#it's a reference to one of the episodes where the pony goes insane for the silliest reason lol

[mindyvee]

fashion goth rarity 🍷🌙🖤 (3/6)

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High: The Seven Ep 5

Through a Glass, Darkly

Welcome back to the Temple of the Earth Defiant where the girls and their magical horses (and one pony!) have found refuge from the strange, twisted, fae creatures that have been chasing them. The statue of Asha Hammerheart that Ost animated last episode is still alive and wrecking house on the remaining harpies and beasts that are foolish enough to keep fighting and the rest soon get the hint and flee. 

Ost does some healing (boosted by the ambient Hallow effect of the temple which gives everyone a short rest) and then, seeing the damage to the temple caused by erosion, starts using Mending to fix things up. Her friends help out too with Sam and Yelle being most effective--Sam by repairing water damage and Yelle by creating tree cover and other druid-y tricks. But of course, we can’t overlook Katja’s crucial addition of carving “A Horse is a Home” into one of the walls of this sacred temple. 

Anyway, the girls are nesting super hard, the horses are having their scrapbooking reviewing club (an insane thing that was established last episode) and then Sam asks a question. Did y’all mention something about a photo of me going viral? Everyone’s like yeah, but don’t worry, you looked super hot. That’s not the part Sam was worried about. What she’s worried about and what all the girls except Zelda don’t really seem to know is that Sam doesn’t really have a social media presence. So like, 180k and climbing views (as decided by a dice roll) isn’t really what she wants. She scrolls through the comments really quick and sees that they’re not awful but one person is like, ���Hey that girl looks a lot like that character from that old show”. Which Sam doesn’t love. She says that she’s fine but also that, even without an Insight check, she’s obviously not. 

Sam kind of looks to Zelda to bail her out and Zelda is like, “Hey, I’m gonna delete this video.” The other girls follow suit, even though they don’t quite know what’s happening. When they have to split up to investigate, Sam has Zelda kind of bail her out again and they split up to go check a nest outside--Zelda waving off Danielle when she wants to go with. Ant and Yelle decide to check out a cache of some treasure they saw earlier and Ost and Katja stay with the horses to keep fixing the temple up. Penny initially goes with Ant and Yelle but rushes back to be with Ost and Kat when Ost discovers a hidden lock while she’s fixing a wall.

So, the girls are split up, let’s run all these scenes.

Antiope and Yelle

Ant and Yelle go see the pile of treasure (near the statue of dwarven paladin Yvonna) which they learn is like a “take a penny leave a penny” situation for weapons and items. They were left by adventures who were similarly chased here and you can take what you need as long as you leave something to help others. Like, “Oh no I only have an ice sword and I need flaming arrows.” It doesn’t have to be equivalent exchange, you just need to leave something useful.

In this space, Yelle feels a weird melancholy and like they’re within the watch of something vast and powerful. She tries to check for TK’s presence but rolls low. Antiope leaves her Kalvaxus killing shortsword and takes some really nice, white feather fledged arrows with mirror tips and an ax Kat wants as a present for her dad. Danielle takes a bandolier of potions (3 healing and 2 mystery I believe) and leaves a bunch of mushrooms. Some of them are psychedelic and Ant takes one because this is probably a good time to be high, right?

It’s not messing with her competence obviously though because she rolls a 25 on Primeval Awareness and gets a weird sense, like something is closing in on this place. And like something very powerful is bleeding, which combined with the chaos of the mountains might explain the weird harpies and the cat/dogs. But she’s high so she explains this is a very spacey, stoner way. Probably a good thing she’s with Yelle.

Sam and Zelda

Sam can fly and Zelda can basically walk vertically with her goat legs so they check out the nest. Well, ostensibly that’s what they’re doing. Really they’re just having a heart to heart. Sam thanks Zelda for saving her ass and apologizes profusely for being so short with her. Zelda gives her a huge mid-air hug and says it’s not a big deal because she knows Sam is just lashing out because she’s hurting but Sam says it’s not a good enough excuse and she’s truly sorry. It’s been her coping mechanism for so long but she doesn’t want to be that way. She tells Zelda that the Everpetals are divorcing and that she’s living alone and Zelda says that any one of the girls would be happy to have her stay with them. Sam further explains that this is a big part of the reason she’s been so broken up about the possibility of their group splitting up and Zelda immediately takes out her crystal and texts her “I’m in” in the thread, breaking Sam again. 

Since they’re in heart to heart mode, Sam tells her that she talked to her bio-mom and an agent and she’s not sure what to do. Zelda says that she’s gonna be spectacular no matter what she does and she doesn’t have to do any of them but it’s cool doors are opening for her but also Antiope and Penny are gonna be PISSED that she’s out here making side plans after she gave them so much shit for theirs. Lol, well it’s a nice moment in the meantime and we cut to…

Penny, Ost, and Katja 

While Penny is lockpicking (and also trying to teach one of the horses to lockpick because sure) Katja and Ost go talk to the statue of Asha Hammerheart. It seems to be animated with at least some level of her true consciousness from beyond the grave and that she can kind of woge into her statue when she wants, which is cool. She’s been there for like 250 years so that’s a lot of history to see. 

Ost is maybe the most polite we’ve ever seen her talking to Asha (at least to begin with lol) and they ask her about TK. Asha says she saw TK show up 12 years ago but she never left, at least not through the front door. And then about 2 years ago (right around when they were in the crystals) that’s when the harpy queen showed up. At first they were normal and then they started mutating. Also, recently, Korra (one of the other statues/heroes) saw a woman in the mountains--not TK. 

Ost then takes a page from the book of one St. Kristen Applebees and asks, “Hey. What’s the deal with our god? He never talks to us, does he just suck?” Asha--who has never talked to him even though she’s a martyred hero and literally in dwarf heaven makes some excuses for the guy but Katja scoffs at them. “If people wanna take care of you, they do.” Ost then straight up asks if Logran Soulforger is even real which sets Asha off but Ost isn’t mad AT her, she’s mad FOR her. You go and do all this cool shit to the point where you have this cool ass statue, you fully DIE for him and he doesn’t even say hi? With a 21 Persuasion check, Asha admits that yeah, she would have liked some recognition. She decides she’s gonna go do some talking to some people and leaves after getting Ost’s number but before they can ask more about the woman Korra saw (who they think is Charity). 

OK, that’s all the small group stuff! Everyone comes back as Penny finishes up with the lock and they go down into this room that’s full of polished, precious stones. This is probably where people who were upkeeping the temple stayed. While everyone else is going down, Sam feels some powerful magical pull--much like her episode 1 Lightning Lure--calling her from the top of the stairs so she goes back up. We’ll get back to her in a bit. 

Penny rolls a high check to clock what’s going on down here. First off, she finds flintlock bullets and airship uniform scraps which makes it seem like there was a battle here involving some airship guys from the Baronies. Which is not just the place of origin of Riz’s imaginary Romance Partner. It’s a cluster of nations known for high rates of monarchical turnover and renaissance style intrigue. I’m picturing just a nation of [REDACTED]s from Crown of Candy. 

With all of this stuff, Penny finds an emblem of a billionaire airship mogul named Lord Talcidimir Tallbreeze who is a friend of her dad’s. Yelle is immediately like FUCK billionaires which isn’t plot relevant but it’s nice to know she’s always on brand. 

Oh also, Penny just casually finds the Legendarium so that’s neat. 

To be safe, Ost casts Protection from Energy on Ant (who is the one who knows how to use it) and brings out her Spirit Guardian (who is a combo of her mom, nona, and Asha, with her dad’s rings). Ant checks it out and sees that there are currently no A, B, or C quests in all of Spyre. While Penny cross references the bylaws to see if there’s a way to get around this, Yelle does some druid BS that I still do not understand to use the crystals in the cave to jailbreak this super powerful magical Artifact so they can just have copies on their crystals. While that’s happening, let’s check on Sam. 

Sam goes back up the staircase where she sees Ending who doesn’t look menacing at all, just extremely sad. She’s looking out the mouth of the cave and, when she turns, Sam can see she’s crying blood. 

“What’s wrong?” asks Sam, the acid-tongued but good-hearted. “Can I help you?”

With a 25 Persuasion check to get her to talk, Ending apologizes for scaring her and her friends before. She didn’t mean to. She sometimes forgets that her very nature can be frightening and dangerous to others. She says that when she escaped, she tried to rejoin her sisters but found their mirrors shattered and them gone. Sam thought they escaped but that doesn’t make sense to Ending. If they had, why wouldn’t they have freed her as well?

Sam asks who her sisters were and we finally get true names for Ending and her sisters:

Chrona, Terra, Pyrria, Nira, Zefira, Anima, and herself, Talura (which is what I’ll be calling her now that we know). Talura is the baby, the youngest. Sam realizes she’s talking about the Eidolons and Talura seems surprised and a bit pleased that Sam recognizes them. 

Sam asks if she can hug her and Talura hugs her tightly in a very cold embrace that doesn’t hurt. Downstairs, she hears her friends (Penny specifically) freaking about about the lack of quests but she doesn’t break the hug. 

“My own sisters are struggling right now but I’m gonna stay with you because you don’t know where yours are. But maybe we can find them.”

Talura clocks that the way that Sam is being is her true nature, not the bitchiness she often uses as a shield. Then she starts to talk about her history. That she and her sisters were sealed away when the gods were done with them (Sam can relate to being used and set aside) and the only way out was death. Talura has been crying and looking for her sisters to no avail. Her tears of blood leaking seems to be what caused the monsters to mutate which is in line with what Yelle and Ant were sensing. 

Talura doesn’t think anything could have destroyed her sisters so she’s very confused. Sam offers Talura her Mirror of the Past because it almost knocked out Sam to get god-tier information but Talura presumably won’t have that problem. Talura offers her a boon in exchange for this great kindness but Sam says she doesn’t need any quid pro quo. “This is just because you’re hurting.”

Talura is supremely touched and still wants to do something for her new...friend? Sam accepts the title and says that what she needs is some help on her GED quest. Once she explains what she means, Talura again recognizes Aguefort and is like, Oh, you need a quest? I can totally help with that! As we learned earlier, these guys are kinda genie connected so it’s not super surprising when Talura very happily goes full your wish is my command.

Downstairs, a Class A quest suddenly appears in Spyre on the screen. 

Back upstairs, Talura says that it’s been too long since she got to grant a wish and seems really happy about it. Sam gives her the mirror so she can check what happened to her sisters but when she does, she totally flips out and gets super angry--not at Sam, just at whatever she’s looking at. She can hardly believe it. Sam tries to figure out what’s wrong but she just gets super big and then disappears into a puff of smoke, leaving Sam's mirror on the ground, covered in frost. 

Downstairs, the Class A quest expands across the entire globe and then the Legendarium cracks. Ost’s spirit guardian disappears because of alarm bells ringing in the afterlife. And the girls learn that a Class A quest is a quest that affects the whole MULTIVERSE. Yikes!

So anyway, they girls go upstairs to check on Sam (on a bear that Penny makes because sure) and they see that something clearly just happened with Sam. Yelle asks if she’s good and Sam is like yeahhhh I don’t think ANYONE is good right now. Sam seems like she’s about to cry and Antiope instantly forgets all the petty bullshit going on between them and rushes to make sure she’s not hurt. 

Sam gives the girls a rundown of what happened and Yelle concretely puts together what I said earlier about Talura’s tears messing with nature. 

Sam wants to check her mirror to see what Talura saw and Brennan says she can do it the safe way with risk of failure of the surefire way with risk of personal harm. She, of course, picks door 2 and rolls a 13 on her con save which means she rises into the air like Storm from X-Men, eyes wide, and then instantly passes out and goes into shock. Antiope is there to catch her as she does. 

Also, she looks SUPER hot while falling on a 31. Honestly, it’s a shame she doesn’t allow herself a social media presence. 

Anyway, we’ll get to what she sees in a bit. Yelle and Ant make sure she’s OK (she is, but the has to be knocked out for this or she won’t be able to handle it). 

Penny tells them what she knows about each Eidolon from her earlier research which is what element each goes with:

Chrona: Time (Related to astral and elemental planes) 

Terra: Earth

Pyrria: Fire

Nira: Water

Zefira: Air

Anima: Life

Talura: Death 

They also talk about TK never leaving via the front door and all this airship stuff being around. Maybe she left out the top of the mountain on an airship? Katja has the hookup with this Tal guy (she’s met him when she was younger) so they decide they need to check it out once Sam is good. 

The girls fix the Legendarium and Ost, when she goes to pray for her spells for the night, doesn’t pray to her usual god. She prays to Asha. And not only does she get her spells, she also gets a new one--Commune. 

And now let’s get to what Sam is seeing in her Vision Coma. 

She was told by Talura that the only way out of the mirrors given to them by the gods was death. And what Talura saw that drove her to do whatever multiverse threatening thing that she did was every one of her sisters walking out of their mirrors and choosing death. I will specifically highlight that the oldest sister leaves almost immediately with a small, “Oh,” of realization and Anima, the closest sister to her seems terrified before coming to a joyful realization and leaving.

And that’s the end of the episode! Join us next week when apparently there is talk of a masquerade ball?????? Brennan, you shouldn’t have!   

Superlatives 

Sam: Most Likely to Accidently Snag a Brand Deal

Did you guys ever read the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche? Where Psyche was born so hot that it was basically a curse and she was miserable because she was so hot that Aphrodite hated her? That’s Sam. She is incapable of almost dying in a non-aesthetic way. It’s like a Pantene commercial every time. This is my favorite running gag.

Random Thoughts

Man, I have so many feelings about Sam. She’s such a BITCH in so many ways but it’s so obvious that she has a good heart. Every time she has an opportunity to be nice with no gain--helping Lola find her dog, magically turning the pages for the horses during book club, fully refusing a boon from Talura--she does. And I’m glad she gave Zelda such a sincere apology and didn’t let the extenuating circumstances absolve her because she said some pretty uncalled for things. But at her core she’s so kind and I want only good things for her. 

Also those of you who know me from my FH recaps know I’m a messy bitch for sister stuff so Talura and Sam both referring to the other maidens as her sister had me dead. You can tell when something in this show is f’ing me up when I just start directly quoting instead of paraphrasing. 

Katja being richer than Helio but having no idea what any of the brands Ost is mentioning are is peak comedy.  

As is Ant’s response to the take and penny leave a penny translation from Ost, “No, Penny didn’t come with us.”

Ost: I get service in the afterlife.

You could really tell which of the players watched Sophomore Year because the Baronies came up and all of them went into fight or flight immediately. 

Very Elsa vibes from Sam during the top of the scene with Talura. (Sam is, of course, a better sister but we simply do not have time to get into my feelings on Frozen 2 right now).

I was wondering why this season was called just “The Seven” when it dropped initially. Like, was it snappier? Did they not want to use the word “maiden”? But they still call themselves the Seven Maidens in the show so it’s probably not that. Now I’m wondering if it’s just to parallel the 7 of them w/ the 7 Eidolons. 

So it seems clear based on the reactions of the first and sixth sisters that they didn’t just “go gently into that good night” as Ant would say and ditch Talura. It seems like they figured something out. Also Brennan isn’t really a “and then they all died, the end” kind of DM, you know? Credit to my friend @camwritery for getting here before I did but the gods said the only way out was death and she is death so you know? Those def seem like puzzle pieces that go together. 

The only crit rolled this episode is a 1 by Penny which she gets to reroll as a halfling. 

[ordinaryschmuck]

Top 20 BEST Animated Series of the 2010s-7th Place

>Insert long exaggerated sigh here<

It’s here that I really, really, REALLY hope nobody that I know personally is reading these.

(Also, sorry that this was a day late)

#7-My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010-2019)

The Plot: In the land of Equestria, a unicorn named Twilight Sparkle moves to a happy little town called Ponyville to learn about the magic of friendship. There, she meets her best friends Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. Together they’ll do what most friends do. Which is to sing songs, defeat creatures who seek to destroy everything, and learn that friendship truly is magic.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Hell, I knew what you were thinking before I even explained the plot: “Isn’t this just a show for little girls that twenty-year-old losers fell in love with? How is this in the top 10?!” Now I’ll be the first to admit, there was a time when I didn’t get it either. When I heard that a fanbase grew around a My Little Pony reboot, I thought people were losing their minds. But, on one fateful day in 2014, my curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to watch ONE episode that seemed interesting to me. Unfortunately, it was the first episode in season two, and I had no idea what was going on within the first few minutes. So then I decided to watch the entirety of season one and then ONLY watch that episode in season two. And the episode after that because apparently, it was a two-parter. And then I watched the next episode after THAT because it also seemed interesting to me, plus the episode after that, for no reason other than I just wanted to. And then I watched all the rest of the series until the season four finale. And the two spin-off movies called Equestria Girls and Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks. Soon, I found myself reading fan-fiction, writing fan-fiction, looking at fanart, and even reading these spin-off comics that aren’t even canon, but I just couldn’t leave this magical world because it TOOK ALMOST A WHOLE YEAR FOR THE FIFTH SEASON TO PREMIER! ALL BECAUSE I JUST WANTED TO WATCH AN EPISODE WHERE A CHAOS CREATURE MENTALLY BROKE OUR MANE CHARACTERS! AND YES! I DID WRITE MANE INSTEAD OF MAIN BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS SHOW DOES TO YOU! IT MAKES YOU SO ACCUSTOMED TO THE WRITING AND LINGO, THAT’S WITHIN BOTH THE SHOW AND IT’S INSANE FANDOM, THAT YOU’LL END UP CATCHING YOURSELF FROM SAYING MANEHATTAN INSTEAD OF MANHATTAN!

>SCREAMS WITH INSANITY<

…

So as you can tell, this show is surprisingly good once you get infested.

The biggest hook it has is the animation. While it doesn’t beat The Amazing World of Gumball’s quality, it is pretty impressive when considering that it’s all done in flash animation. Most flash animated cartoons tend to look cheap and slow, and Friendship is Magic is thankfully one of the rare exceptions. The movements are insanely smooth, and the facial expressions are pretty comical to look at. Even in the background of scenes, viewers will notice a lot of little jokes the animators put in. Seriously, the biggest reason why I kept watching the series for so long was that it was nice to look at (which is the case for most people, from what I’ve heard). And the best part? The animation somehow gets better with each passing season. And only 0.1% of the time does it show it’s cheapness, which isn’t that big of a deal considering there are two hundred and thirty-two episodes with a twenty-two-minute runtime. That’s nearly five thousand, one hundred, and four hours of animation that’s good for 99.9% of the time. While you could argue that it’s not the best, it is still pretty good animation quality.

Another thing that drew me in was the comedy. Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean Friendship is Magic is the funniest show on the list (that also goes to Gumball). Humor is subjective, and just because I found myself laughing with this series, that doesn’t mean everyone will be on the same page. That being said, I was surprised by the fact that I found the show funny in the first place. It’s hard to pinpoint what type of humor the show relies on (for me, at least). For some cases, Friendship is Magic has dialogue-based jokes that use smart or random lines to get a laugh out of audiences. Other times it's visual humor that requires slapstick or comical facial expressions that will make people laugh. But while its comedy falls between two different spectrums, that doesn’t change the fact that I find myself losing it every once in a while. Even during some of the worst episodes of Friendship is Magic, there’s at least one line or gag that got me to chuckle at least once.

However, both the animation and the comedy cannot top the main selling point of this series: The characters. Friendship is Magic might just have one of the biggest cast of characters out of any show on this list. Most of them manage to be funny, relatable, and are downright likable to watch. What’s even more astonishing is how well this show handles character growth. To be fair, there can be certain characters whose development is slow, but for the most part, everybody grows significantly with each new lesson they’ve learned. There are even moments when the characters say something along the lines of “I’m no longer that pony I used to be anymore because I finally learned how to change.” However, this doesn’t mean that every pony in the show is worth the time. There are a few unlikeable characters, but they’re either meant to be unlikable, forgotten after an episode’s end, or are redeemed after a triumphant return.

This is good because it’s the characters that make the stories in the show work. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is split into two different storytelling genres: Slice of life comedy and adventure fantasy. And unlike Steven Universe, it’s Friendship is Magic that mixes both these genres together perfectly. I’m not joking when I say that an episode where Twilight rekindles an old friendship can be just as intriguing as an episode where Twilight fights this soul-sucking centaur made to look like the devil. Hell, some fans even argue that the slice of life episodes are even better than the adventurous episodes. Because while the adventure episodes are cool and action-packed, it’s the slice of life episodes where the characters are allowed to grow the most and are actually given time to be themselves. As for the grand adventures, while their fun to see, the cast is forced to stick to their central personality traits to move the plot forward.

Unfortunately, as fun as this show can be, I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it. Not because there are elements that I think are bad, but because there are elements that might turn people away from watching. And the most significant repulse this show has is also the most important hook.

Yes, the characters in this show are great, but there’s also a lot of them. Some might even say too many. By season nine alone, there are a total of twenty-seven different characters that have the possibility of taking/sharing the spotlight in an episode. And that’s not even counting important figures, recurring antagonists, supporting characters, and even recognizable background ponies (yes, that’s a thing). Because if you want to add those to the mix, you’ve got yourself a total of one hundred and twenty-seven characters (give or take). That is one hundred and twenty-seven different names, faces, and personalities to try to keep track of. Luckily the personalities are easy enough to remember, and it’s mostly the most (in)famous figures that make a return. Even for some of the obscure characters, the show is kind enough to give a brief recap so the audience can get caught up. However, this is reasonably a lot to take in for a casual viewer. Case in point, in season eight, the show decided to add six new characters to the main cast, and it only took me a season and a half to learn their names correctly. It’s even worse since these “new” characters can sometimes feel like carbon copies of the Mane Six (Yes, that’s how the main six characters in the show are referred to as. Deal with it).

And the excessive amount of unnecessary characters are just one issue to deal with. The lessons that the show teaches are another. Before I say anything, I want to clarify that this show has fantastic lessons it teaches kids. In fact, there are even great lessons that are perfect for adults and only adults (know your audience, I guess). However, here’s the thing about morals: Not everyone will share the same view on what’s good and bad to teach children. Every person on this planet has their own life experiences, and with those experiences come different ideas of how the world works. One person can believe that a lesson is good, where others view it as awful and potentially dangerous. Things get especially bad when specific morals are misinterpreted or taken too literally. The best example is the episode “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep.” I believe that there are two possible lessons within the episode. One is that to truly be forgiven, a person must seek forgiveness from themselves and others. The other conceivable moral is that the cure for self-destruction is to get over it and move on without any professional help whatsoever. Now, take a wild guess on which lesson gets talked about more. And in all honesty, I blame poor/rushed writing that causes specific morals to be muddled, as well as a person’s own life experience in whether or not you find an episode’s lesson to be intriguing or insulting.

Another thing that depends on one’s own personality is (kinda spoilers ahead) how this show handles reformations. I may have commented on how Steven Universe uses redemption poorly, but it’s even worse in Friendship is Magic. This show seems to have the idea that the transition from bad to good is as simple as flipping a light switch. Now, on the one hand, this is not something I should be mad about. The show’s title is Friendship is Magic. So, of course, the series would push that making friends will lead to peace and prosperity. Where making enemies will lead to war and violence. The problem is that from a storytelling standpoint, it isn’t that entertaining. Or, at the very least, not as much as it should be. The art of a good reformation is taking the time for the transition to be believable. Characters suddenly deciding to become good seemingly out of nowhere will do nothing but have audiences rip their hair out of frustration. It doesn’t help that most of the villain’s reasoning and backstories are pretty pathetic when they actually should be sympathetic. However, while the reformation itself can be frustrating, I personally think some characters are made more intriguing post redemption. Don’t get me wrong, these villains were great as they were, being the perfect mix of both funny and terrifying. But when the show actually allows characters to grow and deserve the hand-er-hoof of friendship, they begin to have more fascinating personalities to dissect. Now, not everyone is going to feel this way. And if you genuinely believe these villains were better as villains, I can absolutely see why. But for me, I’ve come to enjoy how far these ex-cons have come from their more evil days. 

But none of this compares to the final controversial element that this show has to offer, where there is a fifty/fifty chance that you’re either going to love it or hate it. I, of course, am talking about...the songs. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has four different types of songs. Depending on the episode, these musical numbers have many purposes. They can move the story forward, only work within the episode’s context, try to one-up Disney, and reveal everything you need to know about a character. Now here’s the thing about the music: I don’t hate it. I’ll admit that the lyrics are pretty lackluster most of the time, but at least most of them sound pleasing to my ears. But I have heard how some people seem to hate these little numbers, and I’m willing to put money on that fans even skip them. Everybody has their own tastes in music, and there’s nothing I can do to convince them otherwise. Only respect their opinions and hope they do the same to mine.

In the end, your enjoyment of this series, once again, depends on who you are. Some of you might think this is a dumb kid's show that should only be viewed by children. Some of you will understand that this show has great characters, comedy, and animation, but you just don’t think it’s for you. And some of you might be like me. A person overwhelmed with curiosity over the weirdest phenomenon in the last eleven years and ended up being pleasantly surprised with how magical the show turned out to be.

(And just a heads up, you don’t have to watch the Equestria Girls spin off series or movies in order to enjoy Friendship is Magic. EG isn’t technically canon, and the only noteworthy thing that makes it worthwhile is Sunset Shimmer. And while I personally don’t hate it, I completely understand how others will. But you do need to see My Little Pony: The Movie (2017), though. It surprisingly plays a big part in season 8 and beyond.)

[tfmaster96]

TFmaster analyses- “is discord responsible for creating cozy Glow?”

Greetings all! Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while, turns out it’s much harder escaping from the soul realm than anticipated. (See my post ‘can the matrix of leadership defeat the infinity gauntlet’ for context) but I found my way out, it’s a new year and I’m ready to continue rambling about insane theories and speculations! On today’s list: my little pony! In particular, one of it’s villains: cozy Glow. Now, with the series having reached its conclusion & a lot of questions left unanswered, I figured it would be a good idea to share my theory on at least one with where exactly this little criminal mastermind came from. So the first thing to take into consideration is ‘how?’ How exactly is discord responsible for cozy’s creation? Mind control. We’d seen him do it before all the way back in season two and something about cozy’s behavior strikes me as being very similar to how discord’s mind control works. Now, that leads to a bit of a problem, with discord being reformed. But I think the answer is that it took place before said reformation. Particularly, back in season three. My theory being that it happened in season three when he was released from his stone prison. He was seen trying to turn the main six against each other by getting fluttershy on his side and using the others distrust of him to force them to break apart, rendering the elements of harmony useless. We know part of his plan involved spreading a small amount of chaos -enough to grab everyone’s attention- and make them have to decide on what to do with him. So we can probably assume in order to get things started he would have to go out on his own without supervision, which again we see in the episode. The other thing we know is he’s afraid of the elements and what they can do to him. He learned his lesson (like siro) after his first encounter with them and has nooo desire let it happen again. So would it not make sense for him to have a backup plan for in case his first failed? Have a way to free himself from his prison? Me thinks this might be the case. The back up plan being: find an inconspicuous pawn to take under his control- say, an innocent looking young filly (nobody suspects children)- task them with finding a way to de-power the elements should he end up back in stone and free him. The next question then would be ‘why didn’t he change her back after he decided to change his ways?’ Simply put: he forgot. We saw in ‘princess twilight Sparkle’ that he didn’t recall planting the plunderseeds until after they had started growing into vines & attacking ponyville, and while it might be true that he did know but didn’t bother to say anything in order to teach a lesson- he still never bothered to dig them up in the intervening time. So I’m gonna say he forgot up until he saw them in person. And if he could forget about one failed scheme, it’s very possible he could have forgotten another. But then why not restore cozy after being reminded who she is? We know he knew about her in season nine. Because he needed her in order to set up one last test for twilight. He admitted that was the reason for bringing back all the villains he could in the finale. But what about after the finale? There was plenty of time after. Well, considering how angry everyone was at him for the stunt he pulled, I’m guessing he wasn’t to interested in telling everyone how much further his mistake went. So covers discord’s involvement, but what of cozy herself? What if she really was just a power hungry villain the whole time? I’ve heard some of the theories surrounding her, but looking at the evidence myself... some parts just don’t add up. The first being her behavior on screen. A lot of her ‘good deeds’ presented in the show were established as her manipulating those around her for her plans, but she does still seem to put a genuine effort into establishing a connection between her, tirek and chrysalis. Plus, she kinda goes out of her way to do kind things if this is just part of her scheme (perhaps this her true self peeking through?) . And if you still got doubts, then I’d refer you back to an instance during her first appearance. After the reveal that cozy didn’t get into twilight’s school and seeing the CMC’s getting blamed, she has a moment of regret over her actions. She could have been seen faking it, but why? there was no one around to see her. Best I could think is ‘that was a moment to confuse the audience’, but that still doesn't make sense why it was done in story if cozy was in fact meant to just be a megalomaniac. Second thing that confuses me is her motivation. How in the inferno does a child just up and legitimately try to take over the world? This may be a cartoon we’re talking about, but a certain amount of real world logic must still apply. After all, every other child character on the show has tended to act like- you know- kids. Like in real life. Now, true, starlight had plans of world domination from an early age but it’s implied she didn’t have the means to enact those plans until she was an adult. It also doesn't seem likely a child would be able to acquire all that would be necessary to conquer the world. And even then, where would that kind of motivation come from?? We know what starlight’s deal was, but what kind of motivation would cozy have? Is her mom the mane-iac or something (side note: awesome idea for a fanfic)? Lastly, her goal isn’t very consistent. Starting with trying to rid equestria of all magic (her mission), once that fails she joins grogar/discord’s villain team and ends by trying to take all the power for herself. if she wanted power, why not just take it in the beginning? she says explicitly in the season 8 finale that her plan was to rid equestria of magic, so the plan to take it for herself later doesn't add up. except, maybe if there was some kind of mind control spell messing with her mind. Maybe she broke away from discord’s control enough that she’s not following his instructions anymore. Maybe without that she’s left with a drive to take over the world, but no clear direction on how. And maybe her off putting acts of kindness are signs of who she really is. Or maybe I’m full of slag, but what do you think? dose this make sense or am I just insane (like the joker. which -much like endgame- is another movie I haven’t seen yet)? Either way, I hope you’ve enjoyed and sorry if this one’s a bit late. TFmaster out and glad to be back!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

2010s Art: Music, Games, and TV

So I love all forms of art. It may not seem like it since I tend to stick mainly to movies, with the odd cartoon or video game thrown in, but that’s really because movies are more my thing due to not being massive time investments. Like, don’t get me wrong, I gamed, I watched TV, I listened to music, but it was a lot more casual than my deep dive into becoming a major cinephile.

With games and TV, it was mostly issues of money and time respectively. I have a few consoles, mostly Nintendo and Sony ones, and my wife helped me experience Xbox games, but I just don’t have the money needed to experience every good game that comes out. With TV, the time investment is the biggest roadblock, especially when all the best shows have hour-long episodes these days. With movies, I just have to spend 90 minutes to two hours on average; for TV, it’s countless hours I could be watching movies. As for music… well, I listened to a lot, I just don’t feel totally qualified to properly rank and list songs and albums.

So instead of the big decade-spanning list for movies that I’m doing, I’m going to go over some things I enjoyed from the past decade and maybe a few things I didn’t in music, TV, and video games. Here’s a little guide so you know what stuff is something I consider one of my absolute favorites in any given medium - if it’s from this decade, it will be in bold, and if it’s from a previous decade but I experienced it this decade, it will be underlined.

Television

I figured I’d get this out of the way first since it’s the medium I have the least experience with. Let me put it this way: I have seen only one season of Game of Thrones, the first one (and by all accounts I dodged a bullet by dropping that show). I also had the misfortune of jumping in to The Walking Dead right as it was gearing up for its abysmal second season, which turned me off that and led to me only watching an episode here or there. 

I had better luck watching live action shows on streaming. I managed to get through almost all of Pretty Little Liars on Netflix, which was a chore in and of itself; it’s a good show, but boy could it ever get arbitrary and frustrating. Speaking of Netflix, I think it goes without saying that Stranger Things is their best effort; from the likable cast of kids to the awesome soundtrack, even though it never really surpasses season one the show always has something cool going on in one of its plots. My other favorite from Netflix would probably be their take on A Series if Unfortunate Events, which is how you do adaptation expansion right; everything they add feels like it’s in service of fleshing out Lemony Snicket’s dismal world, as well as giving Patrick Warburton an incredible dramatic role as the Lemony narrator himself.

Amazon managed to score two hits in my book. The first is the unbelievably fun and charming Good Omens, a miniseries that somehow got me to love David Tennant and Michael Sheen more than I already did. The second was the gory joyride that is The Boys which while not the smartest or most original superhero satire is definitely the most fun.

While I didn’t watch the whole show and would not consider it one of my favorites, I do want to give props to Hannibal for introducing me to Mads Mikkelsen. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the only person aside from Hopkins worthy of playing everyone’s favorite cannibal. Another show I DO consider a favorite despite slacking on keeping up with it is Ash vs. Evil Dead; I only needed to see a single season of Bruce back with the boomstick to know this show was a masterpiece.

On the animated side I have much more to talk about. Not since the 90s have we been spoiled with so many genuinely great and varied cartoons. We got Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe… really, Cartoon Network raised the bar this decade and made up for an awful 2000s. They even finally gave Samurai Jack a conclusion, which despite the mixed results, was still a real exciting phenomenon to experience.

Of course, my favorite CN show came from Adult Swim. I am of course referring to Rick & Morty, a fun sci-fi adventure comedy that attracted the most obnoxious fanbase possible in record time. While certainly not a show you need a high IQ to understand and having an atrocious third season, it still manages to be funny and thought provoking in equal amounts. Seriously though. Fuck season 3.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is another great show that I sadly fell off the wagon of around the fifth or sixth season. It never got bad of course but it never really engaged me like the older episodes, though what I’ve heard of the last season makes me wish I’d kept up with it. It was a great show with a lot of heart and character, and I’m not sure we’ll ever see a show like it again.

Netflix did not slack in the animation department; I didn’t catch their most famous show (it’s the one about a certain Horseman) but I did catch their fantastic take on Castlevania, which as a huge fan of the series was a real treat. Where the fuck is Grant though?

My two favorite shows of the decade, however, are what I see as the pinnacle of East and West: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and Gravity Falls. 

JJBA is a series I had vague passing knowledge of, only knowing its existence due to seeing Stone Ocean referenced on the Wikipedia page for air rods when I was younger and, of course, the memes that spawned from Heritage for the Future, which were inescapable back in the day. As soon as I got into the series, it became one of my biggest inspirations, teaching me you can be deep, complex, and filled with great character interactions while also being so batshit insane that every new and absurd power is incredibly easy to buy (looking forward to the rainbows that turn people into snails, animators). They managed to get through the first four parts and start up the fifth over the decade; so far my favorite part is four, mainly due to the magnificent bastard that is Yoshikage Kira (played time perfection by D.C. Douglas) and in spite of serial creep Vic Mangina playing the otherwise lovable asshole Rohan Kishibe.

Gravity Falls on the other hand is just a fun and engaging mystery show that manages to excel at being episodic and story-driven all at once. There’s only one or two “bad” episodes across two seasons, and it lasted just as long as it needed to, wrapping things up with a satisfactory ending that still gave fans a few mysteries to chew on. It also gave us Grunkle Stan, perhaps the greatest character in all of animation, the pinnacle of “jerk with a heart of gold” characters who is hilarious, badass, and complex all at once. This is my favorite western animated show…

...but then the last year of the decade threw a curveball and, if I’m being honest, is on par with Gravity Falls: Green Eggs and Ham. Netflix really wanted us to know 2D animation is back in 2019; between this show and Klaus, the future is looking bright for the medium. It’s a fun, funny roadtrip comedy that knows when to be emotional and when to be funny, and it’s all filtered through the wubbulous world of Dr. Seuss. It’s just a wonderfully delightful show.

And on the subject of JoJo, I had a kind of love-hate relationship with anime this decade. The attitudes of anime fans turned me off from anime for a long while. Sure, I checked out stuff like Attack on Titan and Sword Art Online, but neither series really clicked with me. The main anime I loved this decade were ones that started in the 2000s and ended in the 2010s, like Dragon Ball Z Kai and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I suppose I did enjoy My Hero Academia, which is a really fun show with an awesome and varied cast and great voice acting. Love Froppy, best girl for sure.

One of the most unfortunate things about this decade was how many great shows got screwed over by their networks. Sym-Bionic Titan, Thundercats, and The Legend of Korra were all great shows in their own right but were treated like shit by their respective networks. It really makes me upset that stuff like that not only happened, but continues to happen to this day.

But let’s not end on a bad note; let’s talk about the astounding returns old shows got. Invader Zim got a movie as did Hey Arnold, with the latter in particular finally wrapping up the dangling plot threads, but those are actual TV movies so they don’t really fit here; what DOES fit is Static Cling, the triumphant return of Rocko’s Modern Life. A forty minute special, it follows Rocko and his friends as they navigate the modern age, trying to bring back Rocko’s favorite cartoon. Rachel Bighead’s arc in this in particular is pretty groundbreaking and awesome. 

Also awesome was the first few episodes of Samurai Jack’s return, though it did end up petering out halfway through the season and ended on an anticlimactic note. Still, Tom Kenny’s Scaramouche, the sheer amount of continuity, and the awesome final curbstomp battle against Aku are worth giving this a watch. And if nothing else, stuff like this gives me hope for future revivals. What will we see next? Gargoyles comeback? Batman Beyond continuation? KENNY AND THE CHIMP REVIVAL?! Chimpers rise up!

Music

Much like everyone, I listened to a lot of music this decade. There was a lot of shit, and I definitely used to be one of those “wow no one makes good music anymore” morons, but I grew out of that and learned to look in the right places.

Let’s start with the albums I loved the most. Continuing her meteoric rise from the 2000s, Lady Gaga drooped her magnum opus, Born This Way, an album that successfully showcases her skills as she takes on numerous pop styles. No two songs sound the same, and with a couple of exceptions every song slaps. While we’re on the subject of pop stars, Gaga’s contemporary and lesser Katy Perry managed to hit a home run with the fun bit of pop fluff that was Teenage Dream.

Weird Al was sorely missed for most of the decade, but what albums he did drop featured some of his best work. While Alpocalypse doesn’t hold up quite so well, it’s still solid, but even then it is blown out of the water by Mandatory Fun, an album that just refuses to stop being funny from start to finish. And that’s not the only funny albums this decade; aside from artists I’ll get more into later, George Miller AKA Filthy Frank released Pink Season as one of his last great acts as his character of Pink Guy. The album is as raunchy and filthy as you’d expect. And then for unintentional comedy, Corey Feldman dropped Angelic 2 The Core, an album so musically inept that it ends up becoming endearing; it’s The Room of music.

As I gamed a lot this decade I got to experience a lot of great video game soundtracks, but the two I found to be the absolute best were Undertale and Metal Gear Rising’s. I couldn’t tell you which soundtrack is better, and I’ve actually made a playlist on my iPod containing my favorite tracks from both games. Pokemon had solid soundtracks all decade, but they definitely were better in single tracks such as Ultra Necrozma’s theme from USUM and Zinnia’s theme from ORAS.

And speaking of individual songs, there were a lot I really loved. The disco revival in the easel ide half of the decade lead to gems like “Get Lucky,” “Uptown Funk,” and… uh, “Blurred Lines.” The controversy to that one might be overblown, but it sure isn’t anything I really want to revisit.

Corey Feldman may be the king of unintentional comedy, but this decade was seriously ripe with so bad it’s good music. The crown jewel is without a doubt the giddy, goofy “Friday,” but I think the equally stupid but also endlessly more relatable Ark Music production “Chinese Food” is worth some ironic enjoyment as well. 

Meme songs in general were pretty enjoyable, though it came at a price. Remember when everyone tried to be funny by ripping off “Gangnam Style?” Remember when people took that Ylvis song at face value? Irony and satire were lost on the masses. I think the best mene song of the decade, though, is “Crab Rave,” a bouncy instrumental dance track with a fun music video and an absurd yet hilarious meme tacked to it. And then we have “The Internet is for Music,” a gargantuan 30 minute mashup featuring every YTMND, 4chan, Newgrounds, and YouTube meme you could think of (at the time of its release anyway),

Then we get into artists. Comedy music was great this decade, with Steel Panther and The Lonely Island putting out great work all decade, but by far my favorite funny band is Ninja Sex Party. Dan “Danny Sexbang” Avidan and Brian “Ninja Brian” Wecht are pretty much my favorite entertainers at this point, with them easily being able to go from doing goofy yet epic songs where they fuck or party to doing serious and awesome cover albums where Dan flexes his impressive vocals. A big plus is how all of their albums are easily some of my favorites ever, with not a single bad CD, and that’s not even getting into their side project Starbomb. These guys are a treasure.

Then we have Ghost, a Swedish metal band who play up the Satanic panic for all it’s worth. These guys captured my interest when I heard the beautiful “Cirice” on the radio, and despite that song rocking the fuck out, Imagine my surprise when it ended up being only middle of the road awesome for this band! With killer original songs like “Rats,” “Mary in the Cross,” and “Square Hammer” to a awesome covers like “Missionary Man” and “I’m a Marionette,” it’s almost enough to get a guy to hail Satan. I think they appeal to me mainly because they have a style very in line with the 80s, most evident on tracks like “Rats.” 

While I’d hesitate to call him one of my favorite musicians yet (he is really good so far though), one of my favorite people in entertainment is Lil Nas X. From his short but sweet songs that crush genre boundaries to his hilarious Twitter feed, this guy is going places and I can’t wait to see what those places are.

And finally, the guy I think may be one of the greatest creative geniuses alive and who has nearly singlehandedly shaped Internet culture with everything he does… Neil Cicierega. While it’s not like I only discovered him in the 2010s - the guy has been an omnipresent force in my life since Potter Pupper Pals debuted - he definitely became the guy I would unflinchingly call the greatest artist of our time over that period.   Whether he’s releasing the songs under his own name or as Lemon Demon, you can always be sure that the songs are going to burrow into your brain. His Lemon Demon album Spirit Phone, which features songs about urban legends and the horrors of capitalism, is easily my pick for album of the decade. And then under his own name he released three mashup mixtapes: Mouth Sounds, Mouth Silence, and Mouth Moods. All three are stellar albums, but only Mouth Moods has “Wow Wow,” the bouncing track about homoerotic bee-loving Will Smith and outtakes so good they deserve to be on the next album.

Video Games 

Having a PC this decade was great because it let me experience a lot of games I probably wouldn’t have otherwise, like Half-Life, BioShock, Earthnound, Mother 3, and Final Fantasy VI and VII. All of these and more are among my favorite games of all time now, but we’re here to talk about the stuff from this decade I consider great.

It’s hard to talk about this decade in gaming without mentioning Skyrim. Yes, it has flaws and the main storyline is a bit undercooked, but there’s so much fun to be had dicking about in the wilderness it’s hard to be too mad. And if you have mods, there are endless opportunities to expand the game. The same is true for the other game I have sunk countless hours into, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Not only is there a thriving modding community, but it has been supported and encouraged by the creators and some mods have even made the leap into becoming fully canon! It’s always a blast to revisit and see how far I can break the game with item combos.

Surprisingly, Batman managed to get not one, not two, but THREE awesome licensed games this decade! Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and the unfairly maligned Arkham Origins all kick as much ass as the Dark Knight himself. The former two reunite Mark Hamill and Kevin McConroy as Joker and Batman while the latter features numerous stellar boss battles. The combat in these games is so graceful and fluid, you WILL feel like Batman at some point, be it after flawlessly clobbering two dozen mooks or silently eliminating a room of thugs before they even realize you’re there.

Pokémon had a bit of a rocky decade; it started out strong with the fifth generation, the best games in the series with a great story, region, and sidequests and then just went downhill from there. Not incredibly so, of course - the games were always fun at least - but gens VI through VIII were not the most graceful steps into 3D. Still, every gen managed to produce some of my all-time favorite Pokémon. Gen V had Volcarona, Chandelure,  and Meloetta; Gen VI gave us Hoopa, Klefki, the Fairy type in general, and a gorgeous mega evolution for my favorite Pokémon, Absol; Gen VII had the Ultra Beasts and Ultra Necrozma, some of the coolest concepts in the series, as well as Pyukumuku; and Gen VIII gave us Cinderace, Dracovish, Dracozolt, Polteageist, Hatterene, Snom, and Zacian. And those are just samplings mind you, these gens are full of hits.

Bringing back old franchises yielded amazing results. Look no further than the triumphant return of Doom in 2016, which had you ripping and tearing through the forces of Hell with guns, chainsaws, and your bear fucking hands. This game is HARDCORE. Less bloody and gory but no less awesome was the return of not just Crash Bandicoot, but Spyro as well in remakes that are easily the definitive ways to experience the games. And don’t even get me started on the remastered DuckTales!

Platinum games did not fuck around this decade, delivering Bayonetta 2 and Metal Gear Rising. The former is a balls-to-the-wall sequel to the amazing original Bayonetta that, while lacking in bosses quite as impressive as the first game’s, is more polished and has a fun story and a better haircut for Bayonetta; the latter is an action game so insane it makes the rest of the Metal Gear franchise look tame in comparison. The latter in particular is in my top ten games ever, with every boss battle feeling epic, all the music kicking ass, and Raiden truly coming into his own as a badass.

Speaking of Metal Gear, the divisive The Phantom Pain easily earns its place here. While much fuss has been made about the game being “unfinished,” it still has a complete and satisfying ending even if it doesn’t totally wrap up the dangling plot threads the young Liquid Snake leaves behind. The overarching themes as well as Venom and his relationship with characters like Kaz, Paz, and ESPECIALLY Quiet make this game, with his and Quiet’s being particularly beautiful and tragic. The Paz quest, Quiet’s exit, and the mission where Snake has to put down his men after they get infested with parasites are all some of the most heartbreaking moments in the franchise. But it’s not all tears; there’s plenty of fun to be had harassing Russians in Afghanistan while blaring 80s synth pop from your Walkman. Oh yeah, and fuck Huey.

The Ace Attorney series also thrived, with both Spirit of Justice and Dual Destinies transitioning the series into 3D a lot more graceful than some other franchises while still maintaining the with and charm the series is known for. And if that wasn’t enough for my point-and-cluck adventure needs, Telltale had me covered with The Wolf Among Us and the first season of The Walking Dead. The stories and characters of those games are so good, it’s enough to make you sad they never got a timely sequel or sequels that weren’t shit respectively.

This decade is when I really got into fighting game, though I’m not particularly good. I supported Skullgirls (and am even in the credits!), and got into Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle (and I also got into its spiritual predecessor, Heritage for the Future). But by and large my favorite fighting game of the decade and the one I’m actually pretty good at is Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the most ridiculously ambitious crossover in video game history. The fact that the game is STILL getting more characters added is a testament of how insanely great the game is because instead of being mad that there’s so much DLC, people are going rabid waiting for news of more. It’s such an awesome, complete game out the door that the DLC feels earned rather than half a game being held hostage. Other devs, take note!

A lot of franchises put their best foot forward for sequels. God of War III was an awesomely bloody finale to the original journey of Kratos, with more epic bosses than ever; now he’s off fighting Norse gods, and I hear that game is even better! Portal 2 is just an absolute blast, and easily surpasses the first game on the merit of having Cave Johnson alone; the fact we get Wheatley and the malfunctioning personality cores honestly feels like overkill. Then we have BioShock… 2. While it’s certainly not as good as the first game, I think it was a lot of fun, and it got way too much flak.

 I think it definitely aged better than Infinite which, while still a good game in its own right (it’s hard to hate a game with a character as endearing as Elizabeth), definitely was not warranting the levels of acclaim it got with such a muddled narrative. “Overrated” and “overhyped” are not words I keep in my vocabulary and I certainly would not describe Infinite as such, but I do feel like people got swept up in the gorgeous visuals and the story bits and characters that are effective and so weren’t nearly as critical of its flaws. It’s still a good, fun game with an interesting world, but it pales in comparison to the other two BioShocks. I feel like The Last of Us is in a similar boat. That being said, I couldn’t tell you why; it has a great story, good characters, plenty of replayability, and fascinating enemy design. But despite all that, I appreciate this game more than love it. It’s the Citizen Kane of video game sin that regard at least.

I’d be remiss to not mention the big indie successes of the decade. Shovel Knight is easily one is the greatest platform era ever made, taking everything great about the platformers on the NES and SNES, removing the bullshit, and delivering numerous bonus campaigns with unique playstyles. Then there was Abobo’s Big Adventure, a marvelous mashup of all sorts of games starring the beloved Double Dragon mook as he goes on a bloody quest to save his son. It’s a blast and there is tons of variety but some sections are definitely as hair-pullingly difficult as the games that inspired them. And then there is Doki Doki Literature Club, the free visual novel that brutally subverts your expectations. Sadly, I do feel the game loses some impact on subsequent playthroughs, but it’s still a great, effective story that skillfully utilizes meta elements.

Still, the greatest indie success of them all is Toby Fox’s masterpiece, Undertale. Charming, funny, emotional, and populated by a cast of some of the most fun and lovable characters ever conceived, this game was an instant smash and is still talked about to this day. Sure, things like Sans have been memed to death, but it’s hard to not just love and cherish the beautiful world Toby Fox managed to create. This game may not be the greatest game of all time, but for what it is I wouldn’t hesitate to name it the game of the decade.

There was a lot of great art in the 2010s, and while I couldn’t get around to all of it, I’m so happy with what I got to experience. Here’s hoping that the 2020s can be just as amazing!

[hufflepuff-ravenclaw-reviews]

Supergirl Season 4 Review

I know that in the previous seasons, I've been doing what the different characters have been doing, but I think that maybe I'll just kind of gloss over the individual episodes and point out the important parts.

E01

J'onn has joined a support group for aliens, that focuses on things like helping them adjust to life on earth. A lot of them struggle with their physical differences from humans and often hide them with the cloaking device thing that Lena made in the previous season (originally for Brainy, but then she started mass-producing it for everybody). This leads to a lot of alien-based hate crimes... of which Kara is first to dismiss some of them, but it eventually get to the point where not even she can deny the fact.

This leads to two of this seasons big bads, Marcy and Otis, who are going around and terrorizing aliens. Not only that, but they appear to be at the forefront of a new “humans first” movement that's cropping up.

They try to attack the POTUS, who if you'll remember from previous seasons, is an alien. However, their attack wasn't so much to kill her, but rather, to expose her as an alien. Which they did.

And speaking of Brainy, he's obviously still sticking around as the “replacement goldfish” for Winn (we'll get back to that in a moment), but he's having a hard time adjusting to life in the 21st century. Mainly because he's used to being part of the League, but now he's under Alex's command, and she... doesn't like him running off and doing whatever he pleases, to the point where she “grounds” him. At one point, Brainy puts on some clothes like Winn used to wear (tight plaid button-downs and a cardigan), and he plays with a NERF gun, as a way for Alex to maybe see him more like Winn. However, both of them are quick to agree that Brainy needs to be Brainy, and leave the Winn stuff to Winn. So, you know... at least they didn't completely “replacement goldfish” Winn.

Meanwhile, we introduce a new character: Nia Nal. (My precious cinnamon roll.) She's a new reporter for CatCo, and James asks that Kara take Nia under her wing. And as Kara is quick to realize 1) Nia is basically a baby Kara and 2) Kara has turned into Cat Grant.

Oh, and James is in super awful legal trouble for his vigilante justice as Guardian. (Which, okay. So the pretty blonde alien gets to do it, but the second that the black human does kind of the same thing, suddenly, that's not okay?)

E02

Due to having been exposed, the alien POTUS steps down amidst growing tensions; Vice President Baker takes over. We will be seeing a LOT of him in the rest of the season.

And it's not just in the White House and in DC where tensions are rising... factions of “human first” movements are popping up all over the place, including in the DEO.

Meanwhile, while Brainy goes to get pizzas from a place he likes, his image inducer goes on the fritz... Thanks to Marcy and Otis hacking into L-Corp's servers (they went after client 001, which is Brainy, as I might have mentioned earlier). The pizza shop owner gets angry and upset upon finding out that “Barney” is an alien, and it's only thanks to Nia randomly showing up around the same time that the situation is diffused without... too much violence. Brainly obviously wants to thank Nia for her help, and she promises him that if they're meant to meet again, then they will. (HAHAHAHAHA OH MY SWEET SUMMER CHILDREN.) Brainy later expresses to Alex how the incident shook him so much that he gave Supergirl/Kara bad advice in the field; it's thrown him off his game.

Both of them are obviously shaken from the incident. Nia goes back to CatCo, where she tells James that he needs to make a public statement about what's going on. However, being not only a journalist, but also Guardian (and all of that legal trouble he's been in recently...), it's not exactly the best time to make splashy statements.

Marcy then attempts to steal sometime from L-Corp, which leads to her being captured. In the DEO, she then “seduces” a guard over to the “human” side, to fight for their growing army. When Otis is captured, the guard then helps both of them escape. Once they're free, the three of them set off a kryptonite bomb.

J'onn meanwhile goes to a rally of a group that will later be known as “Agents of Liberty”. (I hope that it goes without saying that J'onn is the only black person in the room. Most of them look like trailer trash. I think that we all know what this is a reference of...)

E03

There's a backdrop of this episode about Kara being treated for the kryptonite by the DEO, but it's not the central point of this episode. (Mainly because it would be largely showing Alex worrying over Kara while Brainy and Lena work on getting the air clean.)

Instead, this episode goes back two years ago, to this season's second-largest big bad: Ben Lockwood. Like a lot of villains, he didn't wake up on day and decide “I'm going to be evil and kill Supergirl!” Which is why we need to jump back 2 years earlier, to show the descent into Agent Liberty. His father used to run a steel mill, but it's been put out of business by some alien steel corporation. Lena Luther used to contract with Lockwood senior, but obviously, since the future is in this other kind of steel, she's moved on to that. Ben tries to get help for his father from Lena, but she's kind of like “sink or swim.” Which honestly should be everybody's opinion about this kind of stuff. Like if your company's going under, maybe you should take a good, hard look at why, rather than screaming about your product being outsourced from some other planet.

When the aliens from season 2 invaded, their house was destroyed thanks to some aliens falling through the ceiling in the middle of a fight. Very little was done to actually help the Lockwood family after that, which... okay, yeah. That would be the time to get fucking angry. Alien invaders destroyed my home and the government refuses to pony up even for the cost of repairs. (But then again: welcome to America.) After this, Ben tries to go to CatCo to say that they need to be reporting on things like this, but while James listens to what Ben has to say, he pretty much refuses Ben.

Angry at how unjust that life has been treating him, Ben then takes it out on some of his alien students at the university where he teaches history. Some of the alien students walk out, and somebody complained to the dean such that she fires him. He tries to argue “that's how history is!” But honestly, this is you just being a racist dickweed, professor. He then stalks one of his alien students to the local alien bar, and he shows his true colors when he accuses her of having reported him to the dean... even though she insists that she didn't say or do anything (other than to walk out from the class). Kara is there to diffuse the situation, and he accuses her of being an alien sympathizer.

Another alien attack then creates an accident at the old steel mill, and Lockwood senior is crushed to death under a steel beam. Which seems a fitting end for a man who thought that he'd go down screaming about steel... This sends Ben into an even worse fit of rage, and he starts to group up with some of the former employees from the steel mill to destroy the new alien steel mill.

He's passing out “humans first” brochures on a street corner when Marcy picks him up, and asks him to help with their cause. He then goes to the warehouse, where he puts on the “Agent Liberty” mask, which quickly becomes the symbol of the “humans first” movement. (Think of it like those V for Vendetta masks, if they had the motives of the KKK.)

E04

With the help of getting Kara under those special sunlamps straight away (Thanks J'onn!) and an anti-kryptonite suit Lena developed for Supergirl, Kara doesn't die. (Well, were you expecting the titular character to die?) However, she feels helpless knowing that she's benched until Lena and Brainy can come up with a way to clean the kyrptonite from the air.

Lena and Brainy work to do that, but it's difficult for Brainy to move past his fear of having almost lost Supergirl. Lena tells him that she compartmentalizes difficult emotions to get things like clearing the kryptonite from the air. She tells him to imagine putting the emotion into a tiny box, and then to lock that box away. Since Brainy is half computer, this is less of a metaphor and more of something that he can actually do.

Meanwhile, J'onn meets the fiancee of the leader of the alien support group, who went missing back in the first episode. His name is Manchester Black, he's insanely British (and proud), and kind of a bad ass, but probably in the worst way possible. Obviously he's there to find his missing fiancee, Fiona. Since J'onn has also been looking for her, they agree to team up.

They end up finding Fiona at a carnival, where she'd being forced to control some aliens to fight against the DEO/anybody who shows up. However, back when she was taken, she was stabbed, and I think that the only reason why they kept her alive was because they needed her. But now that she's been compromised... bye Fiona. Manchester is insanely crushed by her death, and we'll explore this in depth later.

James showed up to the fight as Guardian, but rather than to take what happened in context, the growing Agents of Liberty people instead spinned Guardian fighting aliens as the fact that he's a human sympathizer, and thus, an Agent of Liberty symbol and ally.

Meanwhile, the president wasn't exactly happy when Alex let Kara into the field (and by “let”, of course I mean that Kara did whatever she damned well pleased, because she's Supergirl), so he's put this other agent to oversee the DEO, Col. Hailey.

E05

The Agents of Liberty gave the former DEO agent this thing that lets him drain the powers from aliens to use for a short amount of time. As you might imagine, fighting him is not ideal for Kara, because he can just drain and eventually kill her.

Meanwhile, J'onn hooks Kara up with this alien healer, so she writes an article about him. However, the Agents of Liberty take this special stone of his that he uses to remain alive, and use it to super-power the DEO agent so that he'll retain the stolen powers for longer.

This leads to them cornering the DEO agent, and trapping him inside of a forcefield, but there's also a lot of civilians in the area. He's about to go “nuclear”, but Alex manages to talk him down, and says that he joined the DEO to make the world saver, and he's going to kill a lot of civilians-- human civilians-- because of his shitty actions.

While all of that is going on, Lena drags James to some... big muckety-muck event, where he runs into Ben Lockwood. In this episode, he's basically just some blowhard political asshole on youtube, so it's kind of questionable how he got into the event. But meeting Ben is important for later. James later calls Ben and asks him to “hook him up” to some of the other Agents of Liberty, not knowing at the moment that Ben IS Agent Liberty.

Following the healer's almost death, and Kara tracking down the man's estranged daughter, she learned that the daughter saw her father in a new light because of her article. Kara decides that she's going to start a series about average aliens, so that maybe everybody can begin to see them as just... people. Who like normal things, and have normal jobs, and who have normal lives. But who happen to be from some planet and can shoot fireballs or whatever.

E06

The Agents of Liberty drop a manifesto all over the city, but Agent Hailey refuses to use DEO funding in order to look into this further. I mean, they're only a growing terrorist organization, but sure. However, Alex tells Brainy to continue looking into it under the table. He tries to decode some of it, but the most threatening thing he can get out from it is... ham sandwich. Horrifying.

Meanwhile, Manchester has kidnapped one of the Agents of Liberty, and tortures some information out from him... because that's how he rolls. (There's this big, arching plot with him that he was a horrible person until he met Fiona. She made him want to change for the better, but after she died, he kind of snapped and went back to his old ways.)

And in comparison to how Manchester does thing, James instead goes to talk to somebody that Ben hooked him up with. Now, if you'll remember, Ben is The Agent Liberty, so he's in charge*, but he's putting on this face for the public (at first), that he's just some blow-hard who doesn't know anything. The guy James talks to has this dog that's trained to sniff out aliens, and then bark. (Although, what exactly does an alien smell like? They come from all over, so wouldn't each of their scents be completely and utterly different? It makes zero sense, but okay.)

And Lena and her assistant/secretary/whatever, Eve, are trying to cure... everything. With the haranel that she'd developed from the end of the previous season. They're running tests on these hearts, but nothing's being very productive as of yet. We'll get more into this later as the season goes on.

But first, it's Thanksgiving, so everybody gathers in Kara's apartment to celebrate. On top of Eliza coming down, and Alex and J'onn being there, James, Lena, Manchester, Brainy, and Nia are also there. Earlier, Nia had confessed to Kara that she had narcolepsy, which was why she kept falling asleep at her desk, but her doctor was in DC and she hadn't found a new one yet. However, when Eliza pressed about knowing a sleep doctor, Nia insisted that she had one, much to Kara's bafflement. And because it wouldn't be thanksgiving without an awful discussion of politics... guess what they all get into a fight about? Everything that's going on, plus Lena's idea that maybe we should give people powers. But not like... evil people. Just good people. (YO! NO POLITICS AT THANKSGIVING!!)

This is interrupted when it turns out that the alien residences were being marked for a later “raid” by the Agents of Liberty, so they all run around to try and stop all of this. Kara fights a lizard that can turn into a dragon, but it turns out to be some little girl's pet. Manchester ends up killing a bunch of them... because of course he did. Although James talks down his new “friend”, who then has James kidnapped. Oops.

*he's not actually in charge of shit, as the series went on, but more of that later

E07

James was kidnapped on orders of Agent Liberty. They plan on turning him into a symbol, even if he doesn't want that. And their plan is to have him blow up this symbol of alien freedoms on earth. There's this place called Shelley Island, that's kind of like Ellis Island, but for incoming aliens. They have power dampeners all around the island that... well, make your powers not work. And there's also a kind of “modern” take on the statue of liberty's outstretched arm holding the torch, which is what they intend for James to blow up. James's new friend from the previous episode tries to help him escape, but they're captured again.

Supergirl teams up with Manchester to help track down some of the Agents of Liberty. However, he plays his hand and all of this was a set-up to get her onto Shelley Island, where her powers wouldn't be as effective. They'd promised Manchester an audience with Agent Liberty.

But then it gets worse, because they keep Kara in the statue... that James is supposed to blow up. While she's trying to escape, James notices the lights in the statue, and attacks those forcing him to do the video recording. Ben had been planning to use the footage on his increasingly popular TV show, but he's pissed off when things go south for their side.

After leaving Shelley Island, Manchester is confronted by J'onn. Manchester puts this “emotion sharing” device onto him, which makes J'onn freak out. J'onn later goes to Kara, and they lament about how they wanted to see the good in Manchester, but there is little to be found.

Meanwhile while all of that is going on, Lena gets a test subject for her “cure everybody and maybe some people get superpowers”. At first, she's insanely reluctant to even begin doing this, and even when she does, she refuses to get to know the guy. Finally, little by little, she begins to open up to him, and he opens up to her. She tries to get him to leave, because she's too nice of a person, but he tells her why he wanted to do this: because he needed a new kidney. His brother offered to give him one, but his brother died on the table. He feels so awful, because he gets to live even though he's the one who should have died. This sparks Lena to give him the treatment. She later reports that he exhibited powers for three minutes before he died.

E08

Brainy knows that Nia is important and that her descendants will be important in the future. But obviously, he can't really tell Alex and Kara much about what she or her future off-spring will do without causing a rift in the space-time continuum. (Although, I think that the future he knows went flying out the window at the end of the last season? Which baffles me to no end.) Kara goes to her, and she explains that she doesn't have narcolepsy, but rather, some of the women from her planet have psychic dreams of the future, but they're often seeped in symbolism. (Yes Freud, that banana is a penis.) Brainy helps her tap into her powers, where she helps lead them to a crime.

Meanwhile, Manchester went to the Lockwood residence and ended up directly telling Mrs. Lockwood that her husband is Agent Liberty. They end up at this warehouse, exactly like Nia saw in her dream. And guess who also shows up? Supergirl, Brainy, and Nia. Nia turns out to be oddly useful in a fight, because she can foresee things happening, like a giant warehouse crane swinging, and she uses it to knock Manchester over.

As a result of this fight, both Manchester and Ben were arrested, but Ben was also outed as being Agent Liberty. As he's being taken to a squad car, he screams that the world knows who he is now, but who is Supergirl? This prompts President Baker to visit the DEO and demands that Supergirl tell them her identity. She not only refuses, but says that if they're going to be like this, then she will no longer work alongside the DEO. Oh bother.

E09

This episode was one part of the Arrow/Flash/Supergirl crossover. Didn't watch it.

E10

Kara gets called an attack of an unofficial military ship. She sees a “shimmer” of the usually invisible monster that kills all but one of the crew. The more and more that the DEO looks into the incident, the more shifty things start to become. Including Col. Hailey openly lying about everything. That is, until the truth comes out: years ago, a group in the government raised these aliens to turn them into super soldiers, but the aliens got out. And now, they're looking for payback, which involves them murdering everybody who was involved with the project. Including Hailey. What's worse is that Kara is the ONLY one who can see the aliens when they're invisible, thanks to her super-vision.

While all of that's going on, Hailey is on a mission to get to the bottom of Supergirl's secret identity. Because as if the entire thing wasn't shitty enough as it is. She interviews every DEO member, including Brainy and Alex. Everybody else simply lies to her, but Brainy is able to literally forget the data, and set it on a time to retrieve it later. Handy and also neat. However, one of the people who knows that Kara is Supergirl spills the beans to Hailey after questioning. Hailey confronts Kara right as soon as they manage to capture the last of the aliens. J'onn wipes her memory, but he can't wipe her determination to uncover Supergirl's identity. So, if he can't make Hailey forget about that, then the next best thing would be to wipe the memories of all who know. Including Alex. There's a long moment where Alex says “goodbye” to Supergirl before J'onn wipes her memory.

J'onn, meanwhile, feels like he's found his actual calling: becoming a PI. He's been helping a lot of people throughout this season, and setting up an official shop and getting his PI license seems like the next best step.

Also, there's a bit of Brainy/Nia (Brainia or Dreamerdox) in this episode. Brainy calls Nia and invites her to dinner in the most... Brainy way possible. He's kind of anxious, and hangs up without setting a time or place. Nia's clearly a little interested in him, and agrees to this, but is quickly disappointed when it turns out that Brainy only asked her in a... business context. He wants her to start fighting as a superhero, and gives her a book full of superhero costume ideas. He fails to understand why Nia's upset over the entire thing. Nia later starts to look through the book, but eventually chucks the entire thing into the bin.

E11

Throughout the season, there's been this Supergirl look-alike. We'll get more into her later. But following a training accident, she has her heart restarted, but the resulting blast creates this immense static charge that flows all the way to National City, where it gets into some pills that some dudes are selling from an RV to yuppie white school boys. (You know exactly what I'm talking about...) When ingested, they basically... make the user “hulk out” for a while, and they're filled with this immense rage.

Meanwhile, everybody's still dealing with the after-effects of having erased Alex's memory of Kara/Supergirl. For the others, it was probably??? A couple of years at most, and probably not even all that important. But since Alex is Kara's sister, this was erasing large chunks of not only her adult memory, but also her formative years as well. She forget things like Kara's favorite movie is Wizard of Oz, because Kara relates so much to Dorothy, being lost in a strange land, and no way home. But Alex feels like something is wrong, and asks J'onn to poke inside her head and make sure that nobody's been messing around in there. He hates lying to her, but Hailey finding out about Kara's identity would be worse.

While they're dealing with that, Kara volunteers to drive Nia to her hometown for some harvest festival thing. Nia explains that her hometown is a “safe haven for aliens and humans to co-mingle”. She explains on the way that her mom had a psychic dream of meeting her dad there, so she came to earth, settled, and had Nia and her sister, Maeve. On the way there, Nia has a dream where her mother dissolves into ash.

In the town, they discover pockets of Agents of Liberty, along with their alien-sniffing dogs. But Nia's family is happy to see her, and welcome Kara into their fold. Maeve won't stop talking about “when my powers come in”, and Nia just keeps feeling guiltier and guiltier over the entire thing.

After dinner, Nia is trying to talk to her mom about the powers, about how she can “get rid of it”, in the hopes that this is a thing that can be done. However, Isabel is bitten by a spider and almost instantly dies. During the impromptu memorial for her, more of those kids hopped up on Supergirl-lightning drugs show up and start causing havoc. Supergirl fights alongside Alex for the first time since her mind-wipe, and it does not go well at all.

After, Maeve confronts Nia about how she warned Maeve about the attack, and Nia admits that she has the dream powers. Maeve gets insanely upset over this, and says “you're not even a real woman”. (I think that the worse part about the fight with Maeve is that we never got any actual resolution to it by the end of the season. This episode was the first and last we see of Nia's family.) The dad gives Nia a box from Isabel. On the way back home, Kara tells Nia that she's Supergirl. Inside the box is a superhero costume Isabel foresaw “my daughter” wearing.

E12

Alex took the job as the DEO directly in the hopes that things would get more stable enough to the point where she could do two things: get a girlfriend and adopt a baby. She's done... exactly zero of those things, and she feels like she's constantly putting things on hold because of Kara or something always happening at the DEO. (And now that I think about it, this season was completely devoid of any romantic relationships for Kara.)

Brainy goes to Nia with the prediction that she's probably more likely to want to become a superhero after everything that had happened. However, Nia isn't exactly quite ready to pick up the proverbial cape so soon after her mother's death. She also invites him to her roommate, Yvette's valentine's day party.

At the party, Alex runs into some girl that she went on one date with, and then got too busy with her DEO work in order to call her back. It's... as awkward as you might expect, except that the girl is clearly interested in seeing Alex again.

After Nia gets back from dealing with the monster du jour (see below), she finds Yvette has taken a liking to Brainy, which makes him more uncomfortable than the thought of Nia liking him. He had attempted to give Nia chocolates, but Yvette ate all of them while they waited for Nia. (Rude!) She asks him to help her train.

And for the actual monster du jour, because we haven't had a whole lot of those this season... Some sort of symbiotic snake alien that implants itself into a cat burglar with a taste for fine jewelry. The snake eats the hearts of the victims, and the human host gets to make off with the jewels. It's a win-win. Kara tags along on the case with Alex under the guise of being a journalist on the scent of a good story, but Alex freaks out when the snake-thing attacks Kara and goes into OVERPROTECTIVE BIG SISTER MODE (who doesn't know that her sister is nearly invulnerable). They track the alien/human thing to this big party, where the Agents of Liberty show up and honestly just make things 10x worse than it needed to be... and when the DEO/Supergirl took down the bad guy... THEY TOOK ALL OF THE CREDIT. FOR SHOWING UP AND FUCKING EVERYTHING UP. JFC. But Nia showed up in the costume her mom made, and this is her debut as a hero.

James and Lena also break up. Which is a thing that carried over from the previous season. But they... did not exactly have a lot of chemistry. In fact, I'd say that James had more chemistry with literally everybody except for Lena. (He had more on-screen chemistry with Nia as a boss-new employee, JFC) And they'd been fighting the entire season... but the straw that broke this relationship was Hailey approaching Lena to enter into a contract that she'd make “super serum” for the government, which James thinks is morally repugnant. But their break up makes Lena accept the contract.

Meanwhile, Ben Lockwood gets out of jail on a legal loophole because the Patriot Act only protects “human life”. Ugh.

E13

Kara and Brainy take Nia to the Fortress of Solitude, where they start to train her. Brainy refuses to tell her anything about herself, stating that it'll mess with the space-time-continuum (even though, I might have mentioned it earlier, but they've probably already fucked it halfway to hell by stopping that plague in the last season, and Brainy's decision to stay as a direct result of having changed the timeline... But whatever.) However, she asks the floating robot thing for information on her species, in which she learns that she can astral project and use this kind of dream energy like a physical weapon, so she doesn't have to just rely on predictions. (Brainy isn't pleased with her going behind his back, but she's like “suck it.”)

Meanwhile, Manchester is broken out of jail by a friend of his nicknamed “Hat”, because he has a 5-th dimension hat that he uses to pull things out of. He can also sort of teleport. They break the lady from the previous episode out, Menagerie, and the three of them go around and terrorize the city.

Supergirl tries to tell Baker, but he begins to show more and more of his position as far as all of this goes... and he is not on Supergirl's side. This is made even worse when she has to knock a satellite out of orbit... one that he specifically told her not to fucking touch earlier. As a final “fuck you” to Supergirl, he makes Ben Lockwood director of alien affairs. Ugh.

Hat also steals Brainy's legion ring, which gives him super powers. He can still use his predictive analysis, so he's not hopeless, but he feels so lost without it.

E14

With Manchester, Hat, and one of those invisible aliens from earlier in the season on the loose, they're desperate to catch them, but they've seemingly vanished. Kara compares them to being like a second Agents of Liberty group. They end up at the Fortress of Solitude, where they only have access to because the plot dictates that they do. (The “key” is this like 1 billion pound hunk of metal, the likes of which only somebody with super-strength could handle.) There, they find info about the Kryptons, but also some of the fortress's secrets... But when the heroes are alerted about the break-in, Manchester runs into a room that contains a “sun eater” and seemingly dies. However, J'onn isn't convinced about this, because he feels like they have a connection, and he would know if Manchester was killed. (He's later proved right, and that Hat saved him.)

Meanwhile, Alex is asked to head up Ben Lockwood's security detail. She's obviously disgusted by the entire thing, and complains about it the entire time, but she does her job. He's moving to repeal the alien amnesty act, which a lot of people think is rather unconstitutional, but he's going to try, dammit. He makes some public speech about the entire thing, and invites everybody to a public rally the next day.

But, our alien friends aren't without their own plans. Brainy has been stirring the pot on his own, and has used his powers of technology to organize a peaceful alien march through the streets at the same time as Ben's rally, but he makes sure that none of this can be traced back to him. He tries to ask Kara and Nia to join him at the march... but not as Supergirl and Dreamer, but as aliens who live on earth peacefully. They at first refuse, thinking that they'll just be security, but Kara eventually understands where Brainy was coming from. She changes into her Krypton clothes, and stands at the front of the parade with Brainy and Nia as Kara Zor-El; it's an insanely powerful moment.

However, at the hall where Ben's rally was taking place... IT'S A TRAP. Agents of Liberty start attacking everybody, and then Manchester and Hat show up and it's just a clusterfuck. The entire time, James stands there and takes photos of the events, of which he obviously later publishes. Later, a lot people look at them and say that seeing humans helping injured aliens really changed their opinion about the entire thing.

At the very end of the episode, as James is leaving the office, he gets shot in the back.

E15

And now, we're finally getting into the real meat of this season: Lex Luthor. (And I'm still having a hard time getting over the fact that out of all of the actors in the world, they picked Jon Cryer to play him. Why.) Four years earlier, he did something to the sun to try and stop Superman, but it's what had him arrested in the first place (and put Lena down the path of being better than Lex.)

Somebody pushed the “call Superman” button on James's watch, and Kara found him before he could bleed out. At the hospital, things don't look good. His sister, Kelly, shows up, and Alex talks her into approving the untested super-serum that Lena's been working on in order to help cure him.

Lena, meanwhile, is beyond herself with grief... she still cares deeply about James, and will do anything to help save him, including pushing herself to perfect the serum so that she can save James. They end up dosing him with some of it. But she doesn't do it alone; she has the help of her brother. He's also sick with cancer, which is probably one of the only reasons why they would even let him from the prison at all... because he's seemingly too sick to move much without the help of something. But, as you might have figured out, Lex used Lena's research to cure himself, and he betrayed her in order to escape. Oh, and Lena's assistant, Eve? Totally been working for Lex this entire time. Because of course.

Also, while Brainy and Nia are waiting around the hospital, Nia goes to Brainy. He's upset about a lot of things... how he's stuck in the 21st century, his own troubled past (which is never really delved into this season, unfortunately), his missing ring, the Agents of Liberty, Manchester and Hat, and now James... but he's taking it out on a vending machine that won't give him his snack. But in the middle of his panic attack, Nia kisses him. He later tells her that they can never be together because she's too important in the 21st century, and he's supposed to be in the 31st century. Nia is understandably heartbroken over the entire thing... but not deterred too much. We'll get back to this later.

Meanwhile, J'onn managed to track down Manchester again after Manchester steals this Martian staff thing and defiles the grave of J'onn's father. So, J'onn goes to confront him, and ends up destroying Manchester in the process. Although to be fair, there wasn't exactly much of a person left after Fiona died.

E16

With the junk that Lex took in the previous episode, he goes up against Supergirl... and seemingly wins. After having been defeated, Kara goes to tell Alex and still hospital-ridden James about Lex's escape... and I hope that I don't have to tell you that this is probably the worst news ever.

Meanwhile, most of this episode is a flashback. At his trial, three years earlier, Lex tried to murder the judge and prosicuitors... which probably only just makes him look even guiltier, but hey, nothing quite like first degree murder to... eco-terrorism??? IDK what you would even call something like that. It was outside the courthouse where he first met Eve, a Lex Luthor fangirl who would do anything for him. He told her to go work for CatCo, and then she eventually suggested that she should become Lena's assistant. However, even in prison, Lex quickly had everything under control by bribing all of the officers and such, so he was literally free to come and go as he pleased.

Meanwhile, nine months from the present, a Supergirl clone shows up in the fictional country of Kaznia. (A Russia knock-off, I guess?) She was created when Kara came into contact with the Haranel from the end of the last season. The Kaznian government is friendly with Lex, so they call him up to come and help them. Which he does, by molding “Red Daughter” into a weapon to not only take down the actual Supergirl, but to help him rule the world. Most of the episode shows parallels between all of the other stuff that was happening and Red Daughter's reaction to what was going on.

Lex takes Red Daughter to the United States and puts her to work as a hotel bar waitress so that he can show her what kind of pigs that Americans are. He also makes her think that a child that she once saved and became friendly with was killed by American missiles so that she would do whatever he asked. She's completely and utterly brainwashed by him.

Oh, and in case you couldn't figure it out... but Lex willingly walked into a chamber knowing full-well that it would give him cancer. This was all a part of his long con.

E17

James is released from the hospital, having been magically cured by whatever was in what Lena gave him. However, he's already starting to display symptoms in the form of various powers. We'll get back to this in later episodes. Later, Kelly visits him at work, and can't help but notice that all of the screens are off behind him... because he's too afraid to have to even look at or think about Lex. She encourages him to go see a trauma therapist to work through everything that's ever happened to him (not just being shot, but just... in general, you know). He refuses.  

Kara also finds out that everybody but the DEO, aka probably the most capable team to handle Lex, is looking for Lex. But Hailey agrees with Supergirl that finding Lex is a priority right now, and agrees to handle things on her end while Alex goes with Supergirl to help with that. They track down some of Eve's last movements, and find out that she went to cure her cousin from cancer with Lena's serum... talk about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. They go to Eve's lab at some university, where a man with half of his appendages replaced with robotic parts and a kryptonite heart attacks them. But this leads them to another huge clue: they found the gun that was used to shoot James in her office. Later, Lena manages to flip their mother by convincing her that Lex was planning to kill her, not rescue her from jail. Oops.

Then, while everybody's gathered in the Oval Office for the repeal of the alien amnesty act, Red Daughter, dressed as Supergirl, attacks. Where's Kara during all of this? Fighting off a krypton supersuit chucked at her by Eve. So now the entire world thinks that Supergirl's ebul. However, a lot of people who have worked alongside Kara/Supergirl figure that something's not quite right with this. But, the event does do some good, because it convinced James (who was in the Oval Office) that he really did need help when he froze during the attack; he goes to Kelly to get that recommendation.

Meanwhile, J'onn goes on a sort of vision quest. See, at the end of the last season, after his father passed away, he took a vow of peace, which he has since broken when he murdered Manchester. He feels like his powers are failing him through his inability to move past killing Manchester. His vision comes to him in the form of J'onn's father, however, like a lot of things of this type, this is a lot of self-reflecting and coming to realizations that were already known, just mostly unspoken. In the end, J'onn agrees (with himself), that he needs to be Martian Manhunter, not a man of peace, so he's going to take his father's staff back to the place where it was found centuries earlier on Mars, in the hopes that somebody else “acceptable” will come along to get it at a later time.

E18

As the end result of the attack at the end of the previous episode, people are afraid of Supergirl now. She complains about all of this to Lena and Alex (neither of whom know that she is Kara right now). In the end, Lena and Supergirl agree to go search Lex's cell at the prison. As they walk down to it, all of the male inmates start screaming at Kara about how she's where she belongs now. Kara tries to question the guy in the cell next to Lex's, but he refuses to talk to Supergirl. (And dear lord, can you imagine what kind of shit that these people got into to be in a cell block with Lex Luthor?)

Later, Otis shows up with a Kryptonite heart of his own, like the random dude from an episode or two earlier. Lena gives Kara a Kryptonite shield to go fight him. However, as she's running around, she realizes that she'd probably be better off in the middle of the riot with all of the inmates looking for Supergirl... as Kara, the reporter. The same inmate that Kara had previously tried to talk to is happy to see her, and gets excited, because he likes her articles (especially the spotlights on alien citizens).

While the prison riot's going on, Lena discovers a hidden chamber behind Lex's cell. There, they find evidence of the stuff that Lex has been up to, but only just puzzle pieces and no big picture just yet. Just then, Otis comes in, and Lex remotely detonates his Kryptonite heart, which kills him (temporarily). Kara flies Lena out of there before the bomb goes off. After, Kara realizes that going to the prison as Supergirl made things worse, so she decides that she needs to forget about Supergirl and focus on Kara. So she goes to the prison to do an interview with the prisoner that she'd talked to earlier... as Kara.

Meanwhile, Ben goes to the DEO to get all of their alien technology. However, even Hailey's like “Bitch, nobody fucking likes you, asshole.” and she insists that he comes back with a warrant or whatever.

This leads Alex to tell Brainy that the alien registry kept at the DEO isn't safe, so he breaks in with the intent to delete it. However, he's left with a dilemma over if he should or not... one which is a 50/50 chance. He goes to Nia to ask her to see into the future. She tricks him by playing the “if you react this badly towards the advice, then it's clear that you should do the other”, and tells him not to delete the data... which completely and utterly works. (Unlike Brainy, Nia sees things more from an emotional standpoint, so she's like “morally, we should delete it to keep people safe”.) However, Nia has a vision later of Ben storming into the DEO and arresting Brainy, which she warns him about. He said that he'd already deleted the data off of the DEO servers, but he says that he's keeping a copy on his own “hard drive”. (Must be handy to have a computer for a brain!)

Later, Alex meets with Kelly and Kelly offers Alex advice on how to get to Hailey so that Hailey won't call Supergirl for Ben. Kelly tells her own story of how she used her commanding officer's weakness against him in order to get him to do what Kelly wanted. Alex tries this to get Hailey onto her side, but it kind of backfires. However, when Ben comes for the info and for Supergirl, Hailey presses the signal watch twice, so she never shows up.

James also goes to his first therapy session, where the doctor teaches him a grounding technique for the next time he has a panic attack. However later, James and Kelly are starting to realize that the panic attacks seem to be half of the problem... and some of it has to do with the junk Lena gave him.

E19

With Supergirl lying low for a while until all of this is cleared up, Nia takes to the streets to help bring down some petty criminals and to stop the Agents of Liberty from further terrorizing aliens. However, Brainy is worried about her... which he tries to mask by stating that they're all at risk because they're aliens. But she quickly finds out that, no matter how many Agents of Liberty she takes down, no matter how many aliens she helps... nobody feels fully safe anymore.

This leads into Ben's son, George. He's been sort of shadowing his dad, and shadowing the other Agents of Liberty on his dad's orders throughout the entire season. And he's been kind of reluctant but just goes along with whatever his dad asks of him. But during a raid that Dreamer stopped, he discovers that one of his best friends was an alien, and I think that this was the kind of wake-up call that George needed to understand how messed-up that his dad's actions are.

Lena, Alex, Kelly and Brainy are trying to unwrap everything that's happening to James after he was dosed with Lena's power juice. They're trying to pull the juice from him, but not with a lot of success. While Lena works on the science side, Brainy goes into his mind in order to work on the psychological, since James's powers seemed to be linked to his panic attacks. In there, they uncover some deeply hidden truths about James... things he himself had been lying about the entire time. They all though that Lex was behind the panic attacks, but it goes deeper and a lot older than that: to the day of his father's funeral. Kelly herself has a lot of bad memories from the day... because not only was her dad dead, but her big brother didn't even come to the funeral. James said that he got locked into the bathroom of a restaurant across the street, but as the episode progresses, they uncover that bullies shoved James into a coffin in the basement of the mortuary, and locked him in there. (Why he'd lie about something like that is beyond me, but here we are.) In the end, they need to get Kelly into James's memory in order to help him out.

Meanwhile, Kara is working the journalist angle hard, trying to track down evidence and proof of what Lex has been up to. She ends up meeting with one of her alien co-worker's sister who works at the shell company controlled by Lex. She wants to help Kara expose all of this, but she's afraid for her own safety... even more so when they're almost discovered when they're snooping through the company's paper files.

Following this, as well as Nia's failure to make aliens feel safer, the two girls complain to one another about how they feel like they're not going anywhere. Kara has a brilliant idea that rather than doing a spotlight on literally all of the aliens on Earth, she just needs to interview one alien: Dreamer. With the help of their alien co-worker, they set up a live broadcast, and Kara interviews Nia as Dreamer. She talks about how she's just a regular person, how she was born on earth and her status as a half alien. Ben is furious about the entire thing. But when Brainy hears about how Nia loves “nerdy boys who think too much”, he suddenly realizes that he's in love with Nia, and asks Lena (who happened to be in the room with him when they were watching the broadcast), “how do you know when you're in love.” I LOVE THIS SHIP. But it inspires everybody else that they have to fight... including the co-worker's sister who wanted to be a whistle blower. She later gives Kara the info she'd been looking for.

Following the end of the broadcast, Ben and his Agents of Liberty show up at Cat Co. However, thanks to the fact that there's two super heroes, plus Brainy showing up (Alex couldn't go without being court martialed), they got this. James shows up at the last minute and does that awesome “stares down a gun before he literally bends it with super strength” and he's like “Get the fuck out of my building.”

Lena later goes to CatCo, where she and Kara look at Kara's “reporter wall”, where she'd taped up all of the clues and written stuff. Lena is able to decode one thing: Kaznia.

Finally, Ben comes home to find that his wife was murdered by the wife of an alien that he'd arrested. Which... ain't karma a bitch, Benny boy?

E20

Since the end of the previous season, Alex has been trying to adopt a baby. While she's going for a jog with Kelly one morning, she gets a call from the adoption agency that there's a teenage mother who's shortlisted Alex... and she's in labor. Alex and Kelly go to a hotel not too far from the hospital in the town where the teen mother is delivering as they wait for news. However, by the time that things are all said and done, the girl's parents convinced her not to give her baby up, which leads to an upset and disappointed Alex. Later, Kelly tells Alex that she was also once engaged to her CO, another woman. Not only were they in the military, where those relationships are a big no-no, but they were also lesbians, which is also still widely frowned upon. But then the CO died. Kelly goes on to talk about how things like your fiancee dying or leaving you is a deep wound, as is being rejected for an adoption. But you will survive, and you will get past this.

Brainy and Nia also help James train his powers.

Meanwhile, Lena and Kara take Lena's private jet to Kaznia. Kara kept trying to convince Lena that she should go alone, but Lena was insistant. As they fly in, some “mysterious” purple lightning hits the plane, and it's only because of Kara being there that they don't crash into a mountain. Oops. They find a base that looks like it was only recently evacuated, but also some stolen files from the DEO desert holding facility. And also Eve locked in a broom closet. They also uncover information about Red Daughter. As they look around, Eve acts... bizarre. And stupid. Like way stupider than normal. They quickly realize that she was given the super power serum that's been dosed up with the DNA of an alien so she can make endless copies of herself, but every copy makes her stupider and stupider. As they're running around, Kara comes across Red Daughter's cell, which kind of makes her look like a creepy stalker for Kara. Also, in case I never mentioned this, but Lex knows who Supergirl actually is, and in turn, he obviously told Red Daughter. So there's pictures of both Kara and Supergirl side by side. Kara ends up destroying the things in the room in order to hide her identity from Lena. After, as they're returning home, Kara is about to tell Lena that she's Supergirl, but then Lena kind of breaks down over everything that's happened. So many people have betrayed her, and Kara feels like now isn't a good time to drop this bombshell onto Lena.

She tells James about how she feels so sorry for Red Daughter, because it could have been her if she'd landed somewhere else. Then she takes the info she has on Lex to President Baker... only for him to laugh in her face and then somebody grabs her. Oh bother.

Back closer to home, Ben pushes his son further away by not even bothering to show up to his wife's funeral. He knows that James has powers, and that Lena was working on stuff. He breaks into her lab there and takes some of the unstable serum from before she'd perfected it to save James. Brainy tries to tell him that it's unstable and there's an insanely high risk of death if he takes it... but I think that it goes without saying at this point that you could tell Ben not to jump off the Empire State Building, and he'd do it anyway. Ben then goes out and tries to get the FBI to arrest both James and Dreamer, but Brainy reminds the other agents that they all swore an oath to protect people, not cause others greater harm. They take his side, but Ben then takes the serum and goes on a rampage. J'onn finally gets back from his trip to Mars just in time to stop him... for now.

Later, Ben goes to the church where the memorial for his wife had been, and George finally drops some truth bombs: on his quest for revenge against what originally started as a series of unlucky events, Ben is the reason why the wife is now dead. And then he walks out on Ben... because fuck his racist noise.

E21

When J'onn wiped Alex's memory, he had to go in and erase a lot of little things, like just... hanging out with her super-powered sister. This left a lot of memory gaps that needed to be filled in, which her mind did. As such, Kara wouldn't be able to re-reveal herself as Supergirl to Alex unless Alex figured it out on her own. To do so would basically break Alex too much. However, following the rejection of the adoption in the previous episode, Alex starts to, what Kelly says, dwell on her adoptive sister.

Meanwhile, Kara was kidnapped by some thugs of Lex's. She's like “UGH” and quickly takes them out, but as she goes to the door, there's Red Daughter with a hunk of Kryptonite. Red Daughter is supposed to kill her, but the problem is that the Kryptonite makes both of them sick... and Kara's had a couple of decades to get used to Kryptonite. Red Daughter's only been alive for a few months. Kara manages to jump out the window and escape. Later, Kara manages to locate Red Daughter's apartment in the city, and realizes that Red Daughter has become rather obsessed with Kara. Alex shows up, despite Supergirl having told her to remain at the DEO, and then gets a weird call from Eliza. Kara rushes to Eliza's house, only to find Red Daughter there. There's a fight, and Red Daughter has some of that mysterious purple lightning powers, which when it hits Kara, causes day to turn into night.

Supergirl ends up having her heart stopped by Red Daughter, and Alex drives up just as this happens. As she cries over Supergirl's prone body, she suddenly remembers everything. Then, the grass and plants around them randomly give up their sunlight in order to save Kara... Yeah. I'm just going with it at this point. So Kara's still alive, and now Alex remembers everything.

Lena gets a “truthseeker” alien to use her mother to help her create the cure for the super serum... and the threat of having been poisoned works wonders, too. And she really pulls through. Amazing what gets you results.

Meanwhile, all of the pieces are finally starting to fall together. Who's controlling literally everything bad this season? Lex. Lena and James go to talk to Ben about how he's been working with Lex. Ben is... in a bad way. He needs to keep taking the serum, or else it seems like he's starting down the path to an early grave. However, Lena is quick to find out that Ben had no idea... but they're pleased to realize that Ben wants answers about Lex's involvement as much as anybody else. Especially if he himself is the one being played behind the scenes, when he thought that he was the big man in charge around here. He goes to Otis, who was the one who suggested Ben to Lex back in the Red Daughter flashback episode, so he knows way more than anybody could have predicted. James gets into a fight with Ben, which ends up with James becoming unstable. Lena takes him back to her mom, but even though they have the reverse serum, but with the upcoming battle ahead of them, they give him more of the super serum to temporarily stabilize him.

J'onn, Nia, and Brainy go to track down where the Agents of Liberty/Lex have been taking all of the aliens that they're supposedly taking to detention facilities. When they get there, Nia proposes a “Wookie Gambit”, where J'onn shape-shifts into a guard and allows them to be safely captured. However, when J'onn goes off to find a better plan, Nia sees this little girl that she'd seen in a vision, and asks Brainy to shift into Ben (via his image inducer) so that she can be the captured one. But the play goes awry, and they both end up captured. (J'onn watching being like “THOSE FUCKWITS.”) Strapped to a chair, Brainy is tortured by Agents of Liberty until he snaps and some of his ancestral “coding” from his evil ancestors breaks free. He goes kind of berserk and takes out the men holding him, before meeting up with J'onn. He tells Nia in her cage that she needs to be taken to where ever they're transporting the aliens to, and then she can use her powers to communicate with them where they're being held. He also tells J'onn that him being there will double the plan's chances of success. He's acting cold and unemotional, but it's a stressful situation, so neither of them notice much.

And finally, Lex plays his hand: Kaznia started to attack the US with everything that they had (which wasn't much; they're a tiny country and seemingly very poor). And they had the “rogue” Supergirl with them... but then here comes Lex to save the day! Yay, he's a hero!! /UGH

E22

In case you'd been wondering what Lex has been doing with those aliens, and where he's been getting the powers that all of his goons (like Eve) were coming from... he's created a chamber that sucks??? Energy, I guess? From the alien, and puts it into whoever Lex wants.

Then, we show the actual Kaznian invasion, which we missed during the Kara/Red Daughter fight earlier. Lex showed up to save the day and look dapper... because priorities. The Kaznian officers were upset over the entire thing, as is Red Daughter. She finally starts to see Lex for everything that Kara had tried to tell her that he was: a monster who only looks out for number one (himself). So the fight between them was pretty real, but Lex had the upper hand because he knew exactly what he was going to do before it even got started, and came ready to take her on.

Meanwhile, J'onn and Nia are taken somewhere, where they're basically turned into slave labor. J'onn easily figures out that they're on Shelly island with the power dampeners, so they take out some of the guards and turn the things off. Nia then astralprojects to Brainy (in Lena's office, waiting Kara and Alex). They're all upset when Brainy tells them of the plan; he doesn't understand because he still has his ancestral coding turned on, and he doesn't understand things like empathy. He knows that Nia can't communicate while astralprojecting, so he breathes on the window to create some fog, and she scribbles most of “Shelly island” before time runs out on her end... but it's enough.

Meanwhile, Lena is invited to Le Luther Family Reunion at the Oval Office, because of course he's fucking taken everything over. Now that he's got what he wants, he doesn't need Puppet Baker in office anymore. However, not even Lilian is going to deal with Lex's bullshit at this point. However, with Brainy's help, Kara is able to recover the files that Baker had supposedly wiped from the CatCo servers, and she publishes the paper and exposes Lex for the lying liar who lies. Everybody reads it, and... honestly, that must be a lot of damning evidence in that article, because EVERYBODY instantly starts to believe it. (Either that, or people remember all of the other awful shit that Lex has done in the past, and they're like “yeah, him doing this sounds about right.”)

Kara, Alex, James, and Brainy go to Shelly Island, where they're greeted by Ben and his Agents of Liberty. Brainy goes inside to turn off the power-sucking coffins that are powering a super weapon pointed at that Krypton planet chunk that's floating out there (speaking of which, it's where Superman has been this entire season, in case you were wondering). This leaves the others free to stick the anti power serum into Ben... which he is in dire need of at this point. But Brainy can't turn the weapon off, and it's set to go off soon. But J'onn won't give up so easily, and tries to use his psychic powers to overload the machine. Nia starts to use her own powers as well... and it's when Brainy sees Nia in such immense danger and pain, that it snaps something inside of Brainy and he reverts back to normal. He screams at her that he loves her. But it did the trick, and the aliens are free... including Red Daughter.

Kara goes off to fight Lex, who came down to try and stop them. But he's already defeated one Supergirl, so he almost had the advantage over her... But he wasn't counting on Red Daughter's rage. She takes a blast meant for Kara, and dies as Kara cradles her. She tells Kara that Kara had been right the entire time, and to protect everybody. She then dissolves into purple mist and is reabsorbed into Kara's body. With these new weird powers, Kara is able to better go toe-to-toe with Lex... which she does until he flies off. She gives chase, but he'd rather fall to his death than to be helped by her. But when he lands, he vanishes, so... no good.

Lex reappears in one of his labs, but Lena easily finds him. She puts some bullets into him, because fuck you. Before he dies, he shows Lena a bunch of footage of Kara being Supergirl.

In the aftermath, Baker was arrested for all of this bullshit, and Hailey is the most superior person, so she's in charge for the time being. She also makes a very public apology (that Kara watches on TV at CatCo) to Supergirl for all of this bullshit.

Alex and Kelly finally hook up, although their first kiss is awkwardly interrupted by Brainy and Nia walking past on their own first date.

Later, Lena shows up at J'onn's place for game night. She's quiet, but she doesn't say anything about now knowing that Supergirl is her BFF Kara. Instead, she eagerly joins Kara's team for “switched up teams games”. However, Lena later destroys a picture frame of her and Kara, so she's clearly not as okay with it as originally thought.

Meanwhile, George Lockwood has swung radically in the opposite direction of his father, and wants to help aliens in need. Ben watches bitterly from prison.

And then, because we need some teasers for season 5... Eve is apparently being controlled by some mysterious forces that isn't Lex. It's honestly a bit weird, and I don't know what to make of it.

Finally, another Martian comes and vows revenge on J'onn. Some guy who was talking to this Martian goes to where Lex was murdered and I'm pretty sure that he brings Lex back from the dead.

[seeksstaronmewni]

Oh, Joy! The Insanely Amazing Art of Animation Cartooning in Ren & Stimpy

In the era and world of the “modern” cartoon, there’s one show that started and defined most of the cartoons that we watch today... and that show is Spümcø’s/s The Ren & Stimpy Show.

What is there to love about a crazy, wacky, gross, dark and violent cartoon that people say is “ground-breaking”?

The gags. The detail. The sound. The stock music. The design. The animation. The layout artists...

I could go on about a show that was a part of @nickanimation’s/@nickelodeon... although, while considered a “kids” show, it truly is one of those... “cartoons for MEN”.

WARNING FOR HATERS: Before I go on, in regards to the show’s controversial creator, If his wrongs cause you to think hatefully of him, AVOID THIS POST! Don’t associate your hate with my posts and tweets about this ground-breaking cartoon.

Anyway, let’s look deep into the magic of the wackiest cartoon ever created that changed animation--namely “Western” animation--forever and for good...

THE TALENT

Under the creators Lynne Naylor-Reccardi, Jim Gomez, Felix Forte, and controversial creator John K., many gifted artists were a part of this amazing series, including @donshank, Charlie Bean, Carey Yost,  Bob Camp, Chris Savino, @stephendestefano, the late and great Chris Reccardi (I began this article prior to his death on May 2nd, 2019 A.D.), Marc Perry, Mr. Lawrence (the “Ooh! My leg! My leg...” guy), Vincent Waller, Donovan Cook, Larry Murphy, Richard Pursel, @gadworks​, @ncrossanimation​, and many others. These people, many of whom were in the layout department, would go on from Spümcø to work on some of the most popular pieces of “Western” animation in history, like Spongebob Squarepants, The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, Dexter’s Laboratory, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Mickey Mouse (Paul Rudish era), The Incredibles, the also ground-breaking The 2 Stupid Dogs/Super Secret Secret Squirrel Show and so much more!

One thing to note about these creatives is that John K.’s production company, Spümcø, was based in Canada, and so were its staff and creatives. I note this as most Canadian cartoons these days have no creatives who work in popular American animation (save for Wild Kratts character designer Alan Stewart, who did character design for some Season 7--or, in “reboot terms”, season 2--episodes of The Powerpuff Girls, as well as Lauren Faust’s My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Season 1 of Johnny Test). Most Canadian cartoons these days are on PBS or Cartoon Network, and some of those are imported from Teletoon or YTV. Such Canadian cartoons as Total Drama’s franchise, The Adventures of Benjamin Bear, My Pet Goldfish is Evil, and the like don’t have creatives who work on more “American” media.

Certain talents of Ren & Stimpy included Michael Fontanelli, Charlie Bean, Vincent Waller and Eddie Fitzgerald (creator of CN’s Tales of Worm Paranoia), who went on to contribute their artist talents in the YouTube Poop-phenomenon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, which somewhat resembles that art direction of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Such talents also contributed to another insane-looking cartoon, Film Roman’s The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. Likewise, one of my favorite character designers, Carey Yost, who contributed to The Powerpuff Girls, Uncle Grandpa and Spongebob Squarepants, was a major layout artist on this show. Charlie Bean (Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog) and Don Shank (most of the above, plus Sym-Bionic Titan) also served as layout artists, and they with Carey created a gem of a Cartoon Network Minisode, Buy One, Get One Free*, which reflects the animation and art of Spümcø and features creatives of Spümcø.

THE DETAILS

First thing to note in both art and animation is the barrier-breaking levels of exaggeration. The “wild take” is a common element to slapstick cartoons like The Ren & Stimpy Show, and the controversial creator was a part of Hanna-Barbera Cartoons (which developed the Cartoon Network and its studios). Many Spümcø creatives would work at H-B, too. Hanna-Barbera, who worked with animation legends like Tex Avery, would create some of the wildest takes in cartoons with A Pup Named Scooby-Doo!, but The Ren & Stimpy Show’s Season 2 opener “In The Army”, written & directed by Bob Camp, features what is probably the wildest wild take ever conceived by man in the history of history:

“You don’t want to anger that big, dopey...”

“...sar...”

*( Sound Ideas, BOING, CARTOON - FLAT JEWS HARP BOING )*

*clink!*

*( Sound Ideas, THUMP, CARTOON - TUBE THUNK 01 )* [+12 pitch]

*glass breaks*

*(  Sound Ideas, WOBBLE, CARTOON - SAW BLADE WOBBLE, MEDIUM )*

This wild take is really slow, huh?

Wait for it...

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

As if that weren’t wild enough, his brain pops out of his skull! Now, that’s more than just icing on the cake... it’s GENIUS!

Teen Titans GO! is perhaps the peak in the evolution of the “modern” cartoon that began with Ren & Stimpy, and in the hands of producer/director Luke Cormican, a layout artist on Ren & Stimpy’s “Adult Party Cartoon” episodes. It’s very nice that, in TTG episode “The Streak (Part 2)”, there was the parody illustration of duos in media, comparing Robin to Ren and Beast Boy to Stimpy. Some of the character designers on TTG worked on shows that included creatives from The Ren & Stimpy Show, too, namely Chris Battle.

One of the most popular episodes, of course, is the season one finale, Stimpy’s Invention.

These shots from the scene of Stimpy attempting to invent something are just beautiful! Great attention to detail and the lighting (including effects design) give a very cinematic, theatrical feel to a mere, 11-minute episode of a TV show. The art of the series has the charm of a 1940′s Paramount/Famous Studios “Noveltoon”, the Bob Clampett-directed Merry Melodies/Looney Tunes shorts (a major inspiration for John K.), and the Saturday morning cartoons of the 1960s, and the show’s creatives would become part of certain modern cartoons in the 1990s, some of which were dubbed by @cartoonnetwork as “Cartoon Cartoons”.

Also cinematic to the quality is the authentic film grain, a result of recording the cels (animated frame by frame on their respective backgrounds) on film. The deterioration of the episode’s film masters make it look believably like something out of the 1960s or even The Golden Age of Hollywood, the 1940s! (I personally dislike the quality that the videotape masters add to the picture, though. It may be that, in the future, UHD / HD prints could use the actual film masters, though!)

Some shots of Stimpy in Stimpy’s Invention have a color mistake where, like in the title card of the pilot “Big House Blues”, Stimpy’s nose is red instead of blue. It looks pretty swell on him, though.

The grooves and moves that Ren & Stimpy make during the montage of the song Happy Happy Joy Joy are filled with bouncy, weight-distributing pieces of animation, with lots of squash and stretch.

Speaking of “squash and stretch”, the above pics are of the extremes as Stimpy does a take of joy when he succeeds at making Ren be happy.

The takes of the characters really stretch their design and animation. Aurally, a common sound effect to accent these takes is a quick, loud record scratch, and their shaking/trembling movements often sound like a record rapidly skipping.

Regarding one of my favorite character designers, much of the designs by @cheyennecurtisart and @lynnvwang in early episodes of Disney’s Star vs. the Forces of Evil (particularly “Brittney’s Party”) are highly graphic and detailed, and that work of hers reminds me of the designs by Chris & Lynne Reccardi, Jim Smith, John K. and others. Very similar are the designs of @stephendestefano on Disney’s Mickey Mouse, which are also very graphic and extreme with character takes and injury aftermaths.

In the infamous Happy Happy Joy Joy sequence in “Stimpy’s Invention”, to stop himself from being controlled by the Happy Helmet, Ren whacks it (and thus himself) with a hammer to break it..

...and every hit pushes the extremes of not only the looks of his body, but also the styles of the psychotic-looking backgrounds.

Often in the show is a lot of mental breakdowns, including the end of Stimpy’s Invention as Ren goes from being the angriest he ever was in his entire life...

...to becoming very jovial as he comes to love being angry. That also causes a change in these psychedelic, psychotic backgrounds. The practice of such backgrounds came to other cartoons of the 1990s, such as The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show, in the episode “Night of the Living Shnookums”, with art direction by Lynne Naylor.

Another great episode, one of my favorites, is “The Boy Who Cried Rat!”, directed by Vincent Waller, who, replying to my tweet compliment, described the episode as “a chance to tip the hat to all the amazing cartoonist/ writer/ funny people who took the time to invest theirselves into their artwork for the enjoyment and tutelage of the regular folks and cartoonists to come.” The episode involves a literal game of “Cat and Mouse” and Stimpy tries to make a living for him and Ren by unleashing his inner cat in service to a couple. It probably bases itself, of course, on Tom and Jerry, and Ren’s costume references the fashion of Mickey Mouse.

Eventually, Stimpy is forced into eating the rat whom Ren plays (this reminds me of another classic cartoon, @paramountpictures’s Noveltoon called Cheese Burglar, featuring Herman and Katnip). In terms of cartoon physics, though, how did Ren become small enough to fit inside Stimpy’s mouth?

This episode features a very clever, unexpected visual gag that is the result of being hit with a frying pan.

See? and it’s not even a violent image, either.

Sometimes, the show would feature various segments among the episodes, including their close-out segment “What’ll We Do ‘Til Then”. The Ren & Stimpy Show actually predates Animaniacs (1993), VeggieTales (1993) and Uncle Granpda (2013), which were similar with a variety of segment material.

THE ANIMATION

The animation is certainly something when one considers the defining quality of this show’s animation, which occasionally was produced by Rough Draft Studios in Seoul, Korea, one of the most popular animation studios today. There’s also some great timing directors, like David Feiss (Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy), Bob Jacques, James Tim Walker (Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls, Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring), Kent Butterworth (Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog) and even the awesome Tony Fucile (Osmosis Jones, The Iron Giant, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, Inside Out, The Little Mermaid), who was uncredited for a few episodes like “In The Army” and “Ren’s Toothache”).

This scene of animation from the episode “Nurse Stimpy” (frame shown above) is one of the very best pieces of animation ever done in the series. The balance between slow and mostly fast-paced animation/timing, along with weight, looks very cinematic--of theatrical-quality animation (like Don Bluth, Tony Fucile, etc.). The film’s quality is fairly deteriorated here, but film specks and stuff add to the cinematic feel.

THE SOUND

The sound design, of course, done at Horta Editorial and Sound, which became/folded into Hacienda Post at Sabre Media Studios, was also defining for the modern cartoon as an unusual array of sound effects were used to accent all sorts of takes, impacts, etc. The use of Hanna-Barbera & Warner Bros. sound effects (mostly available from Sound Ideas) with Disney sound effects (mostly available from Hollywood Edge’s Cartoon Trax Volume One) became a very common blend for many sound designers, up to today. Hacienda Post’s founder and president, Timothy J. Borquez (Spongebob Squarepants, Samurai Jack, The Powerpuff Girls), served as the Re-Recording Mixer and Supervising Editor, as well as the uncredited sound designer, and considers the groundbreaking show to be “a laboratory for using classic sounds (in different contextual situations); adding Foley and new design to create "hybrid" textures and moments. We conscientiously did this and it opened up a whole new world for us! A lot of this was done on the mix stage.” He worked with talented sound editors like Michael M. Geisler, M.P.S.E., Michael A. Gollom, and sound/music editor William B. Griggs. Speaking of cartoon sound design expert Michael M. Geisler, M.P.S.E., in an Animation World Network article, Michael Geisler described the detailed process of sound design in a moment of the controversially violent scene in “Man’s Best Friend” (which never showed the credits): “Sometimes the eyelid closing and the eyelid opening are two very separate actions, and so each motion, open and close, must have different sound effects. In "Man's Best Friend," the classic Ren & Stimpy episode that introduces George Liquor, Ren smacks George with his own "Prize Bludgeoning Oar" and George's eye pops out of his head like a piece of meat. The eyelid does a wet sounding movement down over the eye until the eyelids meet and blink (splat, wet hit), and then slosh up again.” For some reason, however, on prints of that episode, George’s blink is silent.

The music for the show was usually unoriginal, very much like the series soundtrack to Spongebob, as it was mostly composed of music provided by Associated Production Music (APM). This included classical music, too, just as Tom and Jerry, Disney’s Silly Symphonies and Warner Bros.’ Merry Melodies/Looney Tunes would often use. Someone even created 3 volumes of Production Music from Ren & Stimpy, unofficial collections of APM music from the series. I kind of wish that they made those.

You may wonder at this point: After many years of seeing almost nothing of this series, how found I The Ren & Stimpy Show in my life?

I knew or remember very little of the show as I grew up (at least attempting to watch the episode “Ren’s Pecs” one Sunday afternoon in 2007 on Nick), but on August 13th, 2016 I saw another Spümcø project, the later Yogi Bear (or Ranger Smith) episode “Boo Boo Runs Wild”, on @adultswim. John K.’s approach to a classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon (CN doesn’t even air this stuff on anymore) was very inspiring. Looking the names of the team up on IMDb, I found that they were a part of many amazing cartoons that i grew up watching! In May 2017, recommended on my YouTube user were “disturbing” scenes from The Ren & Stimpy Show, including Ren’s insane threats in Sven Höek (the audio of which I heard in a YTP where the King [of Hyrule] goes psycho and does the same menacing threats) and perhaps a spiritual taste of Hell in Stimpy’s Fan Club. Ren’s acting (voiced then by creator John K) was so hilarious that, from that point onward, I desired to see more of this groundbreaking cartoon on which I was missing out.

On the day that I began to concept this post, June 18th, 2018, in my final visit to Toys ‘R Us (a local one, though I remember visiting the New York one in 2001), I got collectible Ren & Stimpy figures, and at the time of this post’s original concept I placed Ren and Stimpy in the presence of my Aku wacky wobbler.

It’s interesting that a 2018 Google spot regarding how children react to crowd noise used an excerpt from the episode Stimpy’s Fan Club. This practice is like certain phone commercials (namely T-Mobile, I think) that use some brief footage from “public domain” cartoons. Likewise, what Google did with that ad makes The Ren & Stimpy Show feel like a public domain cartoon (and the highly famous Merry Melodies/Looney Tunes and Popeye shorts were often distributed as “public domain” too, though WarnerMedia holds the ultimate rights to the shorts).

From a Christian viewpoint, The Ren & Stimpy Show is sometimes controversial, but its biggest controversy is whether it’s really a kids show or not--perhaps more of an adult show--mostly due to violence and intense situations like the aforementioned mental breakdowns (this excludes the “Adult Party Cartoon” episodes as those were deliberately produced for adults). Of course, classic cartoons of MGM, Warner Bros. and other studios would often show violence, sensuality, smoking, and alcoholics (even though Cartoon Network/Boomerang still rates them “TV-G”), so even those weren’t produced completely with children in mind. That’s why I consider this show and the aforementioned classic cartoons as “cartoons for MEN”.

The humor and heart of The Ren & Stimpy Show isn’t the purest either, given all of Ren’s hate and violent anger, but Stimpy’s Fan Club has an actually touching ending: after attempting to kill Stimpy or otherwise at least upset him, Ren discovers that the one fan letter addressed to him was from no one else but Stimpy himself--and Stimpy meant every word in his letter. Then, Ren is broken to tears.

THE FUTURE?

As a devote cartoon-watching guy, I find great inspiration from the barrier-breaking art and animation, visually and aurally, of The Ren & Stimpy Show. If you love slapstick comedy and cartoons, then this one’s definitely worth a watch--essential viewing. I surely hope that it comes back again; I can agree on one’s opinion for the show to come back (and, if you want the show to be rebooted as I do, share this IMDb list with Nickelodeon/Spümcø or whatever studio’s in charge). Now, if Viacom/Nick is willing, [adult swim]/Turner/WarnerMedia or some other studio may be better off to purchase the rights to Ren & Stimpy, as Nick or at least Paramount no longer wants anything to do with the series (due to the objectionable material in the “Adult Party Cartoon”), according to this article.

There were rumors of an upcoming Ren & Stimpy short that Nickelodeon Animation was producing. IMDb once removed the title, but now the short “It’s Our House Now!” may be in production by Jessica Borutski, also a former layout artist on the “Adult Party Cartoon”; this may be based on a short John K. sketched to promote Sponge Out of Water.

The closest thing to Ren & Stimpy so far is John K.’s Cans with out Labels [WARNING: some strong language and nudity], a dark, edgy Kickstarter short featuring George Liquor, including storyboards & layouts by Jim Smith and amazingly cartoonish, detailed, over-the-top animation, contributed by @gadworks, @mikepelensky​ and @sandrarivasart​ (a DVD is available for $25 purchase here). Color cards were made by @kalikazoo​ too.

In the future, also, it would be swell to see true high-definition transfers of the actual film negatives for the non-digitally animated episodes of Ren & Stimpy. Most filmed cartoons were often recorded onto videotape masters, which lowered the quality, and I suppose that some of the film negatives still exist in Spumco’s/Nickelodeon’s archives. In point of fact, this clip of The Muddy Mudskipper Intro here looks like it came from an actual film negative (of which I tweeted), with brighter colors and no videotape quality. Though the film looks fairly aged, it looks better than usual prints of the scene.

As we come to the conclusion, I have some additional notes: I began this post in January 2019. 5 months later, Chris Reccardi died, so I refer to him in my posts as the Late and Great Chris Reccardi. He and his family are in my thoughts and prayers. A documentary premiered at Sundance 2020 on January 28th, 2020, Ron Cicero’s Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story; while the controversial creator is known for some terrible things he did due to mental issues in the past, the least people could do is respect the work of both John K and his groundbreaking team. If it weren’t for them, many great Western animation projects for Cartoon Network, Pixar, Disney TVA, Nickelodeon and others would not be the same.

Before I close, whether or not you think negatively of John K., here’s something you should know, understand, and remember about the value of the creatives of The Ren & Stimpy Show: "Brilliant cartoonists like Lynne Naylor, Jim Smith, Bob Camp, Vincent Waller, Rich Pursel, Elinor Blake, Bill Wray, Chris Reccardi, Gabe Swarr and many many more added a lot of richness and personality to the cartoons. Actors like Billy West, Cheryl Chase, Mike Pataki, Gary Owens, Eric Bauza and others inspired us all to capture the subtle nuances in their readings. Henry Porch, Bill Griggs and Tim Borquez contributed much to the wacky new sound design style Ren and Stimpy was known for. We also had some very talented producers like Chris Danzo, Libby Simon and Kevin Kolde who helped me execute the totally new production system that gave the artists ways to express themselves more personally. These people and more are all heroes to me. Think of them when you remember my cartoons." I will always think of these people and pray for them.

For the inspiration, I give thanks to the entire Spümcø staff and creatives who went on to produce some of the best cartoons ever made.

[cynfinnegan]

In Japan, Quatre Raberba Winner is the least popular Gundam Wing pilot. Although he acquits himself well, fans of the series there still refer to him as the “space heart wimp” because they think he’s not a stoic bad-ass like Hiiro, Trowa, and Wu Fei are, and tends to wear his heart on his sleeve.

Unfortunately, some American fans see him that way, too, or even worse, and that's just as wrong.

Reasons for being hated: wimp, useless, stupid, hypocrite, crybaby, manipulative/abusive asshole, not a fighter, a whiny brat, crazy/can "go ZERO" and kill everyone at any moment, gets in the way of alternate Trowa pairings, is Trowa's canon love interest.

WAH!!! Quatre is a wimp!!!

Then why does Trowa call him the strongest person he knows, not just in the series, but in canonical mangas such as Blind Target or Battlefield of Pacifists? And if Cat’s such a wimp, why does Hiiro pass the baton of leadership to him in the series?

If he were a wimp, which he isn’t, he would never have earned the respect of any of the other Gundam pilots, let alone Rashid and the Maguanac Corps, Commander Sada'ul, Noin, Sally, or his own sister, Iria.

WAH!!! Quatre is useless!!!

Quatre isn't "useless"; he's a soldier, a strategist, and leader of men.  That he has the soul of an artist is a plus.  Besides, if he were "useless," the character would never have seen the light of day.

WAH!!! Quatre is stupid!!!

Bitch, please.  According to some sources, and hinted at in the manga version of GW, he wrote the ZERO System BY HIMSELF.  If that makes him stupid in your opinion, then you need a new dictionary, because you don't know the meaning of the word.

WAH!!! Quatre is a hypocrite!!!  He claims he's a pacifist, but fights in a war!!!!

Uh, no.  His father and sisters are the pacifists in his family; Quatre isn't, and even says as much to Duo in "The Whereabouts of Happiness."  Like his mother, Quatre is a fighter.

WAH!!! Quatre is a crybaby!!!

Again, please.  Quatre cries exactly four times in the entire series: when he detonates Sandrock, when his father is killed and Iria is injured, when he sees the remains of Trowa's Vayate and the enormity of what happened in the L2 cluster hits him, and when he finds Trowa alive.

WAH!!!  Quatre's a manipulative, abusive asshole!!!

Look, just because Quatre is an empath doesn't mean he's manipulative.  Quatre is a receptive empath, not a projective one like Lady Une is.  He only receives the emotions of others.  He can't project his to others.

Oh, and just because someone is abused and/or neglected throughout their childhood, much like Quatre was, doesn't mean he's going to become an abuser, too.

WAH!!! Quatre’s not a fighter like the others!!!

Gimme a break. All the official data released by Sunrise states, and I quote, that Quatre received the same level of training the other Gundam pilots did.

WAH!!! Quatre is a whiny brat!!!

How is he whiny? He doesn’t throw fits or temper tantrums. Have you forgotten that he goes through a lot of crap during the series? I think you’re confusing Quatre with Dorothy.

WAH!!!  Quatre is crazy!!!  He can "go ZERO" at any moment and kill everyone!!!

I call this "Cupcakes" Syndrome, if I can be forgiven for referencing a truly hideous My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic titled "Cupcakes."  It's also completely inaccurate.

Being an empath, Quatre felt his father die the moment it happened and his eldest sister's physical pain and emotional suffering.   Therefore , he experienced a psychotic break and went temporarily insane from an overload of pain and suffering that wasn't his own.  He wasn't "crazy" when he piloted Wing Zero; the ZERO actually blocked Quatre's empathy to the point where he didn't feel his own emotions, much less any outside ones.

WAH!!! Quatre gets in the way of other Trowa pairings!!!

Oy, ye'bat.

This is the one thing that can really turn me off a fandom, when some fans stoop so low as to hating on a character because, in their opinion, they get in the way of their preferred pairings.

This also ties into the “Quatre is a manipulative/abusive asshole” bit.  Some fans use that out of character misrepresentation to justify their preferred Trowa pairing.

Well, I'm sorry, but there are some folks in this world who enjoy canon couples, and your pairings aren't the only ones out there. So please, please, PLEASE GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELF and let others have their opinions, too, without trying to tear them down because they like something you don't care for, okay?

WAH!!! Quatre is a focused/canon love interest!!!

Well, this all relates back to the above, pairings.  Yes, he may be Trowa's canon love interest in the series, but that could be what the creator(s) had in mind when they created his character in the first place.

In the end, you can't control canon, you can't control what the creators' original intentions were, and you most certainly can't control the creators' own creations in a canonically proven way like, obviously, the creators can.

WAH!!! Trowa belongs with me/Duo/Hiiro/Middie Une/my OC!!!

You know, you're certainly welcome to pair Trowa up with whomever you choose, but that doesn't mean we have to drop the pairing we like.  No one knows who either Trowa or Quatre are going to end up with.  That's something only their creators can decide.

By the way, they'd decided that Middie Une was a one-shot deal before the Episode Zero episodes were cut from the production schedule.

As for the "me" part, Trowa would never love you because one, he doesn't exist, and two, even if he did, he wouldn't tolerate anybody hating on Quatre because he's very important to him. Trowa only belongs to Sunrise/Sotsu, and nobody else.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Ways Disney Can’t Stop Screwing Up Star Wars

Star Wars. You love it! You think it’s great. But what if Star Wars stopped being great? That would be bad, right? And bad things aren’t great! Everybody knows that! Seeing as how we’re all in agreement here, let’s talk about the possibility that Disney’s entire strategy for Star Wars might be, as a whole, actually madly deeply verifiably bad. I know it’s painful to fathom such a terrible possibility — I mean, The Last Jedi looks just bonkers — but I can’t help to notice a few glaring red flags. Bad flags. So without further ado …

5

So Far, The New Movies Seem Afraid To Take Chances

For staunch Star Wars nerds burnt out by years of jackass Expanded Universe stories, adding to the Star Wars canon sometimes feels like writing new chapters to the Bible wherein Jesus comes back to fight ISIS with the aid of a talking car. And seeing as how the folks in charge of Star Wars are the ones who grew up on it, the new films feel a smidge unadventurous at times.

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5 Insane Answers For Questions You Didn't Know You Had

It’s no secret that The Force Awakens mirrors every character and plot point from the Original Trilogy. But what I find staggering is how every new character also geeks out over the old cast. Kylo Ren worships Vader. Poe and Rey know all about the adventures of Han and Luke. It’s as if the screenwriters wanted to make “relatable characters,” and so naturally wrote them as Star Wars fans. The filmmakers aren’t blind to this. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has spoken multiple times about the balance between writing an original story and keeping to the Star Wars tone. But with Rogue One, Lucasfilm’s definition of “original story” was “the movie takes place literally a few days before A New Hope.”

And remember Ass-Face Roy and Joe Walrus from the Mon Eisley Cantina? Hooray or something, they came back in Rogue One!

LucasfilmTheir plot arc is: “Get drunk and wander around the Galaxy.”

This scene is similar to one later in the movie, when we see C-3PO and R2-D2 on Yavin, watching the fleet roll out.

LucasfilmJust in case you’d forgotten what franchise you were watching.

This is weird, considering that they’re in that very fleet in A New Hope. Fans have already done the mental gymnastics required to fix this obvious mistake (“They must have taken a shuttle later into the war zone, because that totally makes sense!”), but the obvious answer is that Lucasfilm simply wanted to shove these characters into Rogue One and didn’t bother to think about it too hard. And hey, when this kind of nostalgia callback inevitably wears off, people will have to confront the merits of the writing itself, y’know?

And let’s talk about the spinoff movies (like Rogue One) for a second. These could explore enigmatic side characters like Boba Fett, jump forward or back centuries, or even completely switch genres. Who wouldn’t want to see a Star Wars noir-style detective film? There are so many amazing options …

BBCOh.

Or make a Han Solo origin, I guess? Hey, wasn’t A New Hope already the Han Solo origin? See, there’s a reason that film began when it did: It was the most interesting point to start. We didn’t need to know what Han was up to before saving the fucking Galaxy any more than we needed to see how Leia got the Death Star plans. These are footnotes to a bigger story. Devoting films to them is like if Peter Jackson made a two-hour Lord Of The Rings spinoff adventure about Aragorn hitchhiking to the Prancing Pony.

What frustrates me here is that it’s not like there aren’t popular Star Wars characters that it wouldn’t be awesome to see the origin of. (Yoda has no doubt seen his share of adventures and/or psychic goblin orgies.) But I think the reason we’re getting Han Solo is because it’s safe from a writing perspective. He’s a beloved character, a known quantity. His “origin” will undoubtedly be a series of unbearable callbacks to minutiae from A New Hope. In other words, brace yourself for a nail-biting “Kessel Run” sequence in which the prize is a vest.

4

Forcing A New Star Wars Every Year Means Rushing Out Crap

Everyone knows that classic I Love Lucy bit in which Lucy’s wrapping chocolate on a production line, and the conveyor goes so fast that she gets desperate and starts eating the candy to keep up, but Lucy still makes billions worldwide, because people will eat chocolate no matter how sloppy and slapdash it is.

If you haven’t puzzled out my brilliant analogy, Star Wars is the chocolate and Lucasfilm is the hilarious 1950s comedienne. Disney has decided that the world deserves a new Star Wars film every 365 days, because nothing says “quality” like deciding the release date before knowing what you’re making. (That’s why restaurants always bring your meal out in exactly five minutes, no matter how undercooked it is.)

The moral of the story is “rushing is dumb.” It’s why back when most TV shows had 20+ episodes a season, we’d get hogwash like clip shows and that one X-Files where the villain was a clowder of cats. We learned over time that it’s better to have a smaller amount of high-quality things than a large amount of poor-quality things. This applies to 99 percent of everything humanity has ever created. And if you don’t believe me, look at the small library’s worth of articles about Lucasfilm’s current production problems.

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Lucasfilm’s schedule is so nuts that they’re hemorrhaging writers and directors. The script for A New Hope took three years and four drafts to complete, but the process for Rogue One was so zippy that they were writing pivotal scenes during post-production.

So if you’re wondering why these new films seem to borrow so much from the originals, it’s because who has time to think of something new? Who has time to consider plot holes or character inconsistencies when you’re barreling toward a release date? This is the kind of dumb idea that forces you to panic and fire your directors five months into filming.

So yeah, slow the fuck down, Disney. No one is going to forget Star Wars exists if you skip a year. The world once went, like, 16 years without a new Star Wars movie. Those were some wild days.

3

And, Uh, Stop Hiring Indie Directors

Let’s talk about Colin Trevorrow. For those unaware, Trevorrow got his start with a low-budget film called Safety Not Guaranteed, which was based off of a funny fake ad in the newspaper. It’s a perfectly existing movie. So how did he go from that straight to directing Jurassic World? Well, the studio originally wanted Brad Bird (The Incredibles) to direct, and when Bird declined, he referred them to Trevorrow because he liked Safety. In a world full of qualified sci-fi and action directors, this one reference boosted an indie comedy guy to Spielbergian status. And Hollywood being Hollywood, Trevorrow also got a Star Wars out of the deal, because why the hell not.

That’s when things got stupid. After being personally hired by Spielberg for Jurassic World, the newbie director asserted himself hard during the production process and reportedly became difficult to work with. And while a good director is supposed to lead the charge, his lack of experience contrasted with his overconfidence and created a toxic mix, not unlike electing a reality TV show host to be the president of the United States.

And so when his next film, The Book Of Henry, proved to be a confounding disaster, Trevorrow was hastily dropped from Episode IX and replaced with the much more experienced J.J. Abrams. Look, I have nothing against Trevorrow as a director, but the guy was, well, two movies into his career when they hired him for this massive task. And yet for Star Wars, this is a painfully common practice that almost always leads to problems (which I have pointed out again and again).

When Lucasfilm hired Chris Miller and Phil Lord — directors known for improv-heavy comedies like 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie — one would assume they were there to bring that element to the Han Solo film. And you know what? Neat! Considering what I’ve already said about that premise, a Han Solo comedy about improv space shenanigans would have been kinda awesome. But it turns out that wasn’t what Lucasfilm had in mind, and the directors’ slower shooting style and frustration over lack of creative freedom led to them being replaced with smilin’ Ron Howard.

See the pattern yet? Lucasfilm inexplicably hires inexperienced or unique directors, refuses to let them express themselves, and ultimately has to shitcan them. I’m gonna go ahead and call it “Trank Mania” after Josh Trank, whose troubled times directing the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot reportedly led to him losing the Boba Fett solo movie. (Also, “Trank Mania” sounds like an awesome WWE special, so there’s that.)

2

There’s No Single Person In Charge Of The Story

While he didn’t direct two-thirds of the Original Trilogy, George Lucas did oversee the writing and production of all of them. Today we have similar “George Lucases” for other series — Zack Snyder and the DC Extended Universe, Kevin Feige for Marvel, J.J. Abrams for the new Star Trek films, and Peter Jackson for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

And so here’s my question: Who is in charge of these new Star Wars films? Is it Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm? Not really. By her own admission, she and Lucasfilm “haven’t mapped out” the direction of the new trilogy, and have been largely leaving it up to each director to figure it out. And that’s kind of insane, isn’t it? Most film trilogies are championed by a single artist keeping track of the details. And without that, you run the risk of setting up plot points with zero payoffs, or adding twists that contradict previous scenes.

To give you an idea of why this is important, when Alan Rickman played Severus Snape, he was made aware (before anyone else) that his character always had a thing for Harry’s mom. That knowledge dictated the way he played the role long before that twist was revealed. Imagine how less effective that performance would have been if he was told, “Oh, by the way, we decided you’ve been good all along!” at the very end.

And right now, the directors of Star Wars are absolutely making those kind of last-minute decisions. You know the ending of Force Awakens, when Rey and Chewie and R2-D2 show up on Luke’s island of Jedi guano and bring him his lightsaber?

Well, it turns out that J.J. Abrams originally planned for BB-8 to be there, and swapped droids at the request of Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. We don’t know why Johnson needed the switch, but it sure seems weird that they’re doing stuff like that. Meanwhile, J.J. is coming back for the final film, and who knows if his plans will match up with what Johnson has set up?

In fairness, both of these directors are good at what they do. But the whole process still seems like they are flying blind with one hand tied behind their backs. And the oddest thing of all is that no one seems to know exactly where it’s all heading, or really why we’re making these films beyond the fact that people love Star Wars. And that brings me to a pretty dark question …

1

Maybe Star Wars Was Never A Repeatable Premise?

There was no fucking way the Hobbit trilogy, or even a Hobbit solo film, was going to be as good as the Lord Of The Rings films. Tolkien wrote Rings as an epic sequel to The Hobbit, and by reversing that order, the movies lowered the stakes. This is the same problem I’m sensing with Star Wars.

The first films were about the saving the entire goddamn Galaxy from tyranny. They were a definitive, standalone series that highlighted the most important event to happen in that universe. Anything else is supplemental and pales in comparison. The prequels worked (on paper) because they didn’t attempt to tell that same story, and focused more on one man’s transition to the Dark Side. (The delivery did have some issues.) But these new sequels seem unable to do much save repackage the same threats from the original films. “They had a Star Destroyer? Well, we have a Mega Star Destroyer!” “You thought the last Death Star was big? Well, ours is even DEATH-IER!”

Look, I’m honestly not certain I’m 100 percent right about this, but I think somewhere down the line, we overestimated how repeatable of a premise Star Wars really was. The originals were a self-contained trilogy, and after they came out, even George Lucas attempted to pivot off of them and find the next big franchise. (Unfortunately, it was called Willow and failed hilariously.)

But Lucas still continued to spend the next decade searching for original stories for his company to tell, eventually giving in and re-releasing Star Wars in the late ’90s. When Titanic knocked the re-release from the #1 box office spot, he went full tilt and dug up his idea for the prequel. And after that, the world’s never stopped wanting more.

But I believe that through all his attempts to revive the franchise, Lucas knew in his heart that the most important, most epic, and beloved part of Star Wars had long been told.

He knew, deep inside his hirsute gullet, that it was time to move on. That Star Wars would never be as special as that first time.

Unfortunately, it might take the rest of us a bit longer to figure that out.

If you’re George Lucas and wanna vent (or maybe just hang out sometime), contact Dave on Twitter.

The new Star Wars movies may be flawed, and we know porgs are just marketing gimmicks. But goddamnit we want still want porgs.

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