about to change!

(why are they so cute?!)

I think this scene is what cemented to me that I liked this series right off the bat. I love how they introduce the concept of what it’s like to live in a world where superhero battles are kind of mundane, with this guy on the phone telling his boss he’ll be late for work. Because of a super villain battle.

Deku! Precious smile that cures me of all my ills. I love his design, BTW - I’m not sure what it is, but the freckles, the green hair and huge eyes, he’s just so unique looking. I can’t think of another character who I think he looks like.

(First impressions were basically: I love this guy, he’s totally like me. No wonder I relate to a geeky kid who takes too many notes on comic book heroes)

So Deku’s class full of weirdos. How many pre-UA fanfics have these folks featured in, I wonder?

Ah, Kacchan. First impressions: Apparently, I think like Tomura, because I totally thought this kid was being set up as a villain first time around. And I loved him. I love villains who are cool and charismatic and loved by all! (I started changing my tune by the end of episode 2). Yes, I like Bakugo. So if that’s a deal-breaker, just a warning (he’ll always be second to Deku though. Sorry.)

Ooh, this ugly scene. I don’t remember what I thought of it at first, I just know that the fandom never stops bickering about it. Horikoshi has flat-out admitted that he didn’t mean Bakugo to come across this bad in the first chapter and feels he wrote him too evil though.

(BTW I think Horikoshi is the most “literally me” Mangaka of them all. I relate to him painfully hard. Ever commentary I hear from him about his experiences sounds like there’s some older Japanese male clone of me wandering around making manga.)

Better informed BKG meta writers than me have meta’d about this scene to death, and there’s about 50 billion fanfics out there where Deku tries it and turns into Yusuke Urameshi or something. I do wonder if this scene in particular will ever get a callback; I kinda doubt it.  

Baby Deku doing the headbang while watching All Might vids. Meanwhile I headbang while watching this scene. Headbang-ception.

Sad Baby Deku’s backstory. Rips my heart out every goddamn time they replay it. And they replay it a lot.

To get kinda serious, Deku being quirkless is sometimes interpreted as allegorical to being aneurotypical - I still remember how things were when my mom told me I had Asperger’s, and it was a lot like this scene (with less tears, because I was like 12 and 12 year olds don’t cry) - and I can totally see it. That’s one of the things I love about BNHA, btw - other superhero verses make having powers be analagous to being differently abled/LGBT/not-white/whatever, different in some way, not part of the privileged group, which just doesn’t make sense. Being gay does not equal shooting laser beams from your eyes. But being non powered in a world where most people have powers? That analogy works.

Sorry to get ya’ll down. Back to  cuteness!  

Deku being so considerate of Bakugo! (ilovehimhaveimentioned) And still keeping up hope, in the face of all this sadness.

Thought in hindsight, it’s interesting how this still reflects Izuku’s character flaws. I mean, he’s not perfect. He likes to talk about how he could do this, but until the Sludge Villain Incident he never really does anything to make it happen. He’s a dreamer, but that’s also a problem. Shoto points this out later on “You need to back up your words with actions”.

Deku gets attacked by the sludge villain. I love how they animated this, now having read the manga as well - his blurry vision really puts you in the scene.

This next bit is perfect. Deku is more excited about meeting All Might than nearly dying. He has to get his autograph - but he’s already got it! (All Might you treasure). 

The final scene on the roof is really interesting, it’s an odd place to cut the first chapter. But it does set up the big WTF twist at the start of ep 2. Episode 2 is one of my favorites of the whole series and I can’t wait to get to it tomorrow. As for Episode 1, it’s a solid setup and I’m so glad it hooked me in right away. 

BKDK Corner:

So since, like, every episode has a little BKDK and I love it, I just figured I’d shove it in a section at the end of each recap.

Episode 1, where they start off on terrible terms with each other. Bakugo is introduced as a stereotypical bully, Deku as your typical lovable hero. You don’t really get into their layers until Episode 2 (though it’s all the same chapter in the manga). I like how the anime added a small look of “huh?” to Baby Kacchan’s face in the first scene, where he’s like ‘WTF why is Deku suddenly acting tough’ for a minute. Deku also gets protective towards him, even protecting Kacchan from himself. I didn’t start shipping them until episode 2, and I didn’t want to at first because they argue so much, but I fell in love with it anyway. 

BEST GIRL OF THE EP: Mt Lady/Yu Takayama!

Check this link for info on her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWPH4kLQ58&t=399s . Did ya know she was almost the MC?

RANKER: MY RANKING OF THE OPS

5. OP3 (S2OP2) SORA NI UTAEBA

4. OP5 (S3OP2) MAKE MY STORY

3. OP1 (S1OP) THE DAY

2. OP2 (S2OP1) PEACE SIGN

1. OP4 (S3OP1) ODD FUTURE

Tomorrow: Episode 2 “What it Takes to be a Hero”

[operativesurprise]

Dreams I’ve had recently enough to find with a quick scroll on my fb wall

was dreaming about a cave last night. With lots of shallow pools of water along the floor. I feel like if I'd seen the layout from above it would have looked like paisleys. There was a creature there tending the pools. Sweeping detritus away, skimming the surfaces of the water. It took moss that was growing too thick in some places and put it into bare areas, and it was very gentle with the little frogs and salamanders living on the walls.

There was the sound of bats and the dripping and echo of water, and a low hum in the background, but the creature itself made no sound. You heard the bristles of it's broom, and the soft shift of stones it touched, but no footsteps, no breathing, no nothing but a soft chiming noise as it looked in each pool.

The waters all glowed, some white, some pale blue, others pulsed through light pink to deep magenta. The whole dream had this aura of calmness, of being content. It was like being in a giant zen garden but dial the peace up even more. I'm not really sure where -I- was in the dream. My POV was kinda hovering over the figure as it tended to the pools, but I'm fairly certain I wasn't the figure itself. I was like, 6 inches up and to the left.

_____

I've been trying to sketch an image I had in a dream last night and it's just not setting up right. It was like. Honestly it was like the first few seconds of the Adventure Time intro animation - that super fast 'drone camera' POV that swoops down through trees and stuff and focuses in on a character with their back to the camera and then they turn and look?

I was swooping through this orchard of blooming apple trees - and I took note bc for some reason I was surprised they weren't pear and peach trees like 'they were supposed to be'.

But as the camera/I got closer to this feminine figure standing under the branches and the flowers and these really almost black-green leaves in this rich green velvet textured dress (it's totally the dress that's on the original golden book cover of Ella Enchanted), with big free fall bouncy waves of BLOND hair, they turn and instead of it being that kinda anime "turn and wink/smile" and the camera goes to the next, she turned around and it was a dead eyed marionette.

My camera POV just slammed to a halt with the freeze frame of this... entity (which I 'knew' in my dream was The Druid) (Even though this wasn't really an MJ dream) looking up and over their shoulder at me, like they'd become aware of the camera and were looking straight at ME. The branches with the flowers and the leaves above it framed it really close and I couldn't see much other than the scribbly ovals of it's eyes. Then the colors all got desaturated except for the apple blossoms.

And then that dream was over.

___

Vivid dreams last night about being on house hunters. With Lithrick as the realtor.

Also had a very ominous dream about standing in a misty open field, feeling the sawgrass scrape my bare arms and shins, staring up into the grey sky while sharp winged birds with broken bodies 'flew' through the air. It looked like how a washcloth you are swirling in a tub of water looked. There was no sound for that one but I could feel the rain on my face as I looked up.

Then I was dreaming about being on the beach in Belize with the chitons and baby hermit crabs and the breeze and I was watching the sunrise.

___

I've been having zombie nightmares since Sunday. Sunday and Monday were taking place in the shopping mall (which is a relatively new venue for my dreams), Sunday being the Beginning of the outbreak (and star trek themed) and Monday mostly about life starting up in the 'colony' of this gigantic shopping mall.

But last night I dreamed about the collapse of the colony and then survival in the forest.

There was a man in a wheelchair who had arrived at the shopping mall with his mother - both of whom were injured but not infected. We let them in and the mother succumbed to her injuries shortly after.

This left the man in the wheelchair distraught and he would wheel around the open plaza in the center of the mall mumbling. It was not concerning - until other weird things began to happen.

Like how one of the dorm areas had mysteriously become locked, how some people were going missing (presumably they left to try and find their families), and how some older people were getting injuries in the night - explained away by "well, old people have delicate skin and maybe they bumped themselves".

But then the man in the wheelchair wheeled up to the mezzanine and shouted for attention. And then he collapsed, and clouds of mosquitos erupted from his wounds and began to attack people.

Flash forward to a weird mix of irl and larp characters living in the woods behind my house in an abandoned homestead - I had gone from dying by mosquito to being Sano and a group of us avoiding Velociraptors in the long grass as we made our way back to the relative safety of this bombed out building husk.

But then The Rattler Gang came - horribly tattooed and violent and they ransacked through the homestead and were almost into our barricaded room when not-quite-Malaki and sorta-Allison with an ancestor spirit wig on saved us.

The dream ended with us all in a cave explaining to a horrified Morgrym that "see what happens when you're late?"

It was so weird bc as the dreams progressed and became more MJ and less Real World but with Zombies the zombies became less of an issue (I mean, repel undead is a thing)

___

Last night I dreamed about Ridge Road being a swamp instead of a road. The fields on either side were the same, but the road itself was a Louisiana/Florida/Bayou/Swamp thing with hot, moist air, dragon flies, grasses, alligators, everything you could want (though the water was clear as day).

And I was walking along the broken up boards that served as this sorta river trail following the path of the road. Slats were missing in places and it was a distinctive walnut color, and it was rickety and I could smell the heat of it like being on a dock in the summer time.

And as I was walking along I knew I was heading toward Harris Hill farm but instead of the farm it was the Pirate Tavern bar that I dream about fairly often.

(as I'm thinking about it, it kinda has the air of a setting in a Curse of Monkey Island game crossed against Diablo II)

But before I can get into the tavern there was a crowd of tourists wading through the water nearby. Like, the most stereotypical hawaiian shirt white-sunscreen-on-nose and flyfishing capped tourists you could imagine. And they were lost looking for their fan boat but I didn't know where it was - but I also didn't want them to find the Pirate Tavern bc it's a secret and my co-owner Matt Sch would be mad if we had to relocate AGAIN bc non-pirates had found us.

And in my dream I am DISTINCTLY aware that LAST TIME there were also VAMPIRES there, but Skye Collins had bought out their half of that Pirate-Vampire Tavern to own it outright as JUST a Vampire Tavern so this time I went into business with Matt. Not Lithrick, Matt.

And I was -upset- in my dream until I 'remembered' that I hadn't skipped out on Skye and the Vampirate Tavern, I'd just opened another location with a different partner after reaching an amicable business deal. We still traded aligator blood grog for peat moss from the other location to serve a certain cocktail with at THIS one.

___

Had a dream last night that I was diving on a whale fall. But either I was minuscule or the whale was super gigantic bc the rib bones were these looming spires like I was watching a stroll under redwood trees through a low fisheye lense.

Thinking about it I can totally piece out the different dives that meshed to make this dream up.

The stalactites from the Blue Hole, The gelatinous muck on the bottom in the St. Lawrence The cold from the Brownstone Quarry

___

If we want to talk about a fever dream... last night I had a dream about being trapped on a volcanic island while the whole chain of volcanoes were erupting.

The evacuation was happening but I went back to the house for the animals and got stuck there. And other neighbors who couldn't get out in time were coming over with their pets and supplies.

I was watching the lightning and the ash fall outside when I saw three red colored golden retrievers but I could only get two of them to come inside and I spent the rest of the dream upset and trying to find the third one. I found other animals trying to hide from the ash and storm, but I woke up before finding that 3rd golden.

The lava flows were coming down the mountain too.

___

Dream time. So. A classical vampire and an actual bat demon are out on the town looking for something to do when they come across a nail parlor.

What a great idea, they think! We'll get manipedis and then do brunch over at IKEA.

But when they go into the nail parlor there is far too much religious imagery to be comfortable and the demon doesn't want to stay anymore so they go back outside all sad.

Vampire suggests they just kill and eat the occupants of the nail parlor and find something else to do with their day off.

Demon agrees to the plan but they have this 'thing' where when the two of them murder a bunch of people they leave a haiku written in the blood on the wall.

They begin to argue because they both have different accents and can't decide on the syllable count for a certain word.

___

So there's a string of tall, skinny houses in Litchfield after 'The Church' that usually feature in any nightmares I tend to have. Last night did not disappoint.

The lineup was this:

🏚🏠🏡🏠 An empty house, My house, the neighbor's house, and then for some reason my grandmother's house.

And we had gone next door to the neighbor's house for dinner, even though we knew it was dangerous to be outside of our house after dark. But as we gathered in their entryway the spotlights on the rest of the neighborhood started turning on and we knew we had stayed too late.

"They" were out there. You were safe in the daylight, you were safe at night as long as you didn't open your doors. BUT now it was night. And we had to get home.

So we slip out the door and we can hear the neighborhood using birdcalls to communicate the 'all clear'. As we are going down this overgrown embankment toward our house we see it.

One of them.

And then we hear someone sound the alarm, a series of owl hoots. It distracts the thing for a moment and we think we could slip away but it turns and starts trying to get into our house so we run to the empty one next door and JUST barely make it.

Dream me's mother and little sister make it into the screened in porch just ahead of me and I fall in and turn and only just get the door closed in time when It attacks.

It was a zombie. Or a ghoul. Or something. a woman with a bloody face and terrible teeth and honestly it looked like Reagan from the Exorcist and she launched herself against the screen door which I'm trying to keep closed.

I know she can't get in the door but then she makes this horrible noise and says,

"You won't be safe for long. We're getting stronger,"

And the door is almost coming off its hinges but I -know- as long as I keep the door closed at night we are safe and then she laughs and presses her face to the screen and says,

"I'll just get in tomorrow morning. Before you're awake. Because, really, what difference does the sun or stars make? I'll get in tomorrow,"

And then I woke up.

____

My dream last night was so complicated I can barely keep it straight.

I was some grizzled, older ex-con dude pulled out of my soft retirement as a school bus driver because a child genius was being used as the catalyst for the robot war apocalypse by his wealthy mother's greedy board of directors.

And somehow I had a time machine that I was gonna use to bring the kid back to the beginning of all the issues and he was gonna start sabotaging the dangerous inventions so he could just be a regular child genius instead of responsible for global-scale mass murder.

At one point I had thrown the kid's manifesto at him but he hadn't actually read it bc it was too big and there were no pictures but also bad language and he asked me what "twat" meant and the kid was horrified that they would use that kind of language. Like he was ambivalent about the murders but bad language was crossing a line.

And as part of my "wait. He's just a kid I can help him instead of kill him" epiphany for some reason I looked out the time machine window and saw my old motorcycle which was painted in blue tiedye pattern and that memory moved me enough to offer to help the kid.

So the kid grabbed his froggy backpack and offered to give me all of his science fair winnings (which was like. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and two telephoto camera lenses for some reason. And a green and purple feather boa) but I just took enough to buy a new motorcycle and told him to hide it from his past mother so they're not suspicious.

___

Okay subconscious, doing laundry with the elves of mirkwood is NOT becoming a reoccurring dream. Three times is enough. Stop now. ____

I was an undercover secret agent posing as the nanny to a royal family's children. The children had a pool party for the oldest's birthday, and I was in charge of the yacht rides in the aquarium tank. Halfway through the dream, Pirates attacked with large assault rifles, trolls, and fire elementals. I managed to save some of the children, but then Katina was healing the ones that had been injured when a Shadow quick deathbed them and I had to resort to Improv comedy to keep the remaining kids from screaming as their friends turned to ghosts around us. None of the adults would listen to me that the attack had been planned, they were convinced that it was random, and despite the fact that I had a way to turn back time and catch the one woman who had started the fight they refused to do anything but complain that dinner had been delayed.

[gamillianwrites]

The wonders of being “retired”

Style: Multichapter (hopefully) 

Wc: ??

Warnings: Cursing, lmk if i forgot something

Summary: Amelia got a letter in the mail with a job request from an anonymous person to “take out” a target with valuable information that they don’t want to be spread around. Speil and Willow were the only available friends to help out, so they run the job stealthily.  

A/N: This is my first time actually publishing something I’ve written so I hope people like it! It was fun and I’m thinking about posting regularly. 

---

The job is meant to be simple. Get in, take out the target (either out of the building or with Speil’s shortsword), get out. Amelia and Speil are on recon duty, and if they find the target they have permission to put him to sleep if he resists extraction. 

The letter came in the week prior, and it was the standard “An alias of mine has retreated to this and this location and I either want them returned or dead because they have secrets that can overthrow my company. You will be paid handsomely.” type jobs. You know, as you do on a nice Saturday morning. So, Amelia hit up the group chat consisting of her, the wife and three of her best “retired” hero friends. Speil and Wifey were the only ones available, so the job would be mainly stealth based. Not Amelia’s favorite style of job, but a fun one nonetheless.

Speil approaches the destination from the north followed by Amelia. The farm is down a small hill, with plenty of cover at their current location. From this vantage point, they have a perfect view of the farm. It’s your stereotypical movie farm hideout, big red barn with a silo. Across from it is a small and cosy white house with a little shed. A dirt path splits the two buildings and leads to a road on the far end away from Amelia and Speil. The opposite direction leads to the farmland next to where they are hiding.

“So, we have two options, las. Either I stay back and keep an eye on ye while you zip about jamming to yer music, or we can split up and we take a building each.” whispers the heavily accented voice next to her.  

Looking at him he’s not much, just a tall and skinny guy from Scotland, which is exactly what he wants. You can hear him frequently say, “The best deception’s are the underestimated one’s, and I love being underestimated.”  He’s wearing an oversized green/grey cloak that looks like a blanket with a hood that hides most of his features, and works well as camouflage. 

“I have a feeling you’ve already decided.” 

“Aye, yer right about that one. From the looks of it, nobody seems to be home, besides our potential target. From a tactical standpoint it’s safer if we go down us two with Willow as backup when she’s in position.” As he says that seven rapid pulses of light aimed at their location signal that Willow is ready. “Speak of the devil and she’ll come to play poker!” he chuckles and scratches his head.  “ As I was saying, tactically, it’s better that we don’t split up. That way the three of us aren’t spread out thin. We will be vulnerable to an ambush from this side, but Willow should be able to spot ‘em if that were to happen.” 

“I’m liking the sound of it so far. You want the barn or the house?”

“Honestly the barn would be nice Besides, you’d be able to search the house much quicker than I ever could.” 

Nodding in agreement she pulls out a signalling mirror, responding to Willow’s flashes of light with a single pulse. She glances back at the man after receiving a confirmation signal, only to see that he’s vanished without a sound. 

“Good luck, Amelia. Make sure to look out for booby traps,.” she mumbles to herself as she opens up her phone and starts the playlist titled “gotta be swift”. “See you on the other side, Speil.” she says as time seems to slow and every sound around her is drowned out by the intro of Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics. 

Since she is considerably faster than everything in the world except people with speed abilities, Amelia takes her sweet time. She jogs down the green hills to see if she can spot anything that can detect their presence. Speil has undoubtedly looked out for something like that as well, but it’s better to be on the safe side. One satisfyingly natural hill later, she continues her jog towards the house.

Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?

The house is two stories tall, and the paint faded and cracked. To her left she can see Speil’s legs dangling in the air, while he’s mid somersault through a window on the ground level of the barn. Chuckling at the sight, Amelia snaps a photo.

I travel the world and the seven seas, Everybody’s looking for something.

There’s a slanted double door that leads to a cellar, a small shed to the left of the house, and an old front door.  Amelia jogs over to the shack and tries the door. It’s unlocked.       

“Sweet, love it when that happens.” she says to herself.

Some of them want to use you, some of them want to be used by you.

A quick run through the shack shows it’s unoccupied with an exception to a couple sacks of potatoes and animal feed. Turning around, she goes straight for the cellar door, opening it in a swift action. It’s dark. The only source of light is the sun above her. 

Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused.

“Not as sweet, but it’s fine.” Amelia scratches her head, reaches for her phone and turns on the flashlight making a sound as she pushes the button. A quick jog through the cellar shows it’s empty besides a big pile of boxes in the corner. As Amelia moves up the stairs to the surface, she remarks “Someone left here in a hurry. I wonder who the target even is?” The air around her ripples as she speeds through the room faster than any living thing could perceive. 

Amelia looks back to where Speil was mid tumble and to her dismay, he’s landed and started up the stairs. So far, no sign of life. Both the front and back doors are locked, and a quick lap around the house shows that all the windows are locked as well. “Not ideal, but it can work.” 

Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?

Amelia takes the tactical decision of going to the backdoor, which has a big glass pane in the center of it. “This lock seems simple enough.” she says as she punches the glass and unlocks the door. “Who needs lockpicks when you can do that instead?”

I travel the world, and the seven seas. Everybody’s looking for something.

Amelia quickly scans the kitchen she just entered.She jogs to the front door to unlock it. The kitchen is quite large,with a stove and refrigerator. There’s a small table in the center with four chairs around it. On the far side of the room, there’s a counter that you can access from the living room. To the left of the refrigerator is the backdoor that Amelia had just entered through, and on the opposite side of the building, just outside of the kitchen, is the front door. The floor outside of the kitchen is completely carpeted, and it seems like it’s this way all the way up to the second floor. 

Dust clouds erupt from the carpet as she steps down. She can feel the wood under the carpeted floor creak and crack as she moves deeper into the house. There’s a door under the stairs that is cracked open, which she supposes leads to the cellar. “It’s oddly empty here? Has the anonymous employer fucked with us?” 

Hold your head up. Keep your head up, movin’ on 

Looking up the stairs, the second floor is dark. The eerie emptiness of the place is getting to Amelia, and she’s starting to get nervous. It would’ve been better if the place had been filled with people, at least then she could punch someone. Or lightly tap them with full speed. People don’t notice any difference, it hurts either way.  

Hold your head up, movin’ on. Keep your head up, movin’ on.

She runs up the stairs, only followed by eruptions of dust. In the first room to the right, she has a perfect view of the barn. The room has a bed neatly tucked into the corner, and posters of a child's favorite soccer team plastered on the walls. She can see Speil in the opposite building from a window on the second floor of the barn. His face covered by a cowl as he leaps off the banister that keeps people from falling down to the ground. Effective way to get down, but an unnecessary risk.

Hold your head up. Keep your head up, movin’ on.

Turning around, she leaves the bedroom. The floor moves under the stress of having someone run at superhuman speed over it. The room on the opposite side of the hall is a bathroom.She runs to the room diagonally and admires Speil’s leap from what seems to be a study room.

Hold your head up, movin on’ Keep your head up, movin’ on.

Three figures are standing behind Speil. She recognizes them as his mirror images. “That’s weird, why would he be using those now?” Amelia’s mind races with possibilities. “Wait, wasn’t there a door downstairs? There wasn’t any door that led up to the main building from the ce-” She was sprinting down before she could finish the thought. The floor under her’s heating up and contorting upwards, as the walls of the house are shaking. 

Some of them want to use you, some of them want to be used by you.

The only thought going through Amelia’s head was a long and drawn out ‘Shiiiit’ followed by several other profane thoughts and an instinctual terror that she hasn’t felt since she was a little girl. She sprints down the stairs as they expand and distort from their normal shape. In certain parts, the stairs have seperated and reveal a glowing ball of flame that’s still expanding. Halfway down the stairs she loses her footing and hits the ground at the bottom of the steps, making her lose focus for half a second, which is enough for the explosion to get too close for comfort. 

Some of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused.

The kitchen is also mid-explosion, and she curses herself for not opening some windows. The explosion under the stairs is evolving right in front of her. She can feel the heat singing the hairs on her arms and face. Amelia ducks under a piece of flying wood and dives through a window, cutting up her arms as she rolls on the ground and launches into a sprint.  

[mucky-puddler]

Here is Kubrick blog no. 2

So, this week I’ll be looking at Kubrick’s early work (again), Paths of Glory, and the introduction of Depth of Field; Stanley Kubrick, film, and the uses of history – yes, that is the whole title.

The first thing Nathan had us all do was shout out any themes we could think of that Kubrick had used in the films we had watched so far. This list ended up being ridiculously long and appeared to contain every film under the sun (which is something I never understood – creatives don’t really think about themes when creating things, it just kinda happens, so what is the point in listing themes to look at?). Here are a few examples of themes we named;

- Madness

- Masculinity

- Obsession

- Photography

- Chess

- Brutality

- Violence

- Animalism

- Sport

- Fathers/mothers

We then reviewed the Seafarers (again) and looked deeper at the shot composition used; one of the more obvious ones was the shot change from machinery to people, suggesting that within the seafarer community the people are simply machines designed to complete certain tasks.

Let’s move on to the man himself. It has been suggested that Kubrick makes his films for men, and the evidence is as such – his characters fulfilled the stereotypes of having the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armour, making his female characters weaker and in need of assistance, he would often utilise the male gaze to sexualise women (as seen in the Seafarers when the camera pans up and holds on the image of a naked calendar), all of which makes him seem misogynistic. Alternatively, Kubrick could just be representing the world around him – personally, I think we give people who grew up during the 40’s and 50s much more credit than they deserve – there is no way we can assume that so many people during that time felt the way we all feel now, because the times have changed so much and we don’t want to ruin our idealised, romanticised perspective of a different time. I’m not saying that there weren’t people that thought this way, I have no doubt that there were, I just don’t believe that everyone thought that way. In every single piece of media I have studied where there is some injustice, the argument has always been made that they were “representing the views of the time”, inferring that the creators did not have the same views when it is entirely possible that their own views aligned with the unjust perspective they present.

Okay, rant over for now.

Something else I picked up on, that is somewhat related to what I’ve said above, is how Kubrick used his camera to give himself as much freedom as possible. Kubrick was commissioned to film the Seafarers as a promotional piece, meaning there was very little creative liberty given to Kubrick – what he did have control over was the camera movement. It would appear that his favourite were the long tracking shots, giving the audience long takes of the food hall (and the food itself, to a pornographic extent).

Another clear feature is Kubrick’s sense of humour – his sense of humour was young, like that of a teenage boy (hence the calendar shot). He would sneak as much suggestive evocative imagery through the loopholes into his films to entertain his audience.

And now for our word of the week – Gematria; Greek for geometry, turning letters into numbers, giving the numbers power, meaning texts have hidden codes.

It has been suggested that Kubrick used gematria in his films – critics and fanatics have spent hours poring over his films, trying to discover the hidden meanings behind the numbers and text he leaves in the shots. The numbers 7 and 3 are said to be popular numbers in Kubrick’s films but no one has figured out why yet. I personally don’t see the point in obsessing over every pixel in a shot to mangle it into an alternative meaning, but some people enjoy it, so you do you.

The last thing I took from the lecture was that theme and style should be considered together, especially over the many films brought to life by a single director. For Kubrick, we should look at similar themes through films like 2001 and Spartacus and Lolita, just to name a few.

Now onto the film – the film we watched this week was Paths of Glory. Like all of Kubrick’s films so far, it starts with a lovely bit of narration and a somewhat boring long shot – expositional, some would call it. Both these features together let us know that we are in for a war-time film. For almost the entirety of the rest of the film, I couldn’t understand what these characters were saying, So I had to gather the deeper plotlines from context. Something I drew from the film was how realistic it was for a film of that era; it does not romanticise war like others have, it is a good example of strong men being scared to obey orders, then suffering the consequences.

Here is something about the film that confused me – there is a single shot that pans around the characters to watch them leave, and a washing bowl that was used at the beginning of the scene comes back into the shot – why? It is not referenced at all in the scene, or even the rest of the film. Why was that shot included? Was it because it looks cool? Thinking about it deeper, the character played by Kirk Douglas was using it at the beginning of the scene – this character goes on to defend the men who get called to trial for ‘not following orders’ but assigning their deaths anyway because of the the decision of the court. To someone who grew up religious, this sounds familiar (that’s right, we got Jesus imagery right here). Kirk Douglas’ character could be reflected as Pontius Pilot – he washes his hands of the blood of the men under his command (as demonstrated by the washing bow) – making the men that were sacrificed as an example to the rest a reflection of Jesus – they were strung up to poles.

Let’s now talk about authority, an obvious theme in this film. There appears to be two types of authority – those who care about the mission, and those who care about the people. The general, who is the former of these two authorities, could be considered obsessed with winning the battle and then the war, and does not consider casualties (he’s a bit of a dickhead). On the other hand, the colonel’s concern is for the men and the logic behind why they did not obey orders (which makes sense). There is, as there is with reality, challenge and contention within and between the ranks; everyone wants to either impress their superiors or undermine them. Within the theme of authority, I’m going to make up a sub-theme – authority vs reality; those in higher authority have an idea that they want to execute, and put it into action without thinking about the factors that could make it possible e.g. the men that would have to die to make their ideas a success. The reality of the ideas is that it most likely isn’t possible, and hundreds of men would die in the process before the authority would begin to realise. One of my favourite scenes from the film is when the fate of the selected men are being decided by the colonel and two generals, one of whom is for killing them in a court-martial, the other hearing reason and willing to give them a fair(ish) trial. The colonel is framed between the two generals, and at first, I thought it would have made more sense to have the more neutral general framed between the two arguing parties. However, after a second thought, the colonel is the one frames between two opposing but equal forces – they are the angel and devil on his shoulders (hell year).

Ah yes, we love a courtroom drama, a turn I did not expect this film to make – it reminded me of the courtroom scene in Hacksaw Ridge (such a good film), and I feel this is a fair comparison; the intensity was continual and high, there was a ‘will they, won’t they’ vibe to it, and an all-round good scene for both films. Only with “Paths of Glory”, I hated the son-of-a-bitch prosecutor and the court for clearly favouring him, giving way to another sub-authority theme – humanity vs the court. Like the overbearing general, the court sides with the authority rather than reason – I thought the defence was not given the opportunity to give their case to the fullest extent, even though their evidence was solid.

The final theme I’m going to look at is religion (catholic flavour) – there isn’t a whole lot to say here as it doesn’t play a huge role in the film, the only religious figure (other than the Jesus imagery) is the father that comes to bless those who were chosen to be sacrificed as an example to the others.

Okay, onto the reading – this reading doesn’t really have anything to do with the film specifically, and I only got through the introduction again. These people really need to calm down with their intros because I’m never going to actually read something of merit if they keep their intro’s long. The book I read is called “Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the uses of History”. One of the first things it discusses is the phrase ‘depth of field’, because it’s meaning it two-fold; the first is concerning photography, as depth of field refers to how sharp and in focus parts of a shot are (which is relevant to Kubrick because he loved photography, so would be able to use depth of field to his advantage), and the second is in reference to researching and trying to understand as much about an area of expertise as possible (this could be Kubrick researching for his films, or could be these critics learning as much as they can about Kubrick – I suspect it’s the latter).

Also, they spoke very briefly about how what is in the frame is the only thing that can “portray the world of human emotion/feeling and action realistically”. I completely disagree with this statement – there are so many elements that goes into portraying human emotion, like music, rhythm, acting lighting, just to mention a few.

Something else I don’t quite understand is how/why directors are praised for working in multiple genres over their career – how is it different to a student having to do multiple courses or modules at the same time? Surely, they just work in whatever genre they want to at the time?

This might just become a list of things I don’t understand because we already know that Kubrick liked to have control over every single aspect of the film, but according to this introduction, he let the cast and crew experiment with their tasks? How does that work?

A quote I found interesting is this – “…seen as bringing the terrible news of the twentieth-century history…to a mass audience” – sorry what? What is this even saying? Is he translating what was happening around him into film for other people to better understand? But if that is the case, then the ‘terrible news’ would have already passed because of how long it takes to make and distribute a film. Why aren’t these people reading the news? Surely no one relies solely on film to give them ‘terrible news of the twentieth-century history’? Or does this mean the people outside of America, seeing as global news was not yet prevalent?

Anyway.

Adorno is a man that pops up a few times in this intro and is said to have said “art and ideology are becoming one and the same thing” and I honestly love that because it’s kinda true. This is also the same guy that said “poetry became impossible after Auschwitz” which is the kind of deep, philosophical shit I enjoy.

This intro really does jump all over the place because then they discuss how Kubrick primarily adapted texts that weren’t already popular, with the exceptions of The Shining and Lolita, so his audience could judge his work as his own rather than an adaptation. This seems a little selfish to me. Like he’s not acknowledging the fact that it’s someone else’s work?

I do plan on reading more than just the intro’s to the actual readings, but it’s so difficult because the intros are so long! Also, somehow this blog ended up being longer than the last one, I don’t know how that happened, please don’t hate me.

[fly-pow-bye]

Powerpuff Girls 2016 - “Worship”

Written by: Haley Mancini, Jake Goldman

Written & Storyboarded by: John West, Angela Zhang

Directed by: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

Not worshipping this one, that's for sure.

Salesperson: It's a beautiful sunny day, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, we got Townsville's largest donut-shaped diamond on display, and there's not a supervillain in sight!

No, this isn't a Narrator monologue, but it sure sounds like one. All it really needs is a "The City of Townsville", but apparently, that's optional in this show. A saleperson is showing off this one-of-a-kind diamond shaped like a donut, and he decides to tempt fate by specifically saying there's no supervillain in sight.

Sure enough, two supervillains arrive: the Fashionistas. They're able to bash through the walls, persumably through Barbarus's raw strength. They really don't do any joke about the donut shape, but they do talk about how they kidnapped their best friend. It's a play on "a diamond is a girl's best friend", which we know because Bianca actually had to explain it.

The salesperson refuses, so they use some perfume. Suddenly, he’s happy to get rid of it! She then talks about how this is such a lifesaver for her, wearing the jewel like one. They can’t even stay consistent; is it a donut, a best friend, a baby, or a life-saver? What is the name of this perfume, according to a female voiceover that says its name every time it’s used?

Worship. Just as the bottle says, it brainwashes people into doing their bidding. This is essentially what they did in Fashion Forward; the only difference is that it's a perfume that hypnotizes people rather than a scarf. That almost distracted me from noticing that Barbarus apparently forgot her lipstick for this shot. Almost.

And yes, this voiceover and text happens every time Worship is used, just so you don't forget it! It's almost like it's trying to use it on the viewer. It's not working.

But first, Dateline: Townsville, hosted by one of the generic newscasters from previous episodes. This episode is constantly interrupted by these newscasts, and all I can think of is that this is their way for this show to have a narrator without bringing back the Narrator.

The Fashionistas break in the newsroom to give him a little bit of Worship, and the newscaster starts to praise them as these great people. This looks like the start of a running gag, but we'll see how that goes.

The Powerpuff Girls finally confront the Fashionistas after they rob an armored car. They sure took a long time to actually fight crime in this episode! Bubbles is wowed by the armored car, because she's like that "I Love Lamp" guy from Anchorman. Blossom is sarcastically wowed that they're up to their old tricks! Either this is a sign of continuity, or they're just referring to how they're stealing stuff.

There is one reason to believe the latter: they decide the best course of action for these people is to just stay perfectly still while they spray perfume on them. Apparently, they didn't watch the news.

This perfume ends up being stronger than that rainbow that somehow didn't affect them in Painbow, since it affects them pretty well. Under the effect of the perfume, they fly off and grab every Ruby in Townsville to give to these fine fashionable women. They didn't even get told this, they immediately knew what they wanted to do.

Eventually, the perfume wears off, and the Puffs realize that they just helped the Fashionistas steal. Bubbles is worried that they're becoming too helpful, but Blossom corrects her and says it must have been that perfume that made them do it. Buttercup has an idea.

Buttercup: What are we going to do, cut off our noses? But our faces would look terrible without one!

I would imagine this would be an okay joke about how the girls don't have visible noses, but it doesn't really work when the show decides to give them nostrils for this one scene. Sad to see that return.

The episode reboots, possibly recovering from a fatal lack-of-nose-related error. We cut to a shoe museum, where the main attraction are glass slippers owned by Cinderella's...horse. Yes, with that pause, because the joke isn't just that these were owned by a fictional character known for losing her shoes. It's that these shoes belong to a animal owned by a fictional character known for losing her shoes.

Barbarus breaks through the walls once again, who would have guessed that "breaking through the walls" line in the intro seems to refer more to the Fashionistas than the Powerpuff Girls themselves, and they ask for the shoes.

Tour Guide: We can't afford another robbery, we're on a shoe-string budget!

No, put more emphasis on that line! Some people might have missed that joke. One spray of the perfume, and he just hands them over. Somehow, they missed the opportunity to make a joke about how they don't fit. I mean, it is Cinderella.

The Powerpuff Girls manage to show up before they're able to run off this time, this time, their "noses" are covered up. Bubbles decides to cover her ears with them, too, because she's the silly one! Most of the humor is in episode is just to make Bubbles conform to the stereotype of her hair color.

Bianca knows that these noseplugs are going to stop them from actually winning. I will say this is a little clever: they use it on the crowd, and say something on the lines of "we can't stop the Powerpuff Girls, but maybe they can!"

Somehow, they interpret this as suddenly get some pitchforks and torches, and chase the Powerpuff Girls out of Townsville. They don't even command them to do anything. It's like they forgot how their own plot devices work!

The Reboot Puffs get scared off by this, and the Fashionistas run off with the shoes. Yes, because this group of eight people are going to stop these superheroes that can lift buildings full of people. Considering a previous episode had the Powerpuff Girls get bashed by the ordinary human of the two, that's not too far off.

We get another news bulletin from Dateline: Townsville, detailing their plan that they somehow have gotten. They have a blimp named the Bikini Bomber, and I am glad to know that they didn’t forget the Fashionista’s last names. This blimp has a giant vat of Worship to spray on everyone in Townsville to make them their slaves. Again, this was their plot in Fashion Forward. One thing I should mention is that the newscaster is no longer under the spell of the perfume. They could have made these news segments an okay running gag, but we got the “silly Bubbles” jokes instead.

This time, the Reboot Puffs were watching the news, but all they can do is lament that they can’t do anything to stop this from being the worst day ever. I can think of a few worse days, actually, and I don’t just mean the day they make up where they apparently fought a sludge monster at a vomitorium. It had to have been made up; it involved fighting a monster and apparently winning.

Proving even more that the reboot's Professor Utonium is a terrible parent, this random stranger just barges into the house. Thankfully, she's not here to kidnap them, she's here to pretend to not want to help the girls with their situation...and then doing it anyway. I could see where this character could go.

She's a rival perfumist who made a perfume named Divine. This perfume was stolen by the Fashionistas, and turned into the mind control formula. She will not help the Powerpuff Girls, because that's her running gag. That, and they use a music track that ends up being louder than her voice at one point.

...and we get either a parody of those weird perfume ads, or the show just gave up. It has it all. We see our lovable Sitcom Dad swimming in a pool, showing off a six-pack that he has to fill this episode's muscle quota. We see Blossom going back in the Ada Lovelace costume, which seems to only be used to have a girl in a pretty dress. I'd say that's an insult to Ada Lovelace, really. Also, lots of random stock images of animals, most of which aren't even necessary.

It's not all random, as there is a slight theme near the end: we see the same Sitcom Dad swimming in green water and turning into a stock image of a fish, and then a slideshow of garbage. There are a few shows that come to mind when I think of "slideshow of garbage", and you can guess what show I'm thinking of at the moment.

This was all leading to the Powerpuff Girls' new fragrance: Disgust. How fitting. They're going to use this to counteract the perfume. Speaking of which, here's Buttercup summing up what just happened in the previous scene.

Buttercup: What just happened? Did anyone else's brain just go artsy-fartsy?

More of the "fartsy", really. See, if we point out our segments are pointless and nonsensical, that makes it not pointless and nonsensical! The Powerpuff Girls go into the Bikini Bomber. They decided not to use their noseplugs, for the episode's benefit. The confront the pilots of this dastardly blimp, only to be called out by the Fashionistas standing right behind them.

One of the biggest jokes of the episode, and it's just something stolen from Airplane. Using these blow-up autopilot balloons as a distraction, they start spraying more Worship. So, here were the Reboot Puff's options:

a. Avoid the cloud, and take out the Fashionistas with a spinning back kick.

b. Fly up to the vat and stay perfectly still while the perfume cloud hits them right in the face.

Huh, should have picked A. They do try to resist it this time, possibly trying to use the same power that made the hypnotizing BFF bracelets not work in Frenemy. It doesn't work, and now they're praising them again. We suddenly cut to a shot where some people point at the blimp and say how fashionable it is. Clearly, that was important.

Bianca tells them to give them the vial, so they can persumably throw it in the garbage. They could have told Bubbles to do it herself, but instead, Bianca tells Bubbles to do what's best for them, and she interprets this as throw the vial into the vat. It took me a few viewings to figure out how this makes sense, and all I could gather is that the perfume doesn't overwrite that they still see the Fashionistas as villains. I think.

Thanks to that, we get this lovely shot of a blimp covering Townsville with what looks like fart gas. I'd like to say this was intentional, but if it was, they would not resist adding the fart sound, too.

Right before this gas hits them, we see the Mayor having a press conference dedicating a whole day to these villains that robbed the city throughout this entire day. It's here where they do have an explanation to why the Powerpuff Girls had to watch the news instead of getting a call on their new fancy phones: because he had a visit with them.

Much like the newscaster, neither the Mayor nor the crowd seem to be under the effects of the perfume, but he was going to go through with it anyway. This would make a lot more sense if Worship's effect was permanent and Disgust was the andidote, but as shown by both the Puffs and that newscaster, that's not the case.

We cut to yet another Dateline: Townsville segment, this time finally giving this episode the fast pace it really needed. The blimp gets caught on a radio tower, the Fashionistas parachute down to an angry Disgust-fueled mob. They could have just had cops arrest them when they landed on the ground, but that would be a sad reminder that the Powerpuff Girls don't just bash crooks into jail anymore.

I will say this: there is an okay joke involving a smoke bomb at the end with Nostrilla Dupont. Yeah, they waited until the very end of the episode to finally give that perfumist a name. It would have fit a lot better in the episode that actually used smoke bombs as a running gag, but I'll take any quality I can find.

Does the title fit?

They may have considered a double meaning, with the name of the perfume used in the episode and the way it makes everyone worship the Fashionistas.

How does it stack up?

I could see this plot doing well, since even this show did a better "Fashionistas hypnotize people" episode, but the slow pacing and constant interruption with the newscasts just does not do it for me. I like the idea, and the character of the week is pretty fitting, so I can't do the joke that this episode did my job for me, but it's a pretty low Neutral.

Next, will this reboot improve if my favorite Reboot Puff, relatively speaking, gets multiplied three times? Probably not.

← Not So Secret Service ☆ Blossom³ →

[goprandall]

DC MASTERPOST >3

It’s no secret the DC universe is something of a DCpointment. There’s no cohesion in sotrylines, films are released at odd and illogical times and I decided to rewatch and give proper reviews.

MAN OF STEEL 2013 7/10

This film is something of an outlier on the DCEU, because it is not terrible.

The strengths of this film are defiantly the first act, I feel it was a clear and concise way to create backstory without the stereotypes of following him through childhood into adulthood, they did a great job of creating krypton and establishing an antagonist with a clear motive. I liked the jump straight into adult with flashbacks when confronted with items from his past, it allowed us to understand his past without saturating his journey all at once. Arguably the first arc of this film is completed here with Clark/kal discovering who he is and why he is here. The second arc of General Zod trying to bring back his people is still very well done, providing us more relevant backstory and shows logical actions from both sides of the fight nearing the end of the film. The biggest weakness of the film in my opinion is that it is 20 minutes too long. When superman destroys Zods ship killing the artificial children of krypton, I feel this arc was complete, although the after fight solely fought between SM and Zod does show us the struggle superman goes through becoming the last kryptonite in exaistance, this does not outweigh the pointless mass destruction this causes, on top of a already destroyed city. In my cut this would be disregarded.

Final thoughts of the film; my favourite part was the shot of ‘ALERT’ that slowly turns to ‘Toner empty’, a good transition and piece of direction. I’m giving this film 7/10, in my classification would make it a good Netflix film, one I’d be happy to watch but not pay money to solely see. It was a hard choice to not make it a 6 however, I rank wonder women as a 7, and this is more than equally as good, the only things preventing me from giving it a higher rank is it’s rewatchability. Personally I rarely would due to its lack of joy and humour, and overall darkness, not just in plot but also in cinematography and colour grading.

BATMAN V SUPERMAN 2016 6/10

Batman v superman had all the the ingredients to be the summer blockbuster, but as predicted it followed every DC film and tanked.

Their are some aspects of this film that are genuinely good, giving it a 6, one of those things is the first act of the film where we are introduced to Batman, although I didn’t personally feel the need for another origin story, the way this scene is directed especially with the earl sequence is fantastic, adding depth and differing from older versions of the same story. The other good thing about this film is the Batman fight scene, it is so well articulated and choreographed, i struggle to see how it fits within the wider film which is strangely badly directed, edited and in-cohesive.

Continuing from this idea, I feel the dream sequences are one of the leading problems for the in-cohesion of the film, the issue with these sequences is, if they are not well done it stops the audience trusting more daring scenes, ultimately taking you out of the story. Next, I feel another reason this doesn’t live up to its hype is, again, DCs continuous frenzy of oversaturating it’s film with characters. Here I argue Wonder women is not needed in the end fight, the fight could just have easily gone on sitbout her, or, if they had released wonder women before this film so we felt more engrossed in the character it wouldn’t been fine. However her and all the other justice league promo clips, should not have been in the film in the context they were as they’re a corporate shoehorn, promoting further projects. The other character I feel is unneeded is ‘Doomsday’, he’s quickly thrown in at the end of the film, and honesty an antigunist shown to us at the end of the film will never give the depth and fear of a hero fight, as a villain shown throughout the movie.

To me, Batman V Superman is a movie. Not a film, crafted and worked on to create a narrative for the audience, but a summer movie to get the kids out the house. The idea of having two meta humans as important as Batman and superman battling each other should boggle the mind, as the first avengers did for me or civil war for a closer comparison. But the difference with the MCU spectaculars is, they earned their right to blow people’s minds, DC is playing catch up and trying to get praise and awe without the hard work.

SUICIDE SQUAD 2016 3/10

Wow. This review has been hard to create and will most likely feature ideas from other reviews via podcasts and YouTube due to the fact this movie boggled my head in the sheer awfullness that ensued.

As always, I begin with the strengths of the film. In this instance it’s slight. I loved the aesthetics of the branding for the film, the colours, the neon animations, I loved it all. The mini descriptions in the film were funny and added to the VeRy little personalities of the characters. It is important to point out this clearly wasn’t present in the first edits of the film, but due to good feedback of later trailers that were released they were added, which is why this element of humour is the only of its kind that lands in the film.

Next I normally look into the storyline and the character arcs of the film, arguably my second favourite aspect to look for in a film. In suicide squad there is none, and there aren’t any. That sounds harsh, but the reality is there is no cohesive storyline, it follows no one character individually and the film darts back and fourth between every character, no matter the timeframe. Dean Dobbs (from adventures with dean and Bertie’s podcast) best describes this as ‘like playing a video game where someone is skipping every cutscene’ and this is absolutly true, especially when looking at the relationship of the joker and Harley Quinn. This film is so badly edited, As jack Howard describes, this film contains no scenes, it is obvious the whole film was rehashed and re-edited after the release of BVS (which crashed at the box office) and the final trailer was released, which was very different from the first few as it showed humour and action, and it is evident they cut out almost everything apart from these things. I would best describe it as many GoPrandall videos I have scrapped as I tend to forget to film opening sequencers and filler clips to show the progression of the story told apart from the action, and this is exactly how I felt about the editing of this film, they did the best with what they got but it wasn’t enough.

Although there was a lack of character arcs, this film had an ABUNDANT amount of characters to fill its shoes. This film crams as many famous faces in as many characters

As it can, because for some reason DC refuses to create stand alone films due to the catch up to the MCU that’s going on. We’ll start with the joker, or more exactly the 10 minuets of joker we got. Many scenes with the joker were so heavily edited, and deleted, it is hard to judge Jared Letos performance, because he didn’t have chance to give one. But, as a side note the hand on the mouth laugh is one of the WORST cinema moments I’ve experienced only closely beaten by ‘were bad guys it’s what we do’. Yuck. But we’ll finally look at the ‘suicide squad’, although looking at them it’s hard to identify why they are in this squad. We’ll start with reason no one on the team seems to have a reason to be there, aprt from deadshot, who had his daughters arc to think about. All the others just seem to around and don’t want to die and get out of prison. VERY good motives DC, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Next we can look at the abilities of this so called ‘meta human’ squad and how under utilised they really are, which could show why this film failed so badly. Firstly deadshot- ‘never misses a bullet- amazing at trick shots.’ Who in the film performs close quarter headshots, the same as the Seal team next to him, and in the film performs 1 trick shot. 1. That was in establishing scene right at the beginning, but he isn’t the only victim, we can look at Boomerang, my favourite character by far, with one the coolest abilities, who throws a total of:5 boomerangs and catches: 2. Let’s be honest Harely is there as the jokers Love Interest and to keep him in the film. We can also look at el deablo, the man that can shoot fire but refuses until he’s bullied for a whole minute. The worlds worst archaeologist who starts the entire battle, after BREAKING AN ANTIQUE immediatly after finding it (bravo) who if wasn’t attempted to be weaponised, would’ve skipped this whole mess. Slipknot, a man who could climb any wall or anything, who immediatly dies after climbing a wall, but don’t worry because they don’t even want you to worry about this due to the fact they don’t even intro him before he magically appears on the squad, hoping the audience will react ‘oh he’s going to be important!!! What a mystery man!!’. This is almost as bad as Katana, who adds nothing the story apart from a short intro and when she cries to her dead husband, at which point I began to cut my toenails, something I gave more of a shit about.

But, it is obvious I’m a teenage marvel fanboy just shitting on DC,and I hate when people complain without offering another viewpoint, therefore, to fix this, I would dedicate this film to the viewpoint of deadshot, giving him the character arc of changing with the goal of seeing his daughter- eliminate the extra characters- slipknot/katana and either dedicate more time to the joker and harley sub plot or eliminate entirely, NOT BOTH. With this, better editing around these eliminated plot points could make a more coherent story with more empathetic story arcs. I have a full idea for a plot but this is too long as it is.

WONDER WOMEN 2017 7/10

Wonder women is a refreshing instalment into the DCEU, showing they seem to e learning, but are still falling behind on some of the most basic hurdles.

Firstly, as always we’ll start off with the strengths of his film, firstly it is vividly important to recognise that this is the first major Superhero film to be directed, and sustain a heavy female cast. It does so fantastically and leaves me more excited for the next instalment now knowing female directors and stars now have evidence for an accomplished superhero movie, which arguably has outdone the past 2 major films. With this we see a brilliantly refreshing opening act with a subtle and bright, vibrant origin story.

However, this film slowly returns to madness throughout the film when major plot holes appear, and the film making quality slowly deteriorates. Firstly, the iggest plot hole that has been so easily overlooked is the WW1 aspect. Given a World War Two film, having the Germans be the sole enemy is obvious and logical, however WW1 is not as simple as this and the use of Germans as the enemies is vaguely lazy. Also, as DC loves to do, it adds in extra characters and neglects to give them logical and coherent backstory and arcs. We only need to look at the ‘best marksman in the war’ who doesn’t fire a single shot, and continues not too all the way to the end of the film, showing no growth. The final plot hole is what draws it into the wider EU. The entirety of this film is showing Diana that the human race is bad and should be left alone, although when she defeats arias, this is meant to break this curse and peace seems to be restored. But, in BVS she claims to have stopped helping mankind because of their evils, neglecting Stalin, WW2 and the Vietnam war to name a few, but making a reappearance for- lex Luther. Wow.

Although in almost most of its entirety this was a pleasant watch, my personal issue stopped this at the third act when the final fight begins. To me the film returns to DCs favourite colour scheme of dark and clouded, and uses quite frankly some of the worst CGI I’ve seen recently, making me wonder why they didn’t at least try to incorporate real elements, such as Marvel, but this is still the best DC film after man of steel and I’m excited to see more female led and directed films come to screen.

JUSTICE LEAUGE 2016 5/10

This will be the shortest of the DC reviews, this is the film I’ve seen least of the lot and I feel I’ll need at least another viewing to get a full understanding. To premise this I fully understand Zack Snyder had personal issues leading him to leave and Joss take over, and this is in no way mocking him.

But I’ll dive in, maybe the fact I’m struggling to write this review tells me a lot about the movie. Wonder women was one of the only saving graces of this move, she was well understood and I feel her likeness as a character was well transferred from WW to JL. Contrary to this, I’m struggling to write about cyborg and flash, we were given next to no backstorys, although the flash’s was hinted at at least twice that I recall and what we were given were quite chaotic. Batman was a major letdown for me, coming down from BVS where he was a certified badass taking on superman, he turns into a wimp and hides for a majority of the film, quite evidently showing Ben affleck Clearly does not want to be there. I feel the overall plot of the film was almost underatsnvle, but had the taken the time to set up this storyline in previous films it would’ve been much better, this movie lacked the right to have all these characters on screen together. The characters had adequate screen time each, but contrary to its biggest rival ‘the avengers’ this really wasn’t that special, most of the characters had the same abilities, barring the flash, and the way the avengers films have shown all the characters working together simultaneously in cinematic mastery, you can see hints of Joss attempting this, but with a bad set up it’s an impossible task.

I conclude, not going into the issue with the CGi because I don’t have that much time.

[themarginalartist]

Gotta agree with the fact of every character being OC. I doubt there is difference between chars with studios behind them and chars made by one peep. Most interesting is the creativity with most of all, I think. Could read anything as far as it is creative. But how do you set good vibes to reader to make him stay and be excited for next chapter? I can see it happening on me when reading something, but I don't seem to find the key of doings to do so while I'm really interested on how

(I am so sorry this got really, really, really long so I’m putting it under a readmore, I am not kidding, this is ridiculously long. I checked before posting and it’s 1576 words (not including this bit here), which is like my normal chapter length so read at your own risk I guess???)

I mean a character is usually created by one person, or at least the initial concept of them is, then expanded on either by that person or the writers in order to weave them into the story. 

As far as getting a reader interested… I am not really sure why a lot of people are interested in my things…

But usually the way that gets me interested in reading something, and I am basing this off my response to different novels I’ve read (I’ll get to fan fics in a sec), is a combo of the synopsis and the first chapter being the hook. Now not every synopsis makes me want to read a novel, I have read many books where the synopsis made me go “huh” which is like mild interest, and then I start the first chapter if I have time, if by the time I am done with the first 2-3 pages and I haven’t found anything interesting the book gets put back. 

There was one time at a scholastics book fair that I read like the first 3 chapters of a book, it was while I was in high school and my brother was still in elementary school, but like I was hooked the moment I read it… The title escapes me though… 

As far as fanfics go, I used to be the most avid reader of them in my friend group, admittedly at the time I was looking for a very specific fandom and such, but my preference for fanfics is a longer story or longer chapters. My friends were not that way… Which made getting recommendations and giving them hard. 

But as far as what I like to see when I am browsing for a new fic is if the fic is hosted on FF.net or Ao3 a synopsis that doesn’t give the main plot away, but gives a quick intro to the idea, so for example on Think Ink (which I should update that synopsis I think) the bad version would be “Henry’s also been turned into an Ink Demon and now he has to figure himself out. Fighting different studio members and searchers in his journey to understanding himself.” where as “Henry woke up covered in ink, a spike of fear rushing through him, his life forever changed from that moment on.” is a bit better (not the best but yeah). 

Then comes the spelling and grammar component which I can’t stress enough. If the fics first chapter is extremely bad, and I am talking to the point were the word used is wrong, the spelling is wrong on a number of words, and there isn’t a clear tense being used, then I exit out, it doesn’t matter if I really like the synopsis or something or it’s an AU I liked, if the grammar and spelling makes the fic unreadable then it’s game over. 

Next is characterization, similar to spelling and grammar, if the character you are using is portrayed wrong, it’s also a game over. However there are a few exceptions to this. For example I used to really love Hetalia, the basic gist of the anime is that all the countries have a human representative but is also heavily biased as the Japanese stereotype of those countries. Italy in Hetalia is seen as an airheaded, easily frightened, guy who is a womanizer, eats pasta for literally every meal, surrenders in a second, and takes naps whenever possible, again this is the Japanese stereotype based in WW2. So if he’s characterized as being really serious there needs to be a damned good reason for it. You can’t just change a character to fit what you want if you’re basing it on someone else’s work. 

Next comes plot. Plot is key for any fanfic, I mean yeah every once in a while it’s fun to read a one off or throw away fic of cute activities like baking and stuff, but there’s no action or craziness (unless it’s a fic disguising itself as such which is also fun). The goal of the first chapter is set up. In a novel the first chapter is about introducing the main character(s), the world, and what the problem is. And fanfic is no different, however it has the luxury of us already knowing the character (in a way at least, take Spiderman, there’s the basic concept but there’s also a number of versions of him from different cartoon series and comic series). We might also have the luxury of knowing the world already as well, so that can be sorted out really fast, the rules and nature of the world are defined so we don’t need to explain anything. So then comes the problem, what is the character facing, is there something going on right now or is it coming, do(es) the character(s) have the power to stop it now or are they going to have to travel. The goal of the rest of the story after the first chapter is to show how the character(s) grow and change as a result of the difficulties they face in order to take care of the problem. 

And finally cutoffs. First what I mean by cutoffs is where an author chooses to create a time skip, scene change, or end of chapter point and I’ll talk about each of those in brief. 

For a time skip, the only reason that should happen in a fic is if the task at hand would be meaningless for the reader to know about like them going through all the steps of baking a cake (unless it’s to show the characters relationship with each other then don’t skip) or if there is a large gap of time where nothing important happens and I am talking about years of time, which is what happens in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, there is a 7 year period where Link is “gone” from the world and so when he comes back to it many changes have taken place and so it’s a call to action for him. 

A scene change is similar to a time skip in some cases such as character x and y are driving and now scene change to x and y being at a motel for the night, but in other cases it’s a shift in who’s talking like we were getting told x’s point of view for a long time and now y is saying x is stupid or something. 

And finally the end chapter cutoff, which is honestly a hard one, there has to be a reason for the end of a chapter, a lot of times cliffhangers are the main way to go about it, but also resolution of a current problem is important to consider. For example chapter 4 of Think Ink was a cliff hanger I purposefully put in, one because it was evil and made people want the next chapter, and two because I wasn’t ready to continue on with the story at that point, I can’t tell you the amount of “omg what the heck why did you cut off there” I got from people. Now compare that to chapter 10 of Think Ink, the end of that chapter is Henry and Bendy finally coming to an understanding of each other, what has been going on with each of them separately, and the beginning of repairing the bond. It ties up loose ends that Henry and Bendy had been facing for a long time. 

Good vibes come from the care and dedication to the fic that you have. And every reader is different, they pick up on different things, they read something in different ways. I mean hell I have been asked if I wrote lines on purpose when the reality of the matter was I was just like hey this sounds good and it was by accident. But I think what a lot of people don’t think about is how not all stories have happy beginning, middle, and endings. Sometimes there is loss, there is anger, there is dumb decisions that a character made, there are mistakes and problems and too often I see fics that are just “oh everything is happy and good and light”, and that’s not interesting for a multi-chapter fic, maybe a chapter but not the whole thing. 

So in reality there isn’t a short answer. It just depends on how well you can connect with your readers. And it takes time, there have been plenty of fics that I begin reading after 4-5 chapters are already out or the fic has been completed, so don’t worry if people aren’t reading yet, just keep going and stuff. And not everything I said has to be a part of the fic, time skip and scene jump all over the place, make mistakes and get wild with writing. And the biggest thing, and best way to get better, is to make note of what you like the most, what caused you to like a writer’s style, why did this work, what hints did the author drop in order to lead you to this plot point. And it sounds like school work… but that’s because this is what you have to do for basically every English/Language Arts essay ever. analyze the text…

Congratulations on making it to the end of this monster wall of text btw. 🎉🎉🎉

[seeksstaronmewni]

Samurai Jack Season 5 in Review: EPISODE XCII

Here is my absolute favorite Samurai Jack episode, because it’s not the end. It’s only the beginning of the end.

I was on the hype train for the return of @cartoonnetwork​’s Samurai Jack after I saw the Season 5 trailer on February 8th, 2017 A.D. (I made a recent post to celebrate it) One reason was that I became obsessed about The Powerpuff Girls during the nostalgically incorrect Season 7 (the first “reboot” season) due to a liking for the Season 5-6 designs and animation, a part of the "Cartoon Cartoons” I grew up watching... and I was right to expect former PPG creatives on it! This post highlights the events of the episode and why it’s one of the best Samurai Jack episodes ever--and how much I binged on it at first! You can check the episode out here (Season 5 reran Sunday mornings at 3:30A on Adult Swim), and soon on HBO Max. Also, if you’re on Twitter, check the links to my tweets in the underlined text! They’re old tweets and need some love!

If you saw not this episode yet, be aware of SPOILERS!

/!\ SAMURAI JACK This Program is rated TV-14-V. Intense Violence.

X

The day of the season’s premiere, March 11th, 2017 A.D., too late found I that [as] was doing a streaming of Season 1-4 (I came in during EPISODE XXXIII’s “Wild Ride”). Following was a Q&A livestream with Genndy Tartakovsky, during which I tried again and again to call, but the line was always busy. Luckily Season 5′s premiere was going to be for free--online--via the stream at 10:40P! I was so there for it! Of course I watched the televised premiere on @adultswim​, but the stream first!

While I began ceasing from trying to get Genndy on the PPGs again, all of a sudden...

...it began, and I was totally there for it.

A view of a distant town (not Townsville) appeared. All quiet.

That is until an explosion or 2 set off (and not with the stereotypical H-B/Universal “powah-wahh” explosion sounds either). There goes the giant windmill.

Partially and slowly revealed is that some aliens are on the run from the town...

...from those “beetle bots”. GIANT beetle bots, I might add.

There is this precious little moment where, being surrounded by the giant beetle bots, the mother and daughter visually--not by speech--exchange “I love you!” to each other with hearts in place of “love”. Oh, and there’s a baby too.

As the beetle bots come to a stop, the sound grows quiet. A motorcycle is heard approaching. When the motorcycle is revealed close-up, Tyler Bates’ bass-filled music is sparked: a warrior with a serious, menacing face is riding on these hot wheels...

...and he aims his machine gun out... only to launch a projectile at these familiar foes...

...resulting in the first explosion Jack caused in this glorious 5th season.

He slowly circles around with his gun. Is he a threat to the aliens?

Nope. Just pwning more evil scrap metal.

Once I heard the Looney Tunes-esq “pshhh...” of smoke from his guns, I became more certain that Joel Valentine was back on the show... unlike the PPG “reboot”.

As the Season 5 sneak revealed late in February 2017 shows, the warrior’s motorcycle is packed with punk tires that can scrap these pests up! All of his guns are just as lethal... with all of those cool action shots and poses and all.

The warrior then reveals another weapon: not a sword, exactly, but some manner of pitchfork on one tip and a taser on the other. Graphically, he destroys one beetle bot by twisting the wires inside, and proceeds to scrap the rest until one of them knocks... the mask off?

That warrior is none other than the samurai called...

“...?”

Just another day in the life of the samurai! Shouting a charging yell, Jack continues smashing the wires out of the beetle bots with a front scruff that fits perfectly with the mane... a look that is very appropriate, new and fitting for Jack.

The daughter gives a symbol of either “Is it dead?” or disgust. Because of the emoticons that are a major part of their visual language, I suppose that these aliens should be called... emoji-fawns?

“50 years have passed, but I do not age.”

As the samurai continues onward into the sunset, a new intro is revealed for Jack to explain how much worse things are become. The former intro started with Aku’s prologue before the theme song, but Season 5′s intro is pretty much a prologue. This feels true to the nature of of The Powerpuff Girls’ former intro which also started with a prologue, but PPG Season 7-9 has a shorter, different intro (although the extended version has an updated version of the prologue with most of its original Tom Kenny narration, “DJ Avalanche” score, and few of Joel’s SFX).

Regarding Jack’s opening statement, creator Genndy Tartakovsky said that 50 years were passed apparently between the events of EPISODE LII, “Jack and the Baby”, and EPISODE XCII. I think, however, that Jack meant that 50 year passed since he ended up in the future in EPISODE II, “The Samurai Called Jack”. There could be more seasons of this show to explore more adventures of Jack, regardless of the time that passed; if anything, turn those comic books into episodes!

Anyway, for some reason, the rip in time Aku created to send Jack into the future caused Jack’s body to supposedly not grow old, though I believe that, slowly, he still aged to a point. Aku’s still the bad guy (with a new voice, but I talk about this in XCIII’s post), and hope seems lost unless Jack can return to the past.

The intro ends with a slow reveal of the shows title, burning red in the dark, sporting an epic, exciting, modernly cinematic feel to the show. What follows, of course, is a scene just as cinematic...

A quiet, eerie chant of the name “Aku” subtly fills the dark, fire-lit room. This reveals the worship of a great evil which reminds us of how dangerous and powerful Aku truly is... given that “Jack vs. Aku” is the previous episode where Aku has a speaking role (you know... “EXTRA THICK!”), though he vocalizes in a following episode “Seasons of Death”.

The episode’s opening credits reveal that Bryan Andrews and Genndy Tartakovsky are the main board artists for this season, still directed by Tartakovsky himself with art direction by Scott Wills. Apparently, character design was very crucial to this season, so the main character designer of the season, Craig Kellman, is listed at the beginning on all of these episodes. This’s rare for cartoon shows, but this isn’t much different from old CN shows of the 1990′s like Dexter’s Laboratory crediting the model/character designers on the episode’s opening credits.

“They will succeed where so many others have failed, and we will find favor in your glory.”

Seven daughters?! Is that kind of physical labor even possible?! That explains all of Grey Delisle-Griffin’s screams, but she’s soon back on her feet... to raise her children to serve pure evil.

BTW, it’s a good thing that the baby vocals that Joel used are not the common Sound Ideas Series 6000 cries, since that recording is far more annoying. Anyway, I find the scene very intriguing and exciting because it’s all really dark, and that’s something that “kids” shows often weren’t in the past. It all just feels so epic that it sucks you in; am I right?

Back to Jack: the score revs up quickly in this montage of Jack riding around the country, wherever he is, as if he’s on some epic quest. Is he looking for a time portal or Aku’s place?

It’s Fall at this point and Jack’s in a pretty forest. The lighting is beautiful, cinematic and very realistic in this shot--one of my favorites from this episode. The paintings are still by art director Scott Wills; they’re just digital.

Such scenes as this are long periods of no dialogue, where music and sound can help to set the mood--sometimes, a very peaceful mood...

...until, slowly but surely, Jack’s mind is hauntingly messed up. This’s where Tyler Bates’ music hits on the slow, hardcore, eerie, electronic percussion that subtly drives the intense situation that’s not like what kid’s action shows used to be. This would be frightening to younger children, but the sheer terror of this scene is awesome, and the music is hardcore hot!

Some days later, we go to another sequence that occurs at night, where we focus first on a cute little owl hooting (and not the cliche, classic H-B/Valentino SFX Library owl hoot that many cartoons use, including past episodes of Samurai Jack). This goes to show just how realistic Joel’s sound design can be, and I admire him greatly for that attention to detail.

Jack endured another vision that night, where his father claims that he never came back, though Jack revealed that “Aku destroyed the way home!”

The way? How many time portals or such were there?

“He destroyed everything! Everything is burning!”

Woah. Was it something that Jack ate? It may be that that rat was under-cooked...

Anyway, every time Jack was haunted by the visions, a mysterious figure appeared afterward. Now Jack was motivated to find the village that he previously noticed was under attack. Time for a commercial break... and a breather for us fans of this nostalgic series!

As we return from commercial, we see the progression of the 7 daughters in training. They kind of remind me of Pokey Oaks Kindergarten’s students... but taller.

Training is tough on these little munchkins, though--but Ashi is distracted by a light that comes from the outdoors... to which her mother slowly objects. Her strength endures some real testing over time with her mother’s harsh treatment!

“Are you weak?!”

I mean... I felt like it was almost all over for Ashi at this point.

Luckily for her, “Aku’s fire stirs inside”. The art direction on the following scene is very interesting in terms of lighting: black, white and some red. It helps for the simply-detailed designs to stand out more. Since I saw very little of Sym-Bionic Titan at this point, Ashi’s hairstyle reminded me somewhat of Ilana (who has the same hairstyle and same voice actress, Tara Strong).

Meanwhile, Jack walked through the village to find whoever caused the destruction. He comes to a shady figure in the smoke, revealed to be a hot-shot assassin robot who goes by many names...

“Scaramouch the merciless! The Pied Piper of Ruination! The Crooner of Carnage! The Ambassador of Annihilation! The Eradicator of All, baby!”

The chipper, upbeat, overly positive attitude of “Aku’s most favorite assassin” made him instantly lovable. I loved this tin man from pretty much the very beginning. I immediately tweeted about this guy during the online premiere. I took a little while to know who voiced this guy (kind of sounded like Jimmy Gourd to me for some reason), but it was certainly familiar. Tom Kenny is the groovin’ voice of Scaramouche--another iconic voice from the man who narrated The Powerpuff Girls and voiced the Mayor of Townsville, Spongebob, Bon Bon the Birthday Clown and so many other great voices!

“Wait. Back off, beardsly. Where... is... your sword?”

You were probably wondering about that... so was I.

“You... lost... your sword!”

Well, the coloring on the handle of the sword is reversed in this shot, and it was just brown for the previous shot of the sword, but... yeah. Flashback to an episode that appeared not in Season 4. Destined to become an episode in the next season if CN makes any to explore the pre-Season 5 events.

Jack’s new pitchfork/taser thingy still makes the same “ching” sounds that his sword makes (and not the cliche Hollywood Edge recordings), though.

Anyway, Scaramouch was about to tell Aku the news (Aku apparently forgot about Scaramouch ‘cause he’s all like “Who is this?” First line since “Jack vs. Aku”!) when Jack and Scaramouch dance in a duel of musical magic.

“Ooh, nice choreography, baby!” Scaramouch replied. In a tweet I made of that line, I was thinking of cinematography instead and noted this to art director Scott Wills. I probably meant to note this to board artists Bryan Andrews & Genndy Tartakovsky.

Oh I just LOVE that “fffwwwhOOMP!” sound there on the ease-in. Joel Valentine packs the perfect punch into the sound of an object’s weight with those big whoosh sounds.

More important, perhaps: how can Scaramouch play the flute when he’s just a robot? He hasn’t any lungs or lips... that I know of... though he apparently has teeth and a tongue, and I can hear breath sounds during his lines... and his voice sounds not at all robotic!

Jack can really throw some real weight around as he battles against a monster made by music and of building parts...

“That samurai has gone beaucoup cuckoo!”

...but his haunting visions distract him from his heroic efforts...

...once again seemingly attributed to that shadowy figure. This is a “CinemaScope” ratio for this shot, while the show is in standard widescreen (1.78:1 “matted”/”flat”). Those ratios can change a lot, kind of like IMAX (in movies in IMAX, one often sees certain shots of a 2.39:1 movie turning into 1.78:1 on a large screen, and the ratio goes back and forth). Still, ultimately the show is not in “letterbox” widescreen / “scope” format, like most Cartoon Network DVDs say; perhaps Warner Bros. Home Entertainment says this because Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the Dave Filoni series, only produced for Turner networks) was in 2.39:1; this caught on to some [as] shows like Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal and Tigtone (the logos are 1.78:1, however), but most CN shows are just in 1.78:1.

Anyway, knocked out of his mentally overwhelmed state, Jack was back into the fight, but, even though he sliced the flute in half, Scaramouch was the real “musical magic”. He just goes all “Scatman John” on Jack and can control wherever his sword goes, striking it right at Jack!

This is definitely one of my favorite shots from the episode... a slow-mo shot.

Jack seems to be fighting the sword itself until he comes closer to Scaramouch, who soon pulls another cold blade out...

“Dig that beautiful sound, baby!”

...a split blade whose very tone of ring when clashed against an object can cause the clashed object to explode!

Luckily, Jack has good aim for his sword... so good, that it just blows Scaramouch away.

“Looks like you’re the headliner now; huh?”

Was...

...is...

...and always will be.

Before the end of the episode, we see the last of the 7 daughters’ training. The music here just rocks. Its long, harsh percussion and bass-blowing beats really drive all of the action in this sequence.

This shot has great animation and angles, where Ashi shows an opponent who’s boss as she grabs the 3rd arrow shot and kills her with it.

For more sensitive viewers, first note that this and the following shot are violent/bloody enough to earn the episode its “TV-14-V” rating “for some intense violence” (I’d think that “TV-PG-V” might fit it, since it’s not as strong as it could be). However, CN aired some “TV-14-V” rated movies on their “Action Flicks” block back in early 2009 (i.e. Batman: Gotham Night). That’s right: CN, not [adult swim]! Since, like, 2007 or 2008, they aired a lot of TV-PG rated cartoons like Teletoon’s edgy Total Drama franchise, Regular Show, MAD, Teen Titans Go!, and even The Tom and Jerry Show (though that one seems overrated). I can understand why they often rated certain programs TV-PG-V: even a kick or punch could be a bad influence if a kid was prone to imitating action (The G-rated Garfield’s Pet Force strangely earned this rating too). The point is that CN needs to air Samurai Jack Season 5 on, even if some of the episodes are bloody (only few deserve the TV-14-V rating IMHO). They might be able to cut EPISODE XCII down to a TV-Y7-FV, perhaps.

It’s nice to see that Darrick Bachman from Paul Rudish’s Mickey Mouse still served on this lovely season. He’s the head writer for the 5th season... and the upcoming video game Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time.

As a devote fan of “Cartoon Cartoons”, I personally point the sheet timers out since CN’s traditionally animated shows have lesser animation these days, namely SMIP-animated shows. I mean, that Robert Alvarez and Randy Myers did the “Sheet Timing” on this episode of Samurai Jack (animated by Digital eMation) and animation direction on Seasons 7-9 of The Powerpuff Girls (the “reboot” episodes, animated by SMIP). Compare the action sequences of both shows, and the animation/timing will stand out; unlike Samurai Jack, the 2016-2019 PPG episodes (like SMIP’s work on Infinity Train &��Ben 10) usually lack weight in their rather gentle, slow-paced animation. Those PPG episodes animate not at all like The Powerpuff Girls Movie or any PPG episode where Genndy Tartakovsky directed.

Here’re some of the new people on Genndy’s team for Season 5: Susy Campos, Andy Flexner, Jackie Sheng and Dick Grunert. Production Assistants (or, in this case, maybe production coordinators) can turn into major creatives for the story or art of the show, so watch for those names in future CN Studios projects! Team Cartoon Network Studios rules!

This season’s prop design is in the hands of @heydusty​, who also contributed effects design and some character design / design clean-up. Dustin D’Arnault and others are new talent that live up to the work of Genndy Tartakovsky! The late and great Chris Reccardi returned, starting off with some prop designs as well. The design clean-up artists were also new to the team; these people clean the character, props and effects designs up after the respective designers did their designs, so they’re just as much designers as the designers listed. These “Clean Up” people are not to be confused for animation clean-up, however.

Next up are the background artists: “Layout Keys”/background designer Lou Romano (The Powerpuff Girls, Cats Don’t Dance, Ratatouille) and art director/Background Painter Scott Wills (The Ren & Stimpy Show, Quest for Camelot) bring the beautiful, colorful locations to life. Leticia Lacy, a former Spümcø member like Wills and Reccardi (and many other Cartoon Network Studios creatives), returned as a color stylist, who chooses the specific colors for the character, props and effects designed.

The voice credits are a bit lacking, since lesser characters are only listed as “ADDITIONAL VOICES”, compared to Seasons 1-4. This happened on Seasons 7-9 of The Powerpuff Girls too; i.e. Ms. Keane play supportive or minor roles in an episode, but Jennifer Hale is just credited as “ADDITIONAL VOICES”, though Keane is an important character to that series. Tara Strong is uncredited for voicing young Ashi since she only vocalizes--no lines. Greg Baldwin is in place of Mako as Mako passed away years before Season 5′s dialogue was recorded. Ultimately, though, Jack and his parents are still their respective voices, and it certainly is Phil LaMarr’s best.

Unlike Seasons 1-4, Genndy Tartakovsky himself served as the voice director; previously Colette Sunderman handled the voice direction. Aku may no longer be voiced by Mako, but Genndy was able to direct Greg Baldwin’s “Aku” voice himself. Robert Serda still served for engineering the dialogue recording equipment at CN Studios.

The score composers score with their super awesome hardcore score. Tyler Bates composed music for Genndy’s Sym-Bionic Titan (I can’t believe that I never watched that show when it aired). Joanne Higginbottom co-composes with Tyler on Primal. Dieter Hartman also contributed score on Samurai Jack Season 5. For this episode, no score mixer is listed. Music Editors are uncredited in this season.

The animation company on most episodes of Season 5 is Digital eMation, which looks much smoother than the designs in the digital animation of Rough Draft Studios (lines looks slightly blobby on close-ups). The animation directors credited on the series are generally the overseas animation directors; in Season 5 they’re listed on the end credits since they relate to the animation studio.

Regarding post-production, I was very happy to see Joel Valentine credited for “Sound Editing” (He used to prefer being credited by the name of his company “TWENTY FIRST CENTURY ENTERTAINMENT, INC.” AKA 21st CENTURY SOUND DESIGN CORP.). I was afraid that it would be like Dexter’s Laboratory Seasons 3-4 (or 5-6) and The Powerpuff Girls Seasons 7-9, where mixing studio Hacienda Post/Sabre Media would do the sound design, but luckily Joel was on it. This time, former Supervising Re-Recording Mixer Timothy J. Borquez, CAS is just a Re-Recording Mixer with Alex Borquez (former Hacienda mixer Eric Freeman moved to mixing and editing sound at Disney Television Animation in 2014); both Tim & Alex were Supervising Sound Editors and mixers on PPG’s reboot era. Also credited for the final mix is Taylor Pierce, then a Mix Assistant. Currently, Genndy’s shows credit Hacienda Post’s facility, Sabre Media Studios, Inc., as the “Audio Mixing Facility”, rather than referring to Hacienda/Sabre as Post-Production Sound Services (Joel Valentine/21st Century Entertainment is just as much a sound service, NOT just editing!). I’m not sure if any other editors are involved at Sabre/Hacienda, but someone was recording and performing foley for this show, and, due to time, they get no credit, which is a crime in my opinion since that brings the show to aural life. Paul Douglas remains as the Supervising Editor and Jim Hearn as the Dialogue Editor for CN.

The Cartoon Network Studios logo for this season was visually simple, as it was just the face reveal scene show inside the logo (CN tends to use episode clips more often than animatics these days). Joel Valentine fit the sound effects to this well, though, with the sounds of a sword (not the ones Joel tends to use) and an anime-like accent. As for the “reboot” PPG episodes, they just did something weird... (couldn’t they show, like, the Hanna-Barbera swirling star inside the CN Studios logo instead?! at least for nostalgia?)

The Williams Street logo ([adult swim]’s production company), complete with the Mark VII jingle, follows since it was produced for that often junky block of CN...

...but, on the digital copy prints, the 2016 Cartoon Network ID follows! Nostalgically, though, I prefer the 1999 “Cartoon Cartoons” ripple ID, which Samurai Jack and even PPG Seasons 7-8 used to show. I mind the 2016 ID on the PPG “reboot” episodes, but I mind it not on Samurai Jack because it proves that, while considered “Adult Swim”, the amazing Season 5 still remains a part of the “new new new new” era of Cartoon Network.

Any viewer of Samurai Jack could start with this episode as Jack’s adventures are just beetle bots here and Scaramouch there, occurring over few days. The other side of the episode, the youth of Ashi, occurs over probably years; this only sets the main events of Season 5 into action with the next episode.

As for me, I did all that I could with the streaming marathon of EPISODE XCII. It went on from, like, 10:48P or something until, like, 7:30A that morning. I couldn’t help but observe the episode again and again and again... I binged on it. I update the credits on IMDb. I tweet much about this episode and its team. By the end of over 8 hours of the episode’s stream, I felt that this was an appropriate response:

Before the end of this post, here’re reasons why EPISODE XCII is one of the best Samurai Jack episodes ever:

This “Cartoon Cartoon” returned after 12 years, 14 months and 5 days. According to Genndy’s forward on the Season 4 DVD, “The big question as we neared the end of production was, ‘Should we end the story and send Jack home?’ At the time, I felt that the proper way to end it would be to do a full-length movie - and still do. Hopefully, that movie is somewhere in the near future...” CN Asia-Pacific did this “Sayonara Samurai Jack” marathon for Season 4, but they were hasty, since the return came a dozen of years later, and Season 4 wasn’t the true end of the story. I feel the same about Disney Channel calling Star vs. the Forces of Evil Season 4′s finale “Cleaved!” the “series finale”, and both Daron Nefcy and fans look forward to more episodes in the future.

The nostalgic design and animation of Genndy’s Cartoon Network Studios team was something that the then-current Powerpuff Girls episodes were certainly lacking.

The action is just as intense and detailed as ever, with the right amount and style of music too. Perhaps even more wicked than before, though I miss “DJ Avalanche” James L. Venable, who wasn’t on it because he was busy with Clarence. Paul Rudish wasn’t on this season either, probably due to his hilarious vision of Mickey Mouse of course. Still, the stakes are high and handled well.

The precious moments of our little emoji-fawn family and the haunting fears of Samurai Jack are draaamaaa

The wonderful Scaramouch is our comic relief for the episode. Thanks, Tom Kenny!

“WATCH OUT!” There’s that classic closing to most of the episodes, just like we remembered it. The credits look just as simple as they looked before, too.

Next Episode’s Review

Tweet version here.

Tweet version as a shoutout to Tom Kenny & Greg Baldwin here.

[pajnloki]

5 // hello growth

Okay as I was already hinting about writing about this topic which is really important to me, I’ll be starting now. And just a short disclaimer: its going to be very personal and emotional so yah lets go.

We were three. Three teenagers: Each one of us living a different life. In our daily life we saw different people, experienced different situations and we didn’t see each other that often. But the moment we went home we were connected. It sounds ridiculously corny right now but that’s just how it was. It’s weird that in our generation it’s so easy to communicate with people living miles away from you but that’s also a beautiful thing, right? I do know about all those technology criticism but we’re evolving and it’s a process that can’t be stopped anyways and we as humans have always been striving for education, development and improvement. Anyways, back to the actual topic, which is about friendships and everything else connected to that. We were three. It’s an uneven number that alone is already posing kind of a problem, lol.   I used to be friends with both separately before we formed or three-man squad. We were like friendship goals lol and I was always so glad that I had those two to talk to. But it wasn’t always like that. I often felt really left out and just as if I was third-wheeling, kind of. Yeah, I often felt like that. As if that one friend liked the other and more and didn’t care about me as much as they did about the other one. It was sad obviously but I just shrugged it off but that feeling always lingers and it’s always in your unconsciousness. However, I was so young and naïve back then that these things really hurt me on a different level. Like it was fr bad because now I’ve changed and these kind of things like “oh they like them more and I’m being left out” … these kind of things really don’t matter me as much as before or like I wouldn’t be hurt by it anymore and I kind of learned and realized how I should be dealing with it the right way. Basically I grew up and matured a lot to be honest. Like I cant even think about my old self because I used to be so innocent and simply a crybaby, which didn’t cry that much but was always on the edge of lol. My past self who was dealing with that feeling of being left out didn’t really know how to handle it. She didn’t know whom to tell her worries and she was feeling hopeless. I was experiencing a situation like that in elementary school and in the beginning of middle school already so I was kind of traumatized. Because you gotta understand I was literally just trying to have some friends but in the end they were like excluding me. And it was ended up being like that I was w h y. QUESTION MARK QUESTION MARK QUESTION MARK. Basically. It wasn’t until grade 7 when I found a real friend. And she was pretty much my friend or the only one I was able to reach out to in daily life. I was young and introverted somehow. My younger self was extremely in the “I only need one friend” mode so I was only friends with that one girl from 7th grade to like 10th grade. For these whole three years I only had one close friends, but I did have some other viet friends as well. The school system in Germany is kind of confusing because we’re in classes until grade 10. So my school had classes from A to D with 30 people in each class. But the moment you get into grade 10 the classes melt together into one big one and from there on it depends on which subjects you’ve chosen. That means that mostly have different people in different subjects. It was a whole new experience for my introverted ass. But like I wasn’t your stereotype intro-girl. I’m pretty open-minded and I can talk to people really easily it’s just that making close friends is hard. Just talking in school and joking around is totally okay though. So yeah in 10th grade I had to opportunity to talk to many different people and I started bonding with lots of them because I think I’m a pretty fun person to talk to ;) like I was always really up to date with all the memes and slangs and stuff because I used to be in lots of fandoms (hints: weeb, kpop lol bye kms) and I just knew the trends and stuff. And it’s also important to understand that I literally had one friend and she also only had me in school so we were like an inseparable duo. <3 And we weren’t one of the cool kids because I didn’t own a phone till I was like 15 years old or so and I never actually got to get close to the cool kids. All the cool kids from each class were friends which each other, considering the fact that friendships outside of one owns class wasn’t really common. So during class 10 all those cool people and the popular kids were like THE SQUAD everyone wanted to be friends with. I also went through a lot of changes during that time. I used to look really nerdy and my mum mostly bought my clothes but my style and look changed drastically. It was a sort of glow up.. probably. I’m not really sure but I definitely started to look way cleaner and just had a better sense of style. It was the start of me being interested in fashion and all that stuff and I just generally speaking developed a conscious were I started to think way more mature and I literally grew so much that year. I mean I was always an open-minded person who had a lot of different interests: I had phases where I liked kpop and anime and gaming and stuff. So also had discord and was talking to like all the guys so I got pretty close to them and I started started to get closer with some other girls but was never really part of that cool squad. I never saw the need to join them anyways so I was okay with me having my two friends and discord friends or so lol. It wasn’t until 11th grade when I really started to get close to people. As I already said before it’s really hard for me to bond with people on a closer level unless we have a lot of common interests but I was able to bond some. I mean there were already some people I was close to since my class but we weren’t like THAT close to the point where we would meet up in our freetime every day or so. It was just sometimes u know. But then I went to a trip because of the IB and I started to become really close to that one girl and we clicked immediately. Through her I kind of got into that cool squad and I already knew most of the people in there because some of them were in my class and they liked me. I became a like “squad member” somehow because my one friend (the one since grade 7) also started to get close to different people and we both kind of found new people and so we kind drifted apart BUT LIKE NO. It wasn’t as if we stopped talking but it was just that we kind of got into different squads. I was extremely sad because it was always just us two but then we grew up and met other people. It’s normal of course but I did feel a tad emo. Grade 11 was really the turning point of me and my friendships. I kind of met tons of new people and got close to some and dropped some but in the end I found my real close friends like my real squad. My current squad consists of me and three other girls. And all three of them used to be in my old class. We already knew each other and also met each other a few times but wasn’t as if we were that close. But it’s important to note that this big cool squad’s actually pretty toxic and shady but we weren’t really supportive of their behavior of judging others and their doings when we’re all flawed and all doing mistakes and having other values. So we as the “supportive” ones grew very very close and now we’re like the best friends (not a big fan of that word but that just kind of describes how much I love them). The three of them were already really close before so it was pretty much just me being the new one but It was never awkward we clicked SO WELL. And we’re still extremely close and we love each other and it’s just so nice when we’re together because there’re only good vibes which is not so often with that “cool” squad since they’re all really toxic and started to realize that the moment I got close with them. I did try to change them but it didn’t actually work out so I try to tell them when they’re being rude but I just distanced myself a bit. YES. And I already explained. 11th grade was WEIRD. And it changed me and made me the person I am know. Ofc every single year is influencing me but I feel like grade 11 really had the biggest impact on my values and morals and how I want to be treated and how I want to treat others. I mentioned it in the beginning that I had two friends and they were living in different cities. We met each other in like 2015 and were still going strong. Kind of. We always hung out on discord and pranked others and we always met each other in each other’s cities and it was nice. But I started to feel left out as I explained and also said that it may be due to my low self-esteem back then which didn’t come back until grade 11! So when my self-esteem rose again I knew how I wanted to be treated and how I want to feel. If people make me sad and cry I can’t call those my friends and one of them was just making me feel worse day after day and meeting after meeting until someday when I decided: no more. I couldn’t deal with it anymore and I started to ignore both of them because I didn’t what to do and how to do it but I needed space. And time to think about our friendship. I only had a problem with one of them but it felt wrong to just “attack” one. I was scared and I felt sorry. I started to ignore them for like a week and they were hella worried cause they obviously didn’t know what was going on especially since they both live somewhere else. And when I felt really to speak up I told that friend what was bothering me and how hurt I was. I talked and I cried because it was really stressing me out. I also tried to say in a reAAALLY nice way to not offend her in any way. But it didn’t work out I guess because she then answered with a long ass text and implicitly said I was at fault. It kind of escalated and in the end we couldn’t talk about it because she blocked and deleted me everywhere. And there was still the other friend who was in the middle of us. She was like between us and didn’t know to handle the situation as well since she was friends with both of us. So it got awkward and it took us both  quite some time until we grew close again and now we’re stronger than ever. The two of us. She still feels awkward telling me about her meeting the other friend but im okay with it. However yesterday she suddenly sent me a voice message where she was at a amusement park with the other friend and they both talked. And I heard her voice and I felt like a clown. Her sending me that felt really really weird and it was just uncomfortable but I couldn’t tell her because I didn’t want that whole situation to happen again so now im here feeling hella confused and exhausted. Idek what to write anymore because im so dead inside so im just gonna leave this draft here like I didn’t even check for correct spelling and stuff so yolo. Just wanted document how much ive changed during the last few years and how proud I am of me actually for finally understanding my worth.

[delightfullycraftynut]

Crooked Rot

DISCLAIMER: This video gets to be pretty gross by around minute three. As in there aren’t any actual people, but if you’re sensitive to gore I would recommend not watching and/or reading this post. It’s pretty disturbing. So here is a kitten to cheer you up before you leave this post.

Our feature video of the week comes to us from the Youtube channel David Firth and its original title is “Crooked Rot | NIGHTMARE stop motion animation by David Firth”. I’d just like to state straight off the bat that this video genuinely is incredible because it manages to not have a single actual character, dialogue, or make any sense whatsoever. You could rewatch this video for hours trying to determine David Firth’s reasoning for creating this and not figure it out- that is until you click on the description and realize that it’s actually meant to be a work of art. I learned that the hard way.

Within the first few seconds, we see what I can only describe as the death of some sort of energy containing orb, and I swear I can almost hear a flatlining noise as if this were some sort of cliche hospital drama when a patient’s heart stops. The wavy lines that erupt from what used to be the orb remind me of America Online font for some reason, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t gotten enough sleep. These lines continue on to possess the intro until they, just like my soul after viewing this video for the tenth time within the past hour, have finally died twenty seconds in. I envy them. They don’t have to be here for this next part.

There’s a peculiar whistling noise that grows louder while an electric halo blossoms above what is later revealed to be a mannequin head (but for now just reminds me of a stereotypical deserted island in the middle of a pitch black ocean). You get this feeling creeping over you that you really don’t want to see any more of this, and all I can say is be careful of what you wish for. There’s a flashlight briefly displaying something pale and bloodied before a literal error message is wiped into the void along with the ominous something-worse-is-coming screeching in the background. 

 We finally focus on a rubber hand that tries and fails to perform the perfect pirouette because it’s whisked out of frame immediately after stopping by another hand. That’s when my favorite part of this video begins because we’re taken out of the diner setup to a literal Satanic summoning of some sort. 

There’s the haloed head from earlier along with two faces on either side of it. On the left, there’s a head that looks like it just finished eating a sacrificial pig’s head left on a stick in the middle of a deserted island. On the right, the head appears to be so emotionally stunned by watching Left Head devour its sacrifice that it cannot process emotions or even contain eyes ever again. You decide which is the worse fate: becoming a bloodied monster or always witnessing what said monster does. Two rubber hands clap repeatedly and seemingly ignore the four candles set up around them. If you pause the video at the right moment, the two hands pressed together almost look like the three heads are praying for any kind of salvation and not be subjected to do this.

When the video fades out and it shows us the diner setting again, we see what I presume to be a head from Disney’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” literally wheeling out until it’s right in front of the camera. It babbles unintelligibly before a cigar teleports into its mouth and a candle transported by something made of glass lights it. They both exit stage left, but Disney head is shown to move around a faucet wheel handle before completely escaping. The faucet emits a saran wrap material that’s supposed to imitate some sort of dry water. 

One tree background, the orb of a firefly, and the buildup of a glue and bird feces combination later, we’re greeted with a wooden treasure box and music that you’d expect to find at a classy speakeasy or in a search-and-find game set in the Victorian era. The box contains three ping pong balls that seem to really enjoy literally popping out and back into their brown enclosure. Before being taken away, the balls line up and charge through the side of the box as if they’re trying to bust their way into Platform 9 and 3/4.

Yet again we meet another head, but this time it has a face, eyes, and hair. Improvement? Think again. The rims around its eyes are bloody, the eyes move independently of one another in a chameleon-like fashion, and it sounds like a pig demon possessed a sheep when it speaks. In all seriousness, this is how I’m going to picture Frankenstein’s monster from now on. The hair transforms into several different items that include a pant leg, a shoe, a metal bowl, and a video game controller. Who doesn’t want transforming hair? Sign me the heck up, that’d save me so much time in the morning and I’d never need to brush out knots again.

The next minute or so of this video is the reason why I wrote that disclaimer at the beginning of this post because it gets wild in a way I wasn’t expecting from this world. I just figured that nothing would reach the literal pipe connecting two heads while they emit muffled screams and stare at a hand spinning in a bowl while holding some sort of egg level of weird. Yes, you read that correctly. And yes, that’s what this video genuinely contains. I can’t make this crap up. If I could, I probably wouldn’t be doing this blog for free. There’s also a brief moment where a third head’s hair is removed and plasticlike water shoots out from the back of its occipital lobe- if it even has a brain. And then there’s a lovely moment where the two heads... appear to be having some sort of warbled conversation of sorts? I’m not sure that I want to know what they’re trying to say, but boy they sure do have pretty great pipes on them. Or should I say inside of them?

After a stack of wood, a variety of glass instruments, and a circle of electricity float around for a little while, the music decides that it’s time to get SERIOUS and DRAMATIC. That’s right folks, we’re talking rubber hands and heads casually maneuvering around their surroundings serious up in here. Nothing’s better than heads that come to life without a body to control or a mind to make rational thoughts happen. And who doesn’t love it when two head demons play air hockey with a tightly wound cord of pure electricity?

Hands down the most terrifying moment of this video is when the pig’s head from the book “Lord of the Flies” appears in a windowsill with two hands of its own. It screams gibberish, tries to poke your eyes out, hacks into your best friend’s Roblox account, brutally annihilates a glass bottle, and casually creates a whirlwind of chaos as it builds itself a brick wall. Maybe to save us from looking at it ever again? That’s my guess.

Before the video ends, we watch a bunch of familiar faces from previous watchings spin around until there’s a mask getting the air sucked out of it by a blood covered pipe. There’s that good ol’ electric halo above the deserted island mannequin head and then the credits roll through. Which is honestly a relief because I don’t think I can handle being around mannequins, rubber hands, or pipes for anytime in the near future thanks to this video.

Here’s the link in case you genuinely want to witness what I’ve just written about, despite how I do not under any circumstances recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjny4qNy24

[tumblunni]

Digimon World Next Order!! For once a game that ISNT a weirdly named sequel, even though it still sounds like one. 'Order Points' is the name of the revamped battle system. ^_^ Ive only been playing for about four hours but so far I'm really enjoying it! RANDOM RAMBLING ABOUT MY JOY, AHOY!

* First off, its a sequel to the original Digimon World rather than to Cyber Sleuth, so do a bit of research before you buy it, I'd say. Its more of a tamagotchi hybrid rpg than a regular turn-based one. Lots of hugging virtual pets and feeding em snacks! But this has always been my fave genre so I'm happyyyyyy~ * I named my two digimon Hershey and Zephyr cos they started off as terriermon and lopmon. But they immediately diverged off into wildly different digivolution paths instead, so now the names dont make sense XD By some grand coincidence they ended up becoming snowogremon and icedevimon at the same time, so that's what they are now! :3 my popsicle buddies! * Hershey's favourite food is mushrooms/vegetables, and Zephyr is a bit of a diva who hates everything except mineral water. Its funny since Hershey is the fragile magic user of the duo, and then we have this hulking ice shoulderblades yeti being all 'no my carbs'. DUDE WHY U GO AGAINST UR EVOLUTION REQUIREMENTS aaa but i luv u anywayyyyy * Hershey lucked out and got a super powerful technique early on by random chance, this thing that costs 700 mp to deal 700 damage, when everything else is like 50 power. And then they lucked right out of it again, cos Icedevimon cant use that move XD fifteen seconds of power as a rookie... * why do the levels mean basically nothing, yo? the game says this redvegiemon is level 3 but its stronger than the level 6 everything else in the area. Maybe the game is just dumb and levels dont take into account digivolution level? Like.. this is stronger cos its not a rookie, and they didnt even bother to make the level counter say 13 or something so the player could actually tell  Well, now i know to ignore that thing entirely and just judge on their digivolutions! * The difficulty is far lower in the actual raising aspect yet higher in battles... its weird... * Its also a shame that training no longer has unique animations! It doesnt have any animations at all, its just push button dispense stats. They did at least clear up the problem of having to walk manually between each training area and waste valuable time, now there's just one training area that contains all the different trainings in a neat quick navigation menu. But its also a bit less charming and less gamelike when its JUST menus. BUT on the other hand they did mitigate it a bit by throwing in new features like a roulette roll to get bonus stats, and a whole system of complex ways you can win an extra turn on it. (Training next to each other, training opposite skills, having max happiness, someone having just digivolved, one stat gets a bonus turn each day at random...) * Its really nice that the intro of the game has you meet your digimon partners in fully evolved mega form and have a few scenes of dialogue with them before they get poofed down to digieggs by the villain. It helps mitigate the weirdness of your partner digimon being the only digimon that cant talk! * BUT ALSO. NOW THEY TALK. !!!!!! * You get some cute random dialogue popups on the bottom of the screen as you adventure around, and each digivolution has a different set of stuff to say. Its still very minimal and can get repetitive, but its adorable and helps you get more attatched to these lil doofs! * Also its hella nice that you can now pick to play as a girl, for the first time in the tamagotchi-style digimon games! I actually think her design looks cooler than the dude, he just has a streak of blue hair while she has this awesome poisonous-looking striped ponytail that bleeds pixels as you run! Badass! * ALSO thank you for english dubbed dialogue yo. Its not perfect but then again namco bandai games rarely are XD And they included an option to have the original japanese voices if you prefer! * I missed Jijimon so much. Why he never get to appear in anything aside from this spinoff series? He was in one episode of Tamers but that was an awful cameo He has THE MOST STEREOTYPICAL grandpa voice in the english dub and i luv im * The environment design so far is a lot more basic and boring than the old ps1 game for some reason? It seems to fall prey to the usual ps4 designer logic that making stuff BIG makes it automatically good, even if its just annoyingly huge spaces to traverse with barely anything in them. And so far its just been Generic Field A, B and C, with only occasional stuff like a giant battery to let you know its the digital world. And the main town is super small now that everything training has been smooshed into one building... * Its also a lot less sandboxy and interesting to explore, and the digimon recruitment quests kinda suck. I've already found three guys and all of them were fetch quests to gather a certain amount of an item. And now you also have to gather certain amounts of an item from special gathering spots in order to actually build the new shops, which is annoying because its in these huge boring maps that you have to backtrack thru again and again * The battle system is VASTLY IMPROVED, holy SHIT! Its like they somehow read my brain?? Back when i played the first digimon world, i would always get so frustrated at the auto battle and its bad AI that i'd just mash the X button even when i had nothing to do. Somehow I thought it would make my digimon stronger. AND NOW IT ACTUALLY DOES!!! The X button has been remapped to the new cheer function, and if you cheer at the right moment you get more or less Order Points. if you use them you can manually select to use a move at the right timing, use a move without consuming MP, or use a special super move! (waaaay easier than the shoulder buttons thing in the old game) It spices up a very inactive battle system! * Oh and HELL YEAH FOR QUIDE PUZZLE SYSTEM THINGIE! In the first game you had NO WAY OF KNOWING what requirements you needed to meet for each digivolution, or what digimon could turn into what, until after you'd already unlocked it. You had to consult fanmade guides if you wanted to try 100% completion. Now the guide is an actual ingame menu where you unlock tips as rewards for various good actions as a virtual pet owner. You'll likely never unlock all the guide points for a particular digimon stage before you're already past it, unless you raise the same one a bazillion times. But the lil tips every now and then can be useful enough to help you choose which direction to take your training! Just a lil 'oh, ive already hit the HP requirement for this one? i guess I'll try and go for it!' or 'oh darn this one requires maximum deliquency, i guess i wont get it so I should try for something else'. Its useful. My only complaint is that maybe the way to unlock them could have been less random and less easy? Its just a random chance whenever they eat food/get praised after a good thing. * Ultimately so far the few bad points arent bad enough to ruin the enjoyment for me. It just seems a little soulless and rushed, maybe? But I'd enjoy literally anything in this genre, I've been waiting so long for a sequel that even if this was terrible I'd still adore it! And its far from terrible, its just a lil bland. It probably wont have as much replayability as the first game, but it still feels like it'd be fun for one playthrough! * Also, Hershey and Zephyr are my new lil best friends. SUCH A CUTE GIANT MONSTERS YES YOU IS