#like for example. the action scenes in prime are really well animated.

[sonknuxadow]

sonic prime is so weird because some of the shatterverse characters feel like they actually had a lot of thought into them and are meant to be a representation of or a subversion of a certain trait in the original character and others are like . okay lets put that guy in an outfit so we can make one billion dollars selling toys

[study-trash-child]

Nonbinary Characters in Polish Dubbings

It's a very short list, there's a LOT more they/them characters in media but for many, I couldn't find any dubbed scenes of, and I can't afford to purchase every streaming service ever just to watch a short scene with that character so-

Onto the topic

I so stupidly enjoy finding out translation differences between languages, and what better topic that Nonbinary characters translated to a language that genders everything.

In Polish, if you say you did something, you change it depending on the gender

I was reading - czytałem (male) or czytałam (female)

I feel like it is becoming more popular to use "o" as a gender-neutral way to say something (czytałom) but it's still faaaaaaar from being legally(?) recognized by many many other people and dictionaries.

But more on it later (kinda)

Some examples I found throught the years on how different shows handled the gendered words and characters in Polish translations.

RAINE WHISPERS - The owl house

One of probably most popular characters here, Raine Whispers.

It's Disney. I think it answers a lot already.

The show already had one queer couple, why make another, Raine throught the show is using male pronouns but was voiced by a woman.

On my own note, I really was not a fan on how they changed things in the dubbing including many of the names (Amity-Anita, Willow-Witka, Flapjack - Franek)

The Collector's official pronouns are He/They but the They was simply ignored. 'Easy as that'

ANGEL and MEREKID - Craig of the creek

Never properly watched it but when we (aka my sibling and me being a parasite) had HBO I tried to find epsidoes with them to see.

There are 2 nb/agender characters in that show as far as I'm aware (for some reason I though there were 3, so sorry if there are actually 3 of them)

For one (Angel) they just used he/him.

Other episode with nonbinary kid (I believe it was merekid) is completly gone from hbo in my country.

(overall HBO has a strong problem with many episodes of shows missing, like Adventure Time missing around 30 episdoes...)

STEVONNIE and SHEP - Steven Universe

They just refer to Stevonnie as two people (we, for version that includes at least one guy. Since there is difference between polish we for only girls - robiłyśmy - and we for either girls+guys or only guys - robiliśmy - ).

SHEP

Well, uh. I believe there is some kind of dubbing for the "future" series but I don't have prime and so on so I can't confirm it as of now...Sorry :/ UPDAGE: Managed to find an episode with Shep in polish dub. Shep is dubbed by a woman but the whole episode omits any kind of gendered words ("em" "am") by Shep and everyone else.

FRANKIE STEIN (G3) - Monster High

In the new cartoon and movie they are indeed referenced to as they. Even in polish dubbing Frankie uses "o" when doing something instead of just making them a girl (for both animated show and live action movie)

That's also a part of what I mentioned that the nonbinary way of speaking is becoming more 'common' in Poland

DOUBLE TROUBLE - She-Ra

I adore them, honestly

Well, quick note or so on, their polish pronouns is He/Him (since thier body is more male presenting)

Also their name in polish is "Kłopotowski" I had no idea till now and I wish it stayed that way, I laughed

BATTLE KITTY - Battle Kitty

I so, so, soooo love this show/game (the ony interactive options is picking where you want to go next. It changes nothing in the story). It's not so popular because it's an 'interactive game' which means that many people didn't give it a chance or just skipped it but I beg you to watch it. Me and friend had a blast honestly. It's a 'game' so your only chance to see it is to watch it on netflix.

The main character Kitty is Agender and uses they/them pronouns which carries over to polish dubbing!

REVERSED EXAMPLE

Huuuuh, that's honestly unusual.

So-

Nimona, many loved it, it's a giant allegory for transidentity/ and gender fluidity. I watched it with my mom (hence in polish) that's why I even know of the change

In english Nimona refers to herself as a she and others refer to her as such.

!In polish though! (I will use Nimona's english pronouns)

While everyone else refers to Nimona as she (including Balister), Nimona refers to herself as they ("o"). Honestly, unusal, it took me a few takes of Nimona talking to herself to even catch that, not to mention be sure that it's an "o". So yeah, polish made a character even more queer! Honestly unusual.

Hope you enjoyed my little, not really insightful post. It's just something that I'm really interesed in thus decided to make this (albeit) short post. There's a lot of overall different language changes, including how polish really tries not to curse in trasnlation (amazing example would be deadpool 2) or other changes that are really random (spiderverse, the amazing digital circus).

Hey, maybe it will spark some interest in you too. Make check langauge differences as well, have fun! Or suffer. Probably the later one.

If you (somehow) have something you'd like me to check out translation vise, let me know and I'll try to do just that

Cheers!

Edit: Small add on, regarding the analisys.

You could probably figure it out yourself but it seema like big studios like Disney will be the ones pushing for characters to be of she/he pronouns. While smaller studios will have a better chance of character still being referenced to as they/them in other languages.

[rosie-kairi]

I don't think I've ever really spoken in depth about how much I love Lauriam as a character, which is honestly a crime because out of all the Union Leaders I'd probably have to crown him as my number one favorite.

I love Lauriam not only as a character (pink, sibling plotline) but also as an example of how much prequels can recontextualize an entire character. While Ventus is also an example of this, I think we all knew that he probably had some sort of messed up past that landed him in the clutches of Old Man Xehanort. Marluxia, on the other hand, had absolute zero background to infer from his screentime. He was the villain, you're not really meant to think too hard about him and how he became who he is because he sucks and you hate him.

I don't think there were many people chomping at the bit wanting to get info about his past. Like, it would've been cool to get, but I don't think a background for Marluxia was necessary for the story at that point in time. His role was to establish the organization as a threat to Sora and the other guardians, and that was pretty much the extent of it.

And then Union X happened, and Lauriam entered stage right into a tragedy where his fate was already sealed. You look at Lauriam with his polite little smiles and cute little chibi animations and immediately think "what is this man up to" because you are already primed to distrust him on principle due to COM. Did not help his case that he was introduced in the cutscene immediately following the death of Strelitzia, painting a huge target on his back. Fandom reaction was hostile towards him before he was even fully on screen. Occam's Razor, the most obvious answer is the correct one. Lauriam is the obvious suspect because of his actions in the future, so he must be the killer. Literally him just existing in a scene caused more ire to build against him.

But then the Shift Pride cutscene happened. Then it was revealed that Lauriam and Strelitzia -the girl who so many thought he killed- were siblings, and that he was quite worried for her wellbeing, actually.

Every cutscene a clearer picture of who Lauriam is a person was painted, and soon you stopped looking at him with distrust, and it's replaced with the question of "What happened to you?". What happened that caused Lauriam, someone who has been shown to care deeply and immensely about the people he loves, someone who is willing to do anything for those people, become Marluxia? It became increasingly obvious that they were incredibly different people, even though Marluxia came from Lauriam.

And this isn't to say that there was no connection between the two. Lauriam seemed to be incredibly self-confident in his abilities, enough to be pretty steadfast in his resolve to square up with goddamn Maleficent of all people (even if he did get his ass kicked). There's also his very intense anger, as seen in the cutscene where Ventus confesses to being the reason why Strelitzia "vanished", as well as a bit in the scene where he's at Ventus's bedside.

This is all to say that Lauriam was not a necessary addition to the khux cast, he very well could've been swapped with a random new character and the plot probably would've worked fine, all things considered. But because it's Lauriam -the somebody of a character that has already been established to be a prick- it gives his whole plotline a hell of a lot more punch. If it was a new character, people probably wouldn't have been as distrusting of him right of the bat, the sibling plotline would be sweet, but because it's Lauriam and we know how he ends up in the future, it becomes a hell of a lot more tragic. How did the change happen? He's tragic because we know that whatever he does will lead to the outcome of him losing his heart and falling to darkness, something that is essentially the exact antithesis of the keyblade wielder mission statement.

Lauriam is someone who was made to struggle against the destiny that was written out for him with a neat pen and ink, and someone who was doomed to fail in every regard. He could not save his sister, he could not defeat Maleficent, he could not help Ventus, he could not keep his memories when thrown into the future. He couldn't do anything about it.

I realize this is all rounding back around to "the inherent tragedy of prequels" but it's true.

...and yeah that's basically it. I have a lot more thoughts about this guy but I feel like if I write anymore I'm just gonna sound completely incomprehensible bc I'm very tired. Thanks for reading, and don't forget to sparkle on

[electronickingdomfox]

"Final Frontier" review

Novel from 1988, by Diane Carey. Not to be confused with the novelization of "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier", or Carey's "First Frontier", which is the one with the dinosaur on the cover. There may be no dinosaurs in this one, but it was pretty great nonetheless (and crazy as it may sound, I don't think that dinosaurs would have made it better in this case).

The story focuses on a so far unrecorded period in the Enterprise's life: that of its first mission. And by that I don't mean Kirk's first mission aboard. Not even Pike's. But its very, very first mission under the command of Robert April (from the Animated Series), alongside Kirk's father: George. There's tight action, ideological dilemmas, some funny humor, and Romulans (both good and bad), that borrow heavily from Diane Duane's Rihannsu series. The frame story, on the other hand, has Kirk reading his father's letters during shore leave, in his childhood farm of Iowa. While he reflects upon his life choices in the aftermath of Edith Keeler's death. The brief frame chapters, inserted between the main story, present thus a poignant, quiet counterpart to George Kirk's adventures.

I really liked the development of the new characters in this one, and had the impression of knowing them quite well, despite not appearing in the series (or barely at all). Robert April is the laid-back, gentlemanly and ideallistic Captain, and a clear counterpoint to George, the pragmatic man that sports a more militaristic approach for Starfleet. The narrative tends to side more with George's views, as April's decisions are usually ineffectual once the Enterprise enters hostile territory. Though ultimately, both of them end up understanding and adopting parts of the other's philosophy. In fact, at the story's climax, they're forced to stand up at the opposite side of their initial worldview. Thus, Jim Kirk is presented as the more succesful, balanced combination of both (it's a bit like Spock and McCoy's "reason vs. emotion", but translated to politics). Sarah Poole (April's wife in TAS) also appears as the ship's doctor; she has a lesser role, but was given considerable depth nonetheless. George's pirate-like friend, Drake, usually offers the comic relief. While the staple "noble Romulan" and "devious Romulan" are represented by t'Cael and Ry'iak, respectively.

In many ways, the Enterprise could be considered the main character, though. The story follows her baby steps as a yet-not-finished starship, her coming-of-age after being severely crippled and defeating her enemies against all odds, and finally her official baptism. There are sections in which the ship is even personalized as a sentient being, like a chilling scene where her memory is tampered with. Also, April and George act like two dads that can't agree about their child's true vocation.

I can't think of much to criticize this time, though there's a moment where it's stated that the Federation's constitution is directly based on the USA constitution, as the "prime example to follow". I don't know if this is an original idea of the novel, or if it ever was Roddenberry's intention (which could be, judging by episodes like "The Omega Glory"). But the whole thing was pretty eye-rolling...

Spoilers under the cut:

George Samuel Kirk (Sr.) and his friend Drake Reed are bored security personnel at a starbase. Until one day they're kidnapped by three mysterious individuals, who leave them unconscious. Upon waking up, George and Drake find themselves in the cargo hold of a small ship, and once they break free, George discovers it was his old friend, Captain Robert April, who ordered their abduction. April is gathering his most trusted friends (among them Dr. Sarah Poole, his future wife) for a special rescue mission (well, maybe he could have ASKED them!). A colonist ship has been stranded in the middle of an ion storm, and Starfleet has no means to reach it before hundreds of families die aboard from radiation. Thus, April has been tasked with testing a new, revolutionary ship, much faster and bigger than any other at this time: the first starship (you know which one, right?). This is the only way they could save those colonists in time. And George is introduced to a majestic first view of the Enterprise, still lacking a name, when they approach dry dock. April intends George to be his First Officer, as he values his insights above anybody else's. However, the views of the two men about the role of the starship soon start to clash: April wants it to be perceived exclusively as a tool of peace and exploration; while George argues that its weapon capacities shouldn't be overlooked, in order to defend the Federation.

At the same time, we're introduced in some chapters to Field Primus t'Cael and his Romulan warbird, in another sector of space. T'Cael is dealing with intrigues aboard, instigated by an upstart spy from the Praetorate: Ry'iak. Dispirited by the growing suspicions of his crew, t'Cael has become rather seclusive, though he still counts on the loyalty of Commander Idrys. The Field Primus' moderate views have made him fall out of favor with the Praetorate, as t'Cael doesn't think that the Federation has hostile intentions against the Empire, and disapproves of the stealth attack the Praetor is planning.

For its part, the Enterprise has finished preparations for departure. However, soon after they leave dry dock, there's a catastrophic failure of the sealing elements in the warp nacelles. The only two options seem to be, either ejecting the nacelles (and thus losing warp capacity to rescue the colonists), or let the ship explode. But George doesn't believe in no-win scenarios either, so he pressures one of the engineers to think creatively and find an alternative. Using the energy from the shuttles to seal the leak at the last moment, they manage to salvage the nacelles. Nonetheless, George is suspicious of the failure happening right at the most critical moment, so he asks Drake to investigate the engineers, as chief of security. Drake tries to find a saboteur (not very subtly) among engineers Saffire, Graff and Wood, but finds nothing incriminating. Despite Drake not knowing, the reader does in fact find out who's one of the saboteurs soon thereafter, as Saffire breaks into the starship memory banks and tampers with the systems. The malfunction is delayed until the ship enters the ion storm, at which point there's a massive failure of the warp engines and the artificial gravity. April receives a head injury, while the ship is hurled light years away, into unknown territory. Well, not so unknown: they appear right in the middle of Romulan space, and face to face with t'Cael's warbird.

Confronted with the massive starship, the Romulans start fretting over a possible attack from the Federation. But t'Cael chooses to believe April about their ship being disabled and there out of accident. As a show of good faith, he agrees to meet with the First Officer (as April is too injured), in neutral territory on a nearby planetoid. However, once t'Cael gets off the ship, Ry'iak seizes control of the warbird and kills Idrys (a death that took me by surprise, to be honest). Then, he starts shooting at the planet from orbit, attempting to kill t'Cael too. Since humans and Romulans had never seen each other before, George mistakes t'Cael for a poor Vulcan prisoner. And there's a rather comedic scene, where he "rescues" the Romulan from enemy fire. Once the mistake is cleared, George has to overcome his xenophobic sentiments and cooperate with t'Cael to escape the planetoid. The escape involving alien wolves too.

Eventually, the starship manages to rescue George and t'Cael, using the new transporter technology (well, they accidentally transport an alien wolf too, which creates a bit of a mess). T'Cael agrees to help the Federation against his disloyal swarm of warbirds, as he believes that, if the starship is captured, this will precipitate war between the Empire and the Federation. In the later chapters, there's a pretty intense battle between the Enterprise and the Romulan swarm. While George uses a very Kirk-like bluff to discourage further attacks from the Romulans (which, in turn, explains the eventual development of the cloaking device). With the saboteurs finally captured (and in one case, destroyed in a very grisly way), and the warp repaired, the Enterprise can finally return to home space and rescue those colonists.

Spirk Meter: 4/10*. Spock expresses his grief about Jim's decision to quit Starfleet after Edith's death. And at this moment, McCoy understands how much the ship and Jim mean to the Vulcan: "more than a career, more than a refuge, and certainly more than McCoy had ever guessed". Later, when Kirk regains his confidence and chooses to stay as Captain, Spock looks at him in the bridge and acknowledges his "deeply personal synthesis between himself and Jim Kirk".

However, the relationship between Kirk and McCoy is given far more prevalence throughout the novel, and that's why I'm separating the two dynamics. McCoy won't leave Kirk alone in Iowa at his moment of vulnerability, despite Jim's wishes. At first, he tries to lure him with an invitation to have dinner together. And when this fails, he just pops up in the barn, offering "mouth-to-mouth" resucitation (of all things!) if Jim doesn't answer him (unfortunately for poor McCoy, Kirk doesn't seem too eager to receive a kiss from him). Later, McCoy tries to comfort Kirk about Edith Keeler's death, and share his pain, while Kirk assures McCoy that her death wasn't his fault. He also says that McCoy was worth everything. And once Kirk announces his decision to leave the ship, McCoy gets very emotional and tries to reason with him. Just then, Spock appears in the barn and wonders if he's "interrupting something"; to which both of them answer that yes, he's interrupting. For a novel that doesn't actually deal with the TOS characters, they surely managed to cram as much homoeroticism between Kirk and McCoy as possible...

Apart from this, George Kirk has several things in common with his son. Not just being an absent father... but also having very "intense" relationships with his male friends. There's a bit of it with Drake, that April brings along, not because he has much use for him, but because he can't separate him from George. Drake also waltzes into George's quarters and plops into his bed as if nothing. But most of all, George and t'Cael develop a very, veeeery close relationship (for good or bad), and have all these tense stares at each other, and this desire to protect each other. Just so you get an idea of what I'm talking about:

"Like me, George admitted to himself, unable to bury the color that rose in his cheeks and forced him to look away from t’Cael for a moment. When he looked back again, there was a touch of melancholy on t’Cael’s face. [.......]

George moved closer, hoping his eyes conveyed the depth of his promise. Solemnly he said, “Whatever it takes, however long it takes, I’ll personally make sure you have a place in the Federation. I owe you that,” he added, moving still closer. “In fact, I owe you more.”

A sudden, unexpected warmth came over t’Cael’s face, and he broke his communion with the monitor to look affably at George. “That’s kind of you. It will be difficult.” [............]

Allowing their intimacy to linger, George returned the grin,"

Huh, George, didn't you have a wife and kids back at home???

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

[dalesramblingsblog]

A Brief Look at Judge Dredd Novels, Part XVI: Swine Fever by Andrew Cartmel

This is, for our purposes, a book which is immediately fascinating just on the basis of author alone. There's been plenty of cross-pollination between Doctor Who and Judge Dredd in the past, with the likes of Dave Stone, David Bishop and Stephen Marley each allowing us to contemplate points of overlap between the respective franchises' novelistic offerings through the 1990s and early 2000s.

Still, this is a big one. Andrew Cartmel, script editor of the original iteration of Doctor Who in its final three seasons, and writer of the sprawling War trilogy across four years of the Virgin New Adventures, gets the chance to pen a full-length novel in the world of Judge Dredd.

As if to further hammer home the neat parallels at play here, Swine Fever is even the first such novel we've looked at to post-date the smash success of the 2005 revival; as far as I can tell from the publication date on the 2000 AD website, the book saw print roughly in the week between the airing of Father's Day and The Empty Child. The Eighth Doctor Adventures would wrap up with The Gallifrey Chronicles a mere two weeks later, while Cartmel himself would usher in the end of the Past Doctor Adventures with Atom Bomb Blues in December 2005, just in time for the arrival of David Tennant.

It would be nice to say, in light of all this, that the world of 2000 AD acquits itself just as well opposite two of the most acclaimed episodes of Doctor Who's first revival season, but... well, unfortunately Swine Fever is just a little too muddled and aimless for its own good.

That's not to say that there aren't good ideas here, because there are. They can, admittedly, kind of be boiled down to a slightly more farcical updating of themes of environmentalism and animal rights that Cartmel was playing with in books like Warhead and Warlock well over a decade ago at this point, with a mild update to focus on the issue of factory farming rather than animal experimentation.

This gets at the biggest issue with Swine Fever, though, which is that Cartmel's commentary never seems especially clear on what it's taking aim at, outside of the broadest possible statements like "factory farming is an inhumane, horrible way to treat animals." Which is definitely true, but as a central thematic statement it's not quite enough to hang a whole novel on.

Even here we should perhaps qualify things a tad. It's debatable, after all, whether Warlock really had a significantly more in-depth take on matters of animal experimentation, just as it's debatable whether a science fiction novel always needs to be some groundbreaking political treatise. But what Warlock did have was a sense of scarily focused, powerful anger that never left you in doubt as to what Cartmel was trying to say, even if it could simplistically be reduced to "Don't treat animals badly"; where Warlock gave Chick multiple point-of-view sequences that culminated in a bleak, harrowing euthanasia scene, Swine Fever treats audiences to an uncomfortably long depiction of pig sex built around a bad pun about "porking." And I mean, you know I love me some bad puns, and history repeats first as tragedy and then as comedy and all that, but all the same... pig sex?

The social consequences of Mega-City One's burgeoning obsession with pork are perhaps the prime example of this confusion in action. At times, it seems as if Cartmel is angling to portray the rivalry between fans of competing pork restaurant chains as akin to football hooliganism, while the Judges' overzealous and poorly-handled attempts at crowd control seems to evoke the Hillsborough disaster, hardly the most contemporary of references for a novel published in 2005 (though, of course, it fits perfectly with Cartmel's general status as a writer whose sensibilities were honed in the late Thatcher years).

Equally, however, Swine Fever seems to want to gesture at a "War on Pork" analogous not just to the War on Drugs - so, again, Warlock's shadow is hard to escape here - but to the War on Terror. The climax sees a group of mutant, intelligent pigs hijacking a shuttlecraft and seeking to collide it with a large, prominent structure in the midst of a bustling metropolitan area, as straightforward an evocation of 9/11 as is possible.

There is perhaps something barbed in this, especially in the closing revelation that the Council of Five's response to the crisis is to legalise the indiscriminate slaughter of the pigs, a clearly disproportionate reaction that will probably achieve very little besides widespread, pointless carnage. Porkditz's ultimate fate is probably the closest the book comes to recapturing that sense of anguish at Chick's death, but as it's quite literally in the last scene, it's very much a case of "too little, too late."

Even in the portrayal of the fast food craze spurred on by the legalisation of pork, Cartmel really doesn't have much to say beyond depicting the consumers of Mega-City as dumb, stupid fat oafs willing to ingest sub-par food without a care for its negative consequences for their health. There's little thought to the ways in which fast food companies fill the vacuums left by food deserts and poverty, even though it's a fundamental pillar of Judge Dredd continuity that Mega-City One is rife with unemployment.

Instead, witness the interminable "comedy" scenes of the flatulent, bumbling Judge Carver - and frankly by the end of the novel one can't help but wonder how he and Darrid haven't been kicked out of the Justice Department altogether for their stellar levels of incompetence, let alone why Dredd keeps bringing them along on crucial missions; frankly I also just found myself wishing the pigs would succeed in blowing up the Aquatomics complex, if only to get rid of the buffoons - and try your best not to think about how this is probably about the level of commentary on fast food we could expect from a book published just one year after the release of Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me.

Swine Fever ultimately feels like a missed opportunity all around. Instead of providing a compelling point of overlap between the worlds of Doctor Who and Judge Dredd at the precise point at which the former was beginning to claw its way back into the public's good graces, it instead only serves to make one long for Cartmel's past glories.

When you get right to the heart of the matter, there just isn't that much meat on the bones.

The Ranking So Far:

Dreddlocked

Deathmasques

Black Atlantic

Wetworks

The Final Cut

Kingdom of the Blind

Bad Moon Rising

Silencer

Eclipse

The Medusa Seed

Dread Dominion

Dredd vs Death

Cursed Earth Asylum

The Hundredfold Problem

Swine Fever

The Savage Amusement

[velvet-vox]

My top 30 favourite female villains of all time (10-1)

First part (30-21)

Second part (20-11)

Please, first read part 1 and part 2 linked above, don't click "Read More" without having read the first two posts in their entirety.

Number 10: Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)

It's a tale as old as time.

For those of you who have been sleeping for 100 years, Maleficent is the main villain of Sleeping Beauty, and one of the most iconic Disney villains of all time.

However, before I go on to explain what I like about Maleficent, I'd first like to get a weight off of my chest:

I believe every single version of Maleficent after her first on screen debut heavily mischaracterizes the character, and makes her appear quite dull and boring in my opinion.

I'm not just talking about the versions of the character who deviate so much from the source material that they might as well be considered OCs (aka live action Maleficent and Descendants), no, I'm also referring to versions of the character that try to adhere to her original SB characterization but fall flat because they forgot something or changed a key aspect by accident/will without realising how that would throw off the entire character's equation.

The only alternative version of Maleficent who's mostly true to the original character is the one from The House Of Mouse and that's it.

Let me get something out of the way: Maleficent is an incredibly difficult character to write, and a prime example of why simple pure evil villains are as hard to write as complicated ones.

For starters, the crow that Maleficent carries around in the movie isn't just an accessory, but an important part of her character put there by the animators to fulfill a storytelling requirement:

Diablo gives Maleficent someone to bounce off her dialogue with, but not just that, Diablo is someone who Maleficent can open up with, he allows us to see a softer side of the draconic fairy, and opens up a lot of inferable depth and nuance for the character;

It's truly the small details that really make up Maleficent's character, things like her bored expression while she's sitting on her throne after she captured Philip, or the fact that, apparently, in the 16 years where Aurora was gone she couldn't sleep calm nights, small things like that add up to make Maleficent's character.

I know that this feels more like a critique of the modern Maleficent rather than a tribute to the character, but there's a good reason for it: her original debut was so good, that it speaks for itself, especially that final battle.

Like, girl shoots lightnings from her sceptre, creates a forest of thorns and turns herself into a dragon all the while the most epic gothic score in all of Disney plays at full bombastic strength, and the dragon's sound design is made up of the most weirdly fitting object noises and like...

That's PEAK.

I remember a younger me thinking this was the greatest action scene in all of animation before I saw the Kung Fu Panda movies, and I still hold it in high regards despite those and other movies'existence.

Unfortunately, I think Maleficent truly peaked when her career began; she started off with a bang, and then anything following that were just smaller explosions; but still: one of my favourite Disney villains of all time, and one of my favourite villainesses ever.

Number 9: Black Heron (DuckTales 2017)

I guess this is a spoiler to DuckTales fans for the male villain list, but thinking about it for a while, I really couldn't keep the couple separated, not when Black Heron is just that much of a b##ch in her own right.

Black Heron is a villain of the DuckTales reboot of 2017, who started out as a one time only threat before transitioning to a much bigger role later on in the show.

What I really love about Black Heron, is the level of unsubversive subversion present with her; in a way, she's actually even more of a twist villain than her romantic partner is.

When you first see her episode at the start of the series, you think she's just a "Villain of the week" meant to just serve as a threat for Scrooge, Webby and Beakley to bond over.

Her plan in this episode is rather silly, and it makes you underestimate her greatly, though it doesn't take away from how much of a threat she really is. At the end of it, she disappears, but there is room open to the possibility that she isn't dead.

She was a pretty fun One Time Baddie, and it'd be nice to see more of her.

She's absent throughout the entirety of season 2, and you forget about her existence; at this point, if you weren't fully enamored by her first appearance like I was, you probably are just like "Ah! Ok." when you see her again.

Then, she reappears in season 3, where she shows up a lot more often and plays a major role now.

And here... Is when you start to realise something about Heron.

As the story unfolds, it finally hits you: "Wow, this character really has zero redeeming qualities.", which is, rather astonishing, considering every other recurring villain of the show had at least one moment of humanity, but it's okay, since she really isn't the main focus of any other episode anyway.

Then, the show ends; this character's story ends in a very casual manner, but it's fine, since she was just a side villain, and it was a pretty good conclusion to her arc anyway, so you aren't bothered by the suddenness of it all.

But, as you sit back... and think about the show again... you come to realise that all of the bad events that happened throughout the show are kinda her fault too.

The twist with Heron is not that she's evil or a villain, the twist is that she is pure evil and tied with her boss for the main villain of the show.

And when I say that she's pure evil, I mean that she's really evil for the sake of being evil in the purest form of its meaning, as in that's the only reason behind her actions.

This may surprise you, but there are actually very few pure evil villains whose main motivation is doing bad: Big Jack Horner wants all the magic in the world. Chancellor Palpatine wants to become Emperor. They both fundamentally want UNLIMITED POWAA, but unlimited power is still a different motivation from evil for the sake of being evil.

But Heron, really seems to be doing what she's doing just to do evil; she doesn't even care about her squad's objectives, she just views them as a way to inflict as much damage as possible.

And that's what makes Black Heron so cool: it's extremely hard to make this type of motivation for villains work, but Heron makes it function effortlessly; I'd like to go more in depth on why that's the case, but I think I've made this section lengthy enough.

But what really pushes Heron over the edge into truly amazing villain territory is that she technically won in the end.

She got what she wanted.

Her main objective was to make someone snap and embrace their worst self, and that's exactly what she did.

How villainous.....

Also, her and her partner? Actually Disney's greatest villain power couple, screw concept Magnifico and Amaya, unless Shego X Drakken is that good, this is the only villainous duo I'll ever truly need in my life.

Number 8: Mane Girl (MARVEL) (Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur)

BEHOLD!

You thought my tastes weren't weird enough yet?

Check this out!

Mane is... a very peculiar addition to the Marvel/Disney series of Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur, and the main antagonist of one episode.

Mane is, quite frankly, one of the most creative takes on an arch nemesis I've ever seen, and is tied with Dark Vlad from Wakfu for favourite one-shot villain ever.

This was the show's most talked about episode before season 2 came along, and for good reasons: this episode tackles the prejudice that African Americans face for the way their hairs look.

Without talking too much about the episode itself (there's already plenty of great analyses on YouTube), where the episode truly shines for me is with the inclusion of Mane as a living representation of Lunella's self hatred coming to life in order to harm her.

I don't know how many fans of Mane there are out there or if she's secretly the star of a hidden cult inside the fanbase, but for me, this is my favourite character in the show and I'm so obsessed with her.

In fact, I was even thinking of making her my new profile picture on this site too, since I already use her for my Reddit and YouTube accounts, so that I could officially brand her as my version of Tamatoa.

First of all: the animators did a stellar job bringing this delightful mass of strings to life; her body fluition and every single face she makes is immediately iconic, WHERE ARE MY MANE MEMES AT.

Second things second, Mane is the textbook definition of a dumb idea executed perfectly, which is my favourite type of idea: somehow, she manages to be the most personal threat Moon Girl ever faces in the first season despite having almost zero buildup and barely being on screen for more than 5 minutes; it may even be a stretch to call her Lunella's nemesis since she's not very evil (despite attempting to take over the town), but when you think about it, Mane is just her version of Venom, aka an antagonist accidentally created by the hero due to a flaw in their character.

I truly believe Mane could have been the main villain for an extended arc in the show, as the way she executes her schemes in this episode almost make her look like an S tier super villain, and the action scene at the end of the episode is super epic and also my favourite fight scene of the whole season: the music, the animation and the story all come together to create such an impeccable work of cinema, brilliantly showcasing the interior struggle that Lunella has to go through in order to overcome herself.

I'd honestly be down to doing a 1 hour long analysis of Mane on YouTube if someone asked me; I doubt I'd ever make it for real, due to me already struggling as much as I do to realise my ideas, but I wouldn't be OPPOSED to it.

I wouldn't say this is my favourite episode of the show, but it's definitely the one that impacted me the most, and honestly, this description perfectly fits how I feel about Mane herself.

I don't even think you need to be of colour to love it as much as I do: the themes of self hatred and body shaming make it universal to pretty much every one who wants to check out the show.

Oh, and with that said, check out the show, but not on Disney plus, don't support the company, go on Streaming Community or any other pirate site that you can find.

If you are a fan of Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, The Owl House, The Ghost And Molly McGee, or any of the other great Disney Channel shows, you should like this one too; just be aware that this may be the last truly great Disney animated series before Corporate shuts down the Creative side of things on there too.

Number 7: Jacqueline de Bellefort (Death On The Nile)

While I was a big fan of the 2022 Death On The Nile movie when I first saw it, after reading it, the book is just so much better.

Reading the book after watching the movie is like looking at the moon while the sun is rising: you just can't see the moon anymore.

Though much like our titular couple, that love for the movie is still right there, it's just hidden under the sun's light.

Back to the point, do you wanna know what is the main highlight of both the book and the movie alike?

But why?!? It's Her of course! The mad lad herself:

Jacqueline de Bellefort!

I just love Jackie so much, my brain immediately activates whenever she is just mentioned, she's one of those characters who immediately jumps at you when they pop up.

She's the reason why I still like the movie despite all of its flaws, and why I picked up the book in the first place.

She's just so energetic; especially in the book, you can feel that this is not a character, but a real, living person, which is exactly the feeling that Agatha wanted to give when writing Jacqueline.

What makes Jacqueline better than most other murder mystery twist villains, is one writing decision from Agatha that differentiates her from her peers:

She's insane and antagonistic from the get go.

The very first piece of description that we get on her in the book is that she pierced a guy's hand with a pen because he was bullying a dog and refused to stop.

The contrast between her personality in the prologue and the rest of the story is quite literally night and day, and the lengths that she is willing to go to scare the woman that stole everything from her are quite impressive, if for entirely different reasons.

The insanity makes her so entertaining, that she kind of has to be the villain, otherwise all of that chaotic energy would be wasted, but that's fine, since the twist with Jackie is not that she's the murderer, but that she had a different motivation from the start.

But what is more manic than anything else about Jacqueline is the way she talks, her speech pattern is so erratic that it always keeps you on the edge of your seat; all of Jackie's lines and facial expressions both in the movie and the book are so interesting, they do a great job at making you wonder what the character is feeling at all times and if they are genuine.

Speaking of expressions, I must give my greatest compliments to Emma Mackey for her performance as the character; it's sad to say, but I truly believe that if the movie wasn't so centered on Poirot and she had more screen time, this would have definitely been her performance of a lifetime, the one that immortalises her.

I unfortunately haven't seen the Poirot or 1978 renditions of Death On The Nile and their respective takes on Jacqueline de Bellefort, but I'll still give a shout-out to Emma Griffiths Malin and Mia Farrow performances as the character in case they are someone's favourites.

I highly recommend reading Death On The Nile to anyone who's willing to sit through a detective story.

The movie, despite not being quite as good, can still give you a fun time in my opinion, and Jackie's existence and impact in it definitely enhances the viewing experience of the third one.

Before reading the book, I feared that Jacques (movie) was a rather simple character and not-that-good of a villain, just someone I saw too much into; but after ending the book, I'm extremely confident in saying that Jacqueline de Bellefort is a terribly overlooked character, and one who should definitely be talked about more for the great villain that she is.

Number 6: Julith (Dofus)

Skip this part in purple if you find it boring.

And here, we arrive at the character who's solely responsible for restructuring this top 10 into a top 30, because that's exactly what happened:

Originally, I already had written down all of the top 10 villains that I loved before watching the Dofus and Totò Sapore movies, and while Vesuvia was shockingly great but not enough for me to consider her one of my favourites, Julith, as many other villains from the Wakfu franchise, completely blew it out of the park for me, and therefore, I knew that I had to rewrite this list in order to include her.

The problem was that Halojack, who was previously at number 10 before I moved everyone down a spot to make space for Julith, is a character that's too important for me to disregard as just an honourable mention, therefore, I expanded this project into a top 20.

And then... I also really wanted to talk about Gothel, and at that point the blame is on me for overworking myself (I blame the Other Mother though. Stupid spider b###h).

Julith, titled "The Butcher Of Brakmar", is the main antagonist of the movie Dofus - Livre 1: Julith (2015), based on the animated series Dofus: The Treasures of Kerubim, taking place in the Krosmoz, an extended universe created by the French company Ankama that also includes the likes of Wakfu and other projects.

This franchise (the "Wakfu" franchise, just so we can all have an easy point of reference) is notorious among the fans for almost consistently writing great tragic antagonists, the best of which dunk all over the competition due to the amazing execution of their concepts, and Julith is not an exception to the rule.

While Julith is not my favourite villain in the Krosmoz, I must admit, I'm seriously astounished by how much complicated and multilayered she is with her limited screentime;

By comparison, the main villains of the first and second season of Wakfu are just as much complicated as Julith is, with the main difference being that the formers had multiple episodes and a lot of extra scenes in order to develop, while Julith only has a two hour long movie in which she's not on screen for even half of it, and yet somehow, the movie still manages to convey just how complicated and faceted she is while still making it totally believable at the same time:

Julith is a truly complicated character,

She's a caring woman, a wrathful villain, a heartbroken wife, an ex-warlord, an innocent victim, a cold blooded terrorist, and a mother, all at once.

Our perception of who she is changes constantly throughout the story's runtime as more information and backstory is revealed about her, and the writing does a great job at adding up her new layers with her previous scenes without contradicting or downplaying just how awful the actions that she took were.

Julith's fashion sense is immaculate: this screenshot doesn't do justice to how beautiful she is, her cape is so multitasking it's insane.

Despite falling short of my top 5 by one spot, I admittedly think that, out of all the remaining villains, Julith is the most consistent when it comes to the quality per quantity ratio.

All of the next villains have some very good appearances/portrayals mixed with some poorly written ones: Number 5 has different writers handling her in the comics, thus, she ends up getting some less than stellar moments as a result; Number 4 has some weak moments here and there; Number 3 already had some people second-guessing her legitimate quality before a certain story arc in which she was brought back in stained her legacy forever; Number 2 is........ Number 2, and Number 1 has many different interpretations of various levels of quality, both good and bad.

Julith has no major problems or noticeable writing hiccups: she only has two appearances, the first one in the Dofus movie and the second one in the Wakfu manga, and she's a well written character in both instances (jury is still out on the manga, as it has yet to finish as of now).

She has a very simple but incredibly memorable design (as shown by the fact that she won the Tumblr Krosmoz sexy woman event), an incredibly inspired power set, a rich story with deep themes, and a huge impact on the life of two of the main characters.

I also think that her movie is the best way to get into the Wakfu franchise, as, despite the fact that I largely prefer that TV show over this movie, a common problem for people who want to get into the franchise is the massive amount of filler episodes present in the first season.

The best way to watch the movie is to write f2movies on your browser's research tag, click the link of the green F inside a black square, and write the name on the movie on the research engine of the site.

I HIGHLY recommend watching at least the first two seasons of Wakfu; this franchise has, at least in my opinion, one of the best rogue's galleries in all of fiction, and the very best villains of this bunch are in my opinion some of the greatest of all time.

Number 5: Azula (Avatar The Last Airbender)

When it comes specifically to the female category of these types of ranking, I feel like a lot of people would agree that there isn't a single more picked up candidate than Azula from Avatar The Last Airbender.

With Azula, here, we're talking about the literal poster child for well written, complex female antagonists.

And with that said, I'm just gonna come out and say it: I'm kinda disappointed.

When I first heard that Azula was an evil teenager, I, you know, actually expected her to be really fricking EVIL, or at least on par with Hama; like, an actual psychopath who takes pleasure in causing pain.

Not just the most accurate portrayal of a child soldier I have ever seen.

There's not a single action that Azula makes throughout ATLA that I couldn't see any other Fire Nation general doing.

Even locking up her two best friends and attempting to kill her own brother are things that I could easily see Zhao pulling off.

I know that this makes me sound like an Azula apologist, but can you blame me?

Like yes, Azula is pretty evil, but considering how much some fans like to parade around this aspect of her character, and the fact that Azula is one of the most popular female villains of this century, I was rightfully, you know, expecting more "Evil".

Is this what the golden standard for what an irredeemable evil child looks like?

Pathetic.

Now, let's set aside all of the years of misconceptions that I've heard before actually sitting down and watching not blue Avatar for the very first time in my life;

With all of that said, is Azula actually overrated and is she not as good as she's made up to be?

No.

Not at all.

I came into Avatar as someone who had spent years consuming analysis and video essays for the show despite having never watched it, I already knew what to expect from Azula, including most of her story beats.

And yet that alone could not have prepared me for the astronomical levels of quality that I was about to witness.

This list was always going to be entirely subjective, it was never even a question, but if there is an opinion that I want to express and pass off as a fact, then I'd say that until someone in the upcoming 75 years rises up to the challenge, Azula is THE female villain of the twenty first century.

I don't think any other character quite reaches the same level of iconic that she has, and even if you don't know who Azula is, I still stand by this statement.

I'm not sure what I can say about Azula that hasn't been said already in one of dozens upon dozens of video essays; all of her scenes are just that brilliant and well constructed.

I love The Beach, like anybody else does, and I find her introduction scene extremely memorable.

I guess the best thing I can do is point you to some of those videos, so that they may gush over Azula for me.

Sage's Rain

Rockotar

Hello Future Me

But despite all this praise, one may ask: "Why is she only number 5? Doesn't she deserve number 1 or 2?", and to them I say, one thing that I didn't mention during the number 5 segment of my male villain list (because I was too busy writing poetry and fangirling over him) is that the character I was talking about there had been my favourite male villain of all time for 10 years.

Let me say that again: 10 YEARS.

If I had watched Avatar when it was intended to and not relatively recently, Azula would have been my favourite female villain ever for a comparable period of time.

But alas, with the passage of time, came new baddies or I (re/)discovered some old ones that altered my brain chemistry more than Azula did, so, just like HIM, she fell off in autisticability.

With that said, even when contrasted with Julith, if I tried to make this list more objective, Azula would have definitely been number one or two, as she has by far the best and most consistent writing out of any character present here, with really only the Other Mother and Jobu Tupaki competing in that regard, but even then, they don't have to keep it up for two seasons of TV show like she has to.

She really could be summed up with perfection... if she hadn't massive problems in the comics that I'll be briefly touching upon.

Yeah, this is what I was talking about when I said that Julith was the most consistent character left.

I would like to give my two cents to the conversation, but I think that would be an annoying side tangent, so instead, I encourage you to check out some comics discussions on your own free time.

TLDR: Azula is the goat-bear and go watch Avatar, but the one with Asians.

Also stay AwAy from the comics.

Number 4: Magica De Spell (Duckverse)

(I know that the image on the left belongs to the old DuckTales TV show, but I never saw it, so with that image I'm actually referring to comic book Magica, and not her 90s counterpart)

I remember when I was little Magica De Spell was my favourite villain ever: seeing an Italian sorceress being the number one archenemy of a famous Disney character filled me with so much pride; Flintheart Glomgold doesn't exist in Italian comics, we have Rockerduck in his place, and although I loved Rockerduck just as much as Magica and wish he got represented better in the Reboot, I can't deny that Amelia Che Ammalia (that's her Italian name) had always been my favourite DuckTales villain.

Growing up though, I unfortunately lost touch with the comics and their characters, and so Magica became a forgotten memory, a relic of the past, a lost artifact of an era now gone, waiting to be undug from her prison of dirt.

... And that's exactly what the Reboot did for me.

Hearing Magica speak in the Italian dub was the best moment of my entire life: no offense to Catherine Tate, she gave her best, but those who haven't or cannot watch the Italian dub of DuckTales 2017 don't know what they are missing; the Italian accent provided by Ludovica Modugno is just immaculate, and it makes the character 100 times more hysterical than she already is.

In general it's just great seeing the impact of Duck comics on our country, where characters like Fethry and Rockerduck are much more popular than they are anywhere else.

However, I'd be lying if I said that the Reboot version of Magica De Spell was perfect.

I think there's a big tone issue with DT17 Magica, the show after the first season seems intended to fit her in a "Villain of the week" archetype, probably because that's what she was in the comics, but it undermines its efforts to do so because the show writers keep playing up the "realistic portrayal of an abuser" angle that they introduced with this version of the character, making it sometimes hard for me to take her with the levity that I'm probably expected to.

I also have some grievances with the niece OC herself; despite Lena being in my top 5 favourite Duckverse characters, I don't like how the two get glued together even after the season 1 finale, it feels demeaning to both Lena and Magica alike, I thought it was fine in Friendship Is Magic and Nightmare On Killmotor Hill, but at Phantom And The Sorceress is when I draw the line.

Magica's best post season 1 episode is the one where Lena's absent and she teams up with the other villains, as it removes the tonal problems that she had with the "realistic portrayal of an abuser" angle and treats her with the level of respect befitting of her character, even if at this point in the story she lost all of her powers.

That said, the thing that really sours my opinion of DT17 Magica, is her onscreen relationship with Scrooge McDuck, or lack thereof, which ultimately leads to Magica lacking some depth that her comic book counterpart has.

You see, in the comics, Scrooge's and Magica's dynamic is far more intense and complicated, because, although Magica is the villain, most of the time, Scrooge goes to way further extremes than her, making him not exactly a paradigm of goodness.

I could go on and on about the way their rivalry is done in the comics; just so you know, the Number 1 dime there honestly feels like a character of its own, similar to the Lost Arc in the Indiana Jones movies, it's this mysterious embodiment of Scrooge's and Magica's obsessions, driving them against each other, and in return towards insanity, though at least Scrooge has his family to distract him from time to time, Magica, instead, has nothing else to do except try to steal this golden coin over and over again.

The relationship between these two is so interesting, that's why I'm so upset.

Anyway, most of you may be asking why I'm bashing on Reboot Magica so much when I apparently like her more than Azula, and the reason is, in other aspects, 2017 Magica is peak.

The Shadow War 2 parter is amazing, that goes without saying, and some sequences where the character is in centre space go really hard.

I don't think neither comic book nor show Magica are better than Azula on their own, but together, they make for a much more complete package.

Comic book Magica is the much more compelling and nuanced character, while DT17 Magica has some of the character's best moments in history, so together they balance each other out.

Also, Magica gets one extra point for being Italian, because we love bias in this house.

Before I move on to the final three characters, one final warning: I'm going to spoil the s##t out of these last ones, especially number 3 and 1, so in case you don't really know the characters that I'm going to be talking about, I suggest you to maybe check out the series in question by yourself before reading this, or if you need an incentive, then look them up once you're done with this post.

Actually, I encourage you to look up every single character mentioned in these three posts, because I genuinely believe all of these stories deserve to have more people take a closer look at them, even the ones that I've barely talked about or that I've randomly name-dropped.

Finally, some last minute honourable mentions:

Ambessa Medarda (Arcane): I'm going to keep it brief with Arcane spoilers, but if I were to re-do this top, I would have put her at number 30; also I would remove Jinx from the honourable mentions since I thought that she was going to fall deeper into her villainy during season 2, instead, her character went into a direction that I didn't expect.

Also, shout-out to my silly little mew Maddie, she's so worthless yet so funny at the same time, she is as close to the primal definition of "serve cunt and die" as a character can possibly get; I guess this is kind of a major spoiler, but honestly, it's better if you go into Arcane season 2 with zero expectations for Maddie whatsoever, trust me, it's for the better.

Agatha Prenderghast (ParaNorman): Very recently, I've rewatched my favourite Laika movie ParaNorman, and this time around, I've realised something about it that I always knew on a subconscious level, but I hadn't quite realised yet: the villain kind of slays.

The movie honestly wouldn't be a masterpiece without her; she's such a well constructed character and the animation of her final form was the thing that I remembered the most about the movie for good reasons.

Dare I say it: Aggie's vengeful form is the peak of stop motion animation, and probably one of the best animated characters I have ever seen; maybe even the best, to be completely honest.

I'd put her into the honourable mentions: I don't have very clear thoughts on her, but she's very cool.

Honestly, just go and watch ParaNorman. I'm not even going to make a sales pitch for it, the movie is ten times better if you go in completely blind.

It's a masterpiece, and even if you end up disagreeing with this statement, I'm still sure the movie's heartfelt message is going to stick with you for a while.

Princess Audrey (Descendants 3): So, back in October, since I had some free time in my hands, I decided to marathon all three of the Descendants movies one after the other, which meant that was the first time I ever saw the third DE, as I had watched the first two back when they released; imagine my shock, while watching the movie, in realising that the song from that Miraculous animatic that I kept replaying over and over again actually came from here; I was like "Wait, is this the movie where that song's from?!?"

Anyway, Audrey as a character is closely tied with Harry for my favourite in the series; while watching the second movie after the first, I straight up forgot she existed, which made it even funnier when she became the main villain of the third one.

She's a character whose traits seem intentionally designed to garner my attention: spoiled, bratty teenage girl? Mean cheerleader? Forgettable background character turned main villain? Check, check.

Unfortunately, she's not as well written as the villains of the first two Descendants movies, but much like Kai from KFP3, if there's one thing that I can definitely give Audrey credit for, is that she is definitely the biggest threat that our protagonists have ever faced throughout their journey.

So yeah, she's cool, very stylish, and I'm such a sucker for wasted potential that I can't help myself from putting her at number 24 if I were ever to re-do this list.

And... yeah, that's enough. I need to talk about what carries Audrey so high.

Queen of Mean... Is a completely different experience.

When it comes up at the beginning of the story, it feels like you are watching an entirely different movie all of a sudden. Not because the music style has changed dramatically like in Evil Like Me, no, this is still a Pop song, but because of the story that it tries to tell and dark themes it goes into.

This song, gives me the same vibes, as BIGGERING, and HELLFIRE. (except way toned down, let's just say this is baby's first fall from grace villain song)

As if the jumpscare of learning this song comes from this franchise wasn't enough, this song being in the movie and coming out of nowhere gave me massive tonal whiplash, of the best kind though.

I really hope somebody has made an in length analysis of this song, because I'm this close to making one by myself.

Sofia Gigante (The Penguin): So, ever since the Penguin's episodes were beginning to air, I started to develop feelings for Sofia, but I never allowed them to blossom because I was afraid she was going to be a disappointment.

She never disappointed.

As you can imagine, I have so many thoughts about Sofia, I'm probably going to be rewatching the show during Christmas to solidify my opinions on her, but for now... I'd say she's my new number 8.

All in all, probably one of the best modern female antagonists.

Also I guess now is the perfect time to reveal that I've never watched Trolls 3 or Hazbin Hotel, so no, Velvet (Trolls 3) and Velvet (Hazbin Hotel) were never candidates for the list for this, and this reason alone.

As to why I'm revealing all of this now instead of establishing it in the intro segment of part 1, well...

It's entirely because of how they are named.

So, because I've been hearing the songs of Trolls 3 more times than I can remember, and because Velvet (HH) is inadvertly responsible for the names that I use online (it's a weird story), I thought that I'd pay tribute to both of them by putting the link to their songs down here, with my respective favourite cover for each.

Mount Rageous (original scene)

Mount Rageous (annapantsu)

Respectless (original scene)

Respectless (literal version)

And yeah, the Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2 and Queen Grimilde from Snowhite are not here because I don't care enough about them, in case you were curious.

Number 3

Harumi Jade (LEGO Ninjago)

Harumi IS gaslight gatekeep girlbossery personified.

You don't know what being a hater means until you've finally met Harumi.

For the longest time, I was fine with Azula discourse describing her as an evil teenager.

Then I sat down and watched the entirety of the Oni Trilogy in a short amount of time, and going back to the Azula discourse, all I could think was: you think Azula is an evil teenager?

LOOK UP HARUMI! THIS IS AN EVIL TEENAGER.

In case you don't know, Harumi Jade is a character first introduced into the eighth season of LEGO Ninjago, "Sons of Garmadon"

...

AND SHE'S MENTALLY DERANGED.

While I think that Julith, Azula and even Magica are on average written much better than her; to me at least, the highs of Harumi's are not only some of the biggest highs of female villainy, but also some of the greatest peaks of antagonism in general.

Like, Harumi doesn't blow up a planet, she doesn't conquer a dimension, she doesn't succeed nor try to reshape the entire multiverse in her image, but the ludicrous amount of batsh#t insane stuff that she pulls off despite literally being an absolutely normal 17 year old with no powers is such that it makes all of these higher than life baddies look uncreative by comparison.

And I really need to highlight this: Harumi does some of the most absurdly cruel s##t I have ever seen a villain do in a children's cartoon, I swear to god her laundry list would make many Batman villains do a double take, including THE Joker.

To give you just an idea on who we are dealing with, her very first major crime on-screen, after organising an heist in the intro of the episode and starting a cult/terrorist organisation/biker gang off screen, is to steal another priceless artifact, while blowing up the royal palace with at least twenty guards still inside it, and to burn her adoptive parents, the Emperor and Empress of Ninjago, ALIVE, meaning that in one fell swoop, HARUMI COMMITS:

Murder

Grand Larceny

Arson

Treason

Terrorism

Patricide

Matricide

Regicide

And More,

Right after being introduced, IN THE VERY FIRST EPISODE OF THE SEASON.

And while she arguably never hits the same heights of scale x absurd cruelty ever again (emphasis on "ARGUABLY"), she somehow still gets worse right after that.

Do you know Lord Garmadon?

Father of Lloyd Garmadon, one of the most important characters in the series?

Back in season 4, after/while completing his redemption arc, he sacrificed himself in order to save Ninjago and died, going to the Departed Realm and forever marking himself as a hero for doing so.

Well, fast forward to some time later and skipping over a lot of her atrocities, Harumi resurrects Lord Garmadon, and uses him as a puppet to physically and psychologically torture his son with.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, once she has fulfilled her goals and taken over Ninjago city, to consolidate her position of power, she manipulates Garmadon into adopting her; meaning that she and Lloyd have now unofficially become siblings, and she uses this newfound family dynamic with Lloyd to torture him even further, saying that HIS father prefers her, more than he prefers him, and earlier into the episode, before revealing this information, SHE WAS STILL FLIRTING WITH LLOYD, TO GASLIGHT HIM INTO HARMING HIMSELF EVEN FURTHER.

SHE IS SUCH A TERRIBLE PERSON!!!!!!!!!

DID I MENTION THAT SHE'S 16/17?

She also fricking wins in the end, because she's just that much of a girl boss.

There's no other character in this list who I can point to for the line: "She did everything wrong".

Don't get me wrong, Harumi is a very complex and tragic character too; I know that I've been painting her as some unredeemable monster, but she's also quite sympathetic.

It's just that, unlike with characters such as Azula or number 2, to me, personally, the most interesting thing about Harumi is that, despite having way more support and chances to grow than these other characters, that still didn't stop her from becoming a complete and utter monster.

This girl's ability to dodge every single safety net given to her is unmatched; it'd be one thing if she was given an olive branch once or twice, but the story and characters give her chances upon chances to scram, AND SHE STILL CHOOSES EVIL.

However, it'd be wrong to say that Harumi is a perfect character without any flaws.

I'm not going to say them, I just hope to have hooked someone into watching the show for themselves, but they are there, even if they can be explained with some leaps in logic.

... But I think it's time to finally mention Crystallized.

You see, season 16 of Ninjago, named Crystallized, is notorious amongst fans to be... "Not that great".

Some of the characters, unfortunately for the viewers, have been mishandled, and Harumi, as you can imagine, is one of the characters to end up on the bad side of the writing coin.

This season damages Harumi.

..... Which is why I never watched it!

Listen, I went very in deep when making this list, I bought the book of Death On The Nile just to see if it improved my opinions of Jackie, but LEGO Ninjago is not a franchise that I'm as closely attached to as Wakfu, Kung Fu Panda, and DuckTales;

I'm pretty well informed about the lore, I remember season 1, 4 and 5 pretty well, I saw some pieces of season 2, 3 and 7, and I watched season 6, 8, 9, 10 and 15 in full, and I constantly keep up with Dragon Rising news, but that's about it.

I only watched the colloquially good stuff, and I don't go out of my way to check out the rest, so when I tell you that season 16 of Ninjago fumbled Harumi badly take it with a grain of salt.

I saw some people that I trust saying Harumi was good, and I decided to check her out to see if the voices were true. She delivered, but I also heard about her mishandling in season 16, and I peaced out from watching that.

With stuff such as Ralph Breaks The Internet, Kung Fu Panda 4, The Incredibles 2 eccetera coming out often in the last couple of years, I started to get increasingly more burned out by follow-up to stories that end up subtracting some of the impact from their original tale;

I think Harumi is an extremely cool character and I really didn't want to ruin her for me, and since LEGO Ninjago isn't an hyper fixation of mine, I'll hopefully never have to sit through Crystallized and instead I'll skip directly to her iteration in DR if she ever makes a comeback in that (only if she's good though, however, with the current quality of DR, I'm sure the writers would handle her just fine if they were to use her).

If you know a lot about Ninjago lore and have seen the most important story beats of the previous seasons, I'd honestly recommend giving season 8 a try, though I'd probably ask a long time Ninjago fan what they think of it, as the emotional impact of the Oni Trilogy is dependent on how many seasons of Ninjago you consume I'm afraid, cause you really need to get attached to the characters in order for the story to hit you quite as hard, noticeably Lloyd and Garmadon in the particular case of Harumi.

Also, now that I've done the Harumi entry, I guess now it's the right time for me to reveal that no, unfortunately I haven't seen LEGO Monkey Kid, sorry Lady Bone Demon fans, she's cool, but I haven't experienced her in the show.

By the way, LEGO writers are surprisingly good at writing female villains.

Obviously, Harumi and Lady Bone Demon are the two obvious standouts (at least to me) for different reasons, but there are some other solid ones there too (I never saw the show, but I saw a compilation of Lady Bone Demon scenes, and I'm already sold on the character hype).

I've already talked about Brainfreezer in number 30, but then there's Naare from LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures, Crooler from LEGO Chima, the Spider Queen, many versions of LEGO Harley Quinn, the spectacle of a character that is Queen Whateverwannabe but also smaller characters like Ultra Violet....

Oh right.

Aspheera is there too.

REVENGE!!!!!!

Number 2:

Doll (Murder Drones)

(I chose this picture because loving this character is like staring at a loading screen waiting for something cool to happen, except it's just a picture and it's never gonna change).

If you've seen my male villains list, you know that number 2 is the spot that I reserve for the "I really wish I could put this entry as my number 1, but I can't, because objectively and subjectively, they don't deserve it" entry.

I don't care: Love is Love, Obsession is Hyper Fixation, and True Love is Pure, Unfiltered, Rage and Hatred when it isn't reciprocated.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show or this blog, Doll is a side character in the indie series Murder Drones, made by Glitch, who, depending on your personal view point, may be considered the show's side antagonist.

Simply put, there hasn't been a character who has impacted my personal life quite as much as Doll.

The very existence of this blog hinges on her and the impact she had on me, and if even sometimes I despise how much I'm still mourning her wasted potential and fumbled (insert every single aspect about the character that you want here), I can't help but still think about her all the time.

I don't know what else to say that I haven't already said through the massive amounts of reblogs and analyses I've made for the character, but I'll try anyway:

I love how much I'm still discovering about Doll; it may just be the messy writing, but my perspective on Doll has changed drastically over time, to the point where the character feels entirely different from how I viewed her a couple of months ago, every single day, I'm discovering something new about her that I never considered before, or I'm revaluating a previous notion that I had about her, she's like a pit with no bottom, a tunnel with no end; she scratches the same hitch that number 11 did for me, that being of a weird yet complex villainess, and I appreciate her even more for it.

And yeah, Russians are cool.

There's no better way to show my love for Doll than to put the link to my so-called "Master guide" of Doll media here, I hope other Doll fans who haven't seen it before can get a kick out of it.

However, it's at this point that I must open an entirely unrelated, yet necessary side tangent.

You see, I assume many people who are going to read this post will use it as a sort of "recommendation guide" for cool shows/movies/games to consume, and they expect the villains placed higher on the list to be more worthy of the hype compared to those who ranked lower.

Now, if you are looking for who I think the objectively best villain in this list is, it's probably Azula. The Other Mother, Jobu Tupaki, GLaDOS and Julith are close seconds for me, but if you preferred either of them over Azula, I wouldn't be surprised. Jacqueline is underrated, and totally worthy of much more hype, but she's not THAT good. You can definitely prefer/not prefer all three versions of Magica over Azula, that's up to you. Number 1... is also up to you, and although Harumi is clearly not on the same level of quality as Azula, Harumi's best moments are so good, that I can imagine them being what puts one over the other in some people's eyes.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to get at, is that I can see arguments to be made for all the aforementioned characters to be the best female villains of all time and people buying it, it's entirely within the realm of possibility.

Doll?

OH, LET'S NOT KID OURSELVES, SHE'S AWFUL.

I'm not joking when I say that what puts Doll so high is sheer hyper fixation alone: this, even more than Halojack, is the reason why the whole top 30 is completely subjective, and should only be viewed as a random person expressing their love for their favourite characters on the internet.

Disregarding the idea that, depending on your interpretation of the character, she's not even a villain, even then, she's not a character to be excited about.

The show hyped her up, accidentally or intentionally, and the pay off was abysmal.

NEVER, watch Murder Drones expecting it to be an amazing show, you will be disappointed; the show, much like Doll, is great at getting you hooked, but much like her, it fails to provide any significant payoff for that initial hook.

Other than that... it's a pretty fun show, give it a watch.

With that said, I still LOVE Doll, and I feel like my attraction to the character is still going to impact many years of my life to come.

And yet, despite all that, there's a character that I still like even more.....

Number 1

Number 101

It's Cruella De Vil, baby! (101 Dalmatians franchise)

You don't understand.

I love Cruella De Vil.

I LOVE HER!!!!

I'm a massive fan of the 101 Dalmatians franchise, which is weird, since it's the only one of my hyper obsessions that I can keep a secret.

I've consumed almost every major piece of 101 Dalmatians media (and by that extent Cruella content) that exists. The only things I have yet to check out are the 90's TV show (which I plan to correct as soon as possible), Disney's Twisted Wonderland, Cruella's Chills book, the tie-in videogames, and those obscure comics.

And as you can all well imagine, the reason for my hyper fixation comes from my deep obsession for this puppy skinning psychopath.

You better believe I've listened to Selena Gomez's cover of Cruella De Vil on the ride back from my birthday.

If you are a female villain, you can have the most well written backstory ever, you can have 100 shades of depth, you can have as many great scenes as you want, but if you can't bring me as much unfiltered joy and weird autism juices as this psychotic fur obsessed maniac, then you clearly aren't worthy of my praise.

Most of the characters that I've covered up to this point had very big ambitions and larger than life goals to go along with it.

Some wanted power; they wished to rule over something, to be obeyed, to subjugate, and would go against the competition in order to achieve that.

Others wanted revenge; those who wronged them, the societies, the individuals, and the world alike needed to feel the full force of their wrath, and if an innocent happens to be in the way and gets hurt, that was his mistake.

Others were just broken, and acted out on it; they tried to fix themselves, or the world around them; their brokenness, source of pain and sorrow, meant that they had to change their current predicament, by any means necessary.

Some others, wanted Nothing, but to impose their view of the world on everybody else.

And most were a combination between all four and more.

Cruella?

She couldn't give a shit about any of that, she just wants to skin some Dalmatian puppies and wear them as a coach. She doesn't have any big dreams of grandeur, weirdly enough she doesn't even care about money: she is perfectly fine in her own little world, living her own little adventures, and trying to make her coach, at any cost necessary.

I'm admittedly someone who likes to complicate classic pure evil villains a lot, explaining why they are actually complex and have a lot of depth; but with Cruella, I actually don't do that.

This is not to say that Cruella doesn't have depth (I would never say such a thing), but I don't feel the need to explore the character in depth to feel comfortable with them in the same way I do with other baddies.

And I really like that; it brings me comfort to have a character that I can enjoy in the same way as anybody else does, as it makes me feel way less alien about my favourite type of characters, and I don't get that a lot.

And I think it's fun for me to also have a villain who I don't need to deepen and just have as a one dimensional unredeemable asshole.

The reason why I almost never talk about Cruella to anybody except people that are close, is because she's a deeply personal character to me, in ways that not many would understand.

I relate to her a lot, in the sense that I can also get invested too much into my silly hyper fixations that I forget about the morality of my own actions.

I know this sentence is going to get me many concerned looks, but it's the truth, it's how I feel, and there's nothing I can do about it.

I don't condone any of her actions though, I just empathize with her more than others since we are so similar.

Anyway, Cruella has such a weird place in mainstream culture, she's super popular but you'll be hard pressed to find anyone other than me who considers her their favourite Disney villain.

She's kinda like The Penguin of Disney villains - and the Joker too, except her movie went into production first, so he's the one who ripped from her and not the opposite - much like the Penguin, every version of Cruella De Vil is different, to the point where the character almost becomes a blank slate for the artist to tell the story they want to tell.

For example, did you know that Cruella was originally meant to be the main villain of the Rescuers Down Under, instead of Madame Medusa? And she was meant to have a jacket of crocodile skin?

And that her book version is quite different from her movie version?

It seems that as early on in the character lifespan, she was always meant to be different, like it was hard coded into her that she was a character bound to be changed, while still remaining the same at her core.

Because, to be completely honest, what's more memorable than Cruella herself is her fashion design.

In that sense, the 101 Dalmatians franchise is much more similar to the Alice In Wonderland one than anything else, where the iconography of the series is more important than the actual canon; that being 40s London, dalmatians, its art and fashion design, the number 101, Cruella De Vil's styled clothing and mannerisms, eccetera.

Speaking of her career, unlike Maleficent's, who peaked early on and then was never quite as good as her very first on screen debut, Cruella's career, in my opinion, only improved after her very first on screen debut, and it's still getting better to this very day.

One day, it could be fun to rank all of the different versions of the character in their own separate list, but for now, here are my opinions on almost every single iteration of Cruella:

One Hundred And One Dalmatians:

Starting off with a controversial opinion, the Cruella De Vil from the original 1961 movie is actually one of my least favourite iterations of the character, which is a bold take, since it's the version who popularized the character in the first place.

While I appreciate the original 60's movie for having some of the most iconic moments in her entire career, I must admit, I feel like she's not as interesting of a character as she is in some of her subsequent portrayals or in her original book version.

More than anything, I appreciate this movie's take on Cruella for being an incredibly solid foundation for the character, and if it didn't exist, then most likely there wouldn't have been all this many talented artists taking their own short at their unique take on the character; art is a very important thematic element throughout the 101 Dalmatians franchise, but it definitely wouldn't have been as recurrent if the 1961 movie didn't exist to establish its presence.

The One hundred and One Dalmatians:

Now, the original book version is about as good as the final movie version, however despite the two portrayals being very different from each other, I think book Cruella is slightly better than her movie counterpart; you see, the way that I would describe how book Cruella differs from her movie counterpart is that book Cruella feels like a character written by Tim Burton;

She is very similar to the leader of the witches in Roal Dahl's Witches, almost described as a supernatural force and has a lot of unique lore details that are absent from the movie, like the fact that she only eats food with pepper in it, including ice cream, and the fact that her skin tastes like salt, hence why the dogs cannot bite her; the only thing holding book Cruella back is that she doesn't have that iconic and absolutely deranged car chase sequence at the end of the movie, otherwise I'd say that with full confidence that movie Cruella is a downgrade compared to her book counterpart.

But honestly, "downgrade" is an over exaggeration, the movie version is very good in her own right, and just as important as the book, so I'm definitely glad for its existence regardless.

Also shout-out to Cruella's husband in the book, Mr De Vil, since he needs more recognition within the fanbase. He's a character that doesn't exist in any other version of the story, but he's interesting regardless: he's kinda like the protagonist of Helltaker but with none of the wits and muscles, he apparently just summoned Cruella from the depths of hell to be his wife in exchange for his skills and then just allowed her to step all over him.

One hundred and one Dalmatians 2 (Patch's London Adventure):

One of the best direct to DVD Disney sequels, and my personal second favourite after The Lion King 3/2, already this sequel gives an interesting continuation to Cruella's character at the end of the first movie, and that's by making her deal with aftermath of her crimes and introducing the character of Lars, this polkadot artist who has an interesting dynamic with Cruella; the best way I've seen anyone describe their dynamic is that it's as if Gargamella fell in love with someone who loves the colour blue, and I think its a rather accurate description.

Once Upon A Time:

Sympathy for the De Vil is peak television and I won't accept any rebuttal about it. While her time on the show was short (thankfully), Victoria Smurfit ate her role as the character, and from what I've seen, this is definitely the darkest version of the character, being a cold hearted serial killer with a lust for blood and harming others. This version of Cruella is so violent, that is actually one of the very few versions of the character to die, which I don't exactly love, but it's definetely an interesting change of pace.

Once upon a studio:

Cool background cameo. Love the little faces that she makes.

Funko Pop Cruella:

I don't like my Funko Pop Cruella very much. She's too angry, and I feel like they could have used a way better pose for her, like when she smokes the cigar, though I bet Disney is trying to not remind you of that.

LEGO Brickz Head:

I prefer the constructible Cruella figure over the Maleficent one, even if the latter has the foldable horns. It has to do with variety: the bricks you use for Cruella have way more different shapes and colours that help keep the construction process fresh.

Simpsons:

Straight up, Cruella was a last minute change to the episode, since they couldn't use Maleficent for god knows whatever reason and had to redesign all of her scenes. They didn't even bother to change her lines, how is modern Simpsons so stupid!?

Twisted:

10 out of 10 cameo. It's so good that, despite it being a single line of dialogue, I could write an entire essay talking about its huge importance for the overall narrative of Twisted, and its brilliant understanding and use of Cruella. Team Starkid did such an amazing job with this musical, there's so much heart, care, and two Ds poured everywhere. Twisted is an impeccable theatre production, I encourage everyone to at least check it out for free on YouTube. I promise, it's going to be one of the best Disney movies you'll ever see in your life, especially since Disney won't gain a nickel from it.

Disney Mirrorverse:

This game, is a travesty; one that does not deserve to be forgotten by time, but that instead should go down in history as one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by the gaming community.

I played this game, A LOT, in fact, I was a member of the number 1 ranked Italian alliance in the game, and let me tell you, it was a slog.

And yet, it still has a pretty good version of Cruella De Vil... conceptually. I really like her gameplay, and the trick that you could pull off early on by hitting the enemy with a second heavy attack just as the first root effect expired to give them a second root was so satisfying to pull off (I gave it the name of "Coyote Timing")

But what I really LOVE about this version of Cruella is that she does something with the character that I always wanted a Disney property to do: make Cruella a crime lord.

Every new version of Cruella has always been slowly adding mobster features to her, but this is, as far as I'm aware, the very first version of the character that has made the full jump to the role of Kingpin of her respective universe, and just for that alone, I'm glad for this game's existence.

Descendants:

Descendants is great because it's cringe, and it fully embraces it.

This series knows exactly what it is, and isn't ashamed of it in the slightest.

Some context for those who aren't in the know: Descendants is a Disney Channel's original franchise, that kept its cultural relevance thanks to its extremely catchy songs, focused on the offspring of the most popular Disney villains+some other character, who in this universe exist in the same time period and live close to each other.

The franchise takes many creative liberties with the characters that it chooses to adapt, with a very divisive track record of success; however, it then comes as no surprise that a character as suited for drastic changes as Cruella was left mostly unharmed by the transition into a new interpretation of the villainess.

AND YET, despite Cruella being the most fitting character for dramatically different reinterpretations, she's arguably the non-original Descendants character that changed the least out of everybody, because all classic Disney characters, from the Beast to Lady Tremaine, have even a small changes applied to them, but Cruella

It'd also be reprehended to not mention her son Carlos, played by the talented Cameron Boyce, who unfortunately died sometime ago during the production of the third movie. My condolences to the family.

Carlos is my second favourite OC relative of Cruella, though from what I've seen of Cruella's niece in the 90s animated series, I doubt he'd remain as such if I watched that show; though one thing that at first I didn't like about Carlos in the movies is his relationship with Jane:

On a first look I thought the two didn't have much chemistry because they were too similar, but as the relationship progressed, I realised that wasn't the case and I started buying it more and more, because Jane is that christian household kid who has a massive rebellious phase once she grows, while Carlos is a street rat with a hard past and a soft heart that grows up to become the emotionally stable adult, so him and Jane are actually a pretty decent ship.

Cruella:

Cruella is a complicated case, in that this movie has two different versions of the character simultaneously: Estella and the Baroness, and each of them is great in their own separate ways; Estella is a pretty engaging and complicated protagonist, even if she does suffer from not getting enough backlash by Jasper and Horace for her villainous actions, and the Baroness is a deliciously psychotic antagonist that's more in line to the typical Cruella characterisation than Estella; the scene where she's torturing Estella and she doesn't even recognise who her mother is is hysterical and insane at the same time, truly a deranged woman.

I feel like what really carries this movie for me is the vibe though, this punk rock style is absolutely stunning, and once again, if there's something more immortal than Cruella herself is her aesthetic, and this movie brings that to a whole new other level.

So yeah, I like Cruella, it gets a pass for me.

I don't know what else you expected me to say; it may just be because I have consumed way more Cruella content than the average person and therefore I feel like I know the character better than anyone else, but Cruella De Vil hasn't been the same character for decades, and this being the second most recognizable version of Cruella after the 1961 movie one doesn't ruin her character, especially when 80% of all Cruellas out there are unredeemable b###es;

Evil versions of Cruella still exist and are still going to exist in the future; this movie's popularity and income mean nothing, grow up.

Cruella De Vil (book):

My favourite part was the beinning. One detail that I particularly liked is that they added Cruella's necklace from the book. For those of you who don't know this, in the original Dodie's book, Cruella wore a black skull necklace, that wasn't added to the movie's final design, I enjoyed that it popped up here of all places.

As for the rest... If you think Cruella (2019) is bad, don't read this book, it's even worse, despite me getting some ironic enjoyment out of it.

Cruella's motivation for skinning the Dalmatians here is to make her mother, who has been neglecting and spoiling her since birth, who has manipulated her (Cruella) into giving her (the mom) all of her (Cruella) father's possessions when that's not what he would have wanted, and who's probably responsible for the death of Cruella's husband, proud.

The best part is at the end when the writer reveals to us that apparently, she has been writing the entire story while inside Hell Hall, with Cruella by her side screaming into her ears what to write, and... yeah, the mental picture of that is very funny, especially with all of the implications present in the passage.

Trust me, if this was a Cruella centric post, I could keep going, and Going,

AND GOOOOOOIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGGGG,

But unfortunately, I need to restrain myself from going overboard.

While all these different interpretations of the character are great and all, there's one version of Cruella De Vil that I wanted to highlight and talk about the most,

The rendition of the character that singlehandedly made me obsess over her and the franchise that she's from, and turned her from a character that I rarely think about to my absolute favourite female villain of all time and one of my life icons;

The version of Cruella De Vil that I'm talking about is none other than the one from 101 Dalmatian Street, the show who Disney desperately tried to put under the rug yet that didn't stop it from gathering a small fanbase around it, with myself as an outskirts member of said fandom.

I had written down a passionate piece about this show's version of Cruella a couple of years ago; I'm not going to translate it, you can do that on your own, because I wrote a new one that you're just about to read, but here's the original one anyway:

Già lo sapevo che avrei posto questa come la mia versione preferita del personaggio, ma ammetto di aver vaccillato un po' quando ho visto la versione di Once Upon a Time, ma l'aver rivisto vari episodi della serie e non solo il finale, mi ha convinto di nuovo che la versione di Crudelia del quale mi sono innamorato per la prima volta è ancora la mia versione preferita; Questo è davvero il culmine della storia del cattivo e della sua follia, nonché una celebrazione; sebbene lei appaia in carne ed ossa un solo episodio, lei riesce a rimanere impressa nella tua mente anche più di altre cose riguardo la storia, e la ragione per cui riesce a installare questo effetto è poiché la serie ha un tono così comico che quando Crudelia fa il suo debutto ruba lo show e lo fa diventare qualcosa di completamente diverso. Una lettera d'amore finale davvero degno del personaggio e di tutto il franchise della "Carica dei 101", e possa questa serie essere un giorno trattata con il giusto rispetto che si merita.

Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmatian Street feels like the climax of the character's personal insanity, the show does an amazing job at celebrating the huge impact that the character has had on pop culture by making the first part of the season finale play out almost entirely from her perspective.

But I have a lot to praise even before that:

I love how she was built up all throughout the show as this looming threat, from her shadow appearing every time in the background of the intro song, to the cameos of Hunter and his centric episodes, to the times where Cruella's voice is heard but her physique is not shown, to... JUST THE WAY CHARACTERS TALK AND BEHAVE ABOUT HER, gives out to the viewers the feeling that this character embodies Impending Doom, and that's exactly the last note that the episode right before the series' finale leaves you with.

The first three quarters of the final two episodes of this show are some of the biggest tonal whiplashes any animated property has ever made me experience; Cruella comes suddenly, with a lot of foreshadowing, but oh boy I was not prepared for what would happen next.

I'm not joking when I say that Cruella in these two final episodes feels more like a Slasher villain; she relentlessly tries to break the puppies down, so that she can come inside their house and kill them.

THERE'S ONE SCENE, WHERE THE DALMATIANS ARE DECIDING WHAT TO DO NEXT, AND SHE JUST CREEPILY LAUGHS AS SHE SCRATCHES THE WALL RIGHT NEXT TO THEM, FOR NO OTHER REASON BUT TO TERRORIZE THEM.

It didn't give her any tactical advantage, she gained nothing from doing it, she just did because she wanted to instill fear in their hearts.

I'm not going to reveal much else, since I want to keep some of the surprises a secret for those who got curious, however, there's something that happens in the last episode that I want to talk about:

In the first part of the show's finale, Cruella manages to capture all of the Dalmatian puppies, including the adults; this is the closest she's ever gotten to making the coach of her dreams, so how does she celebrate the news?

BY WALKING UP TO THE PUPPIES' PARENTS, TELLING THEM THAT THEIR FUR IS TOO HARD TO MAKE A COACH OUT OF SO SHE'LL TURN THEM INTO BAGGAGES INSTEAD, AND PROCEEDING TO FORCE THEM, BY LITERALLY PULLING THEM FROM THE EYELASHES, TO WATCH HER SUPER MEGA PUPPY SKINNING MACHINE BOOTING UP, AS IF TO SAY: "OH YEAH, I'M SKINNING YOUR CHILDREN AND WEARING THEM RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME, YOU CAN ONLY WATCH POWERLESS AS I KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN AND YOUR HEAD STILL BEFORE I KILL YOU TO AND TURN YOU INTO SOME SECONDHAND CONTAINERS FOR MY OTHER ACCESSORIES", AND THEN LAUGHS MANIACALLY.

Inconceivably evil; if these 101 dalmatians were humans - which is probably how they feel to the audience by this point due to how much time the show has spent on several of them anyway - this would have been one of the darkest things a villain has ever done in the history of ever.

And now, it's impossible for me to go on without also mentioning Hunter, Cruella's nephew, who helps her in her schemes (side note: Dalmatian Street came out before the second season of The Owl House, so no, our poor little miao miao hasn't copied anything from that show. If anything, the opposite happened).

Simply put, Hunter is fantastic, and Cruella's treatment of him is exceedingly cruel; ever since he was a child (and he still is a child by the end of the show), Cruella forced Hunter to undergo a very rigid training designed specifically to turn him into the perfect "Hunter", the one who would be bring her the dogs that she was seeking; she made him learn the language of dogs, so that he could manipulate the dalmatians into falling for a very cruel trap meant to optimise the quality of their fur, but then, once he failed and fell into the trap himself, she vocally abused him in a very terrifying manner, even making him cry during their first physical encounter.

That's even worse than what Carlos and the other Hunter have gone through; Cruella straight up treated her nephew as an animal, no different from the actual puppies that she was hunting down, and it's no surprise that he ends the show still being a bit mentally damaged.

If possible, watch the show one episode after the other, as the finale hits harder if you have seen everything from beginning to end.

Nowadays, I definetly enjoy Cruella more as an idea rather than a character, but this iteration still remains one of my favourites.

She is proof that to be a great villain, you don't need to be powerful, complex, or to have great goals;

Sometimes, to be an amazing antagonist, you just need to want something intensely, and be willing to do anything to get it.

[mahou-furbies]

Closing thoughts on Samurai Flamenco

(spoilers)

(like big ones, this is the kind of show that throws one big revelation after another at you)

Okay this was a ride. The story is about cinnamon roll dumbass Hazama, who dresses up in a superhero jumpsuit to fight for justice as Samurai Flamenco and faces enemies like littering and random thugs, and the policeman Gotou who somewhat reluctantly befriends him and helps him. Before long Samurai Flamenco attracts the attention of tabloids, and his fame increases. Then we have the reason why this anime is on this blog in the first place, that is the leader of an idol trio, Mari, who wants in on the fighting action and starts moonlighting as a magical girl themed "hero", though she doesn't care about justice and is in it only for the attention and getting to blow off steam by using excessive violence on her targets.

We spend quite a while on issues like stolen umbrellas and running away from overly curious press before we get the big twist, that actual superpowered monster of the week type enemies start showing up. Samurai Flamenco eventually manages to beat their group, but then we learn that there is actually an even bigger and eviler bad guy organisation behind them, and also on the human side there is a secret super sentai organisation, and Hazama is recruited to be the leader of the sentai team Flamengers.

Once the Flamengers beat the new bad guy group, it is revealed that everything was orchestrated by the prime minister, who frames the Flamengers for the monster attacks for his own political gain. Once he has been dealt with, Samurai Flamenco has to go to space, because there was even bigger hyperintelligent alien bad guy organisation behind the previous one. When that too is defeated, Hazama meets the universe's will, who explains that due to his love of superheroes Hazama is actually creating the bad guys through some cosmic nonsense, and that new enemies can be created to oppose him if he so chooses. Instead he opts for a world where he doesn't need to be a hero and is sent back to the earth, and all is well. Wait, why are there still four episodes left? Where can we go from here?

If nothing else this show definitely committed to its twists. The pacing for the early season was pretty slow, but once it got the ball rolling there was something new and wacky in every episode and things just kept escalating. But I gotta say getting through everything was quite a slog for me, and especially the fact that I'm really not a tokusatsu/super sentai fan I just couldn't get into it. And it's not even that different from stuff like Precure, but the aesthetic is just all wrong, I want hearts and cute frills! But if you're a toku fan then this is definitely worth checking out because it leans heavily on the "what if this was real?" aspect and analysing the meaning of heroism and such.

However even putting the toku stuff aside I had trouble finding the right angle to approach the show, like at first it seems like it wants to have a more grounded setting, but also expects the audience to take in some major logical leaps that are more acceptable in more "tropey" stories. Like for example the most egregious example of this I can remember is when in one episode Mari got seriously beat up both physically and mentally in a really dramatic scene, and at the same time the boys are dealing with a mass destruction weapon whose countdown timer is about to end. So we get a scene where a broken and tattered Mari has made it to her concert and does her best to sing a sad song through her crying, which was played over the bomb disposal operation. And through the whole thing I was all like, a) she should not have had the time to physically move from the villain base to the concert, we even have a actual countdown telling that not much time passed, and b) how the hell did literally nobody prevent her from going onstage, like not a single adult said "this 18-year-old is clearly injured and having a breakdown, maybe we should stop her"?

Then there were the numerous twists and bad guys behind bad guys, which I assume was done in a self aware way as a parody of the super sentai genre because their pacing was so fast. But I dunno, to me a lot of it felt just bad writing even if you're doing it ironically. The other four Flamengers also felt underdeveloped, especially for a show that has as many as 22 episodes. Not that I particularly cared for any of the characters though, like I guess Hazama was likable enough for his role but these kind of cute-and-innocent anime boys generally don't belong among my favourites.

As for Mari, even though I'm always inclined to be favourable towards anything resembling magical girls, she was quite difficult to deal with. In general I like it when characters have negative qualities, but with her we went way too far because she is just so selfish and aggressive for most of her screen time. And even though she does get her comeuppance it wasn't enough to redeem her in my eyes. Also her "mahou" outfit is extremely meh.

Then about the final four episodes, they introduce an edgelord teenager who starts tormenting Hazama and the people around him in order to force Samurai Flamenco to return, and the stuff with him didn't work for me either but for a different reason. That is, going from the silly and over the top toku antics to Hazama having to deal with his friends being poisoned or isekai'd by truck-kun by an anonymous stalker moved towards the type of thriller genre that I can't handle very well. Also Gotou was revealed to have some serious mental issues, not sure how to feel about that. But I got to say that in the last episode the show manages to throw in something that topped even the stuff with the universe's will as far as I'm concerned, but I shan't spoil that, you'll have to look it up somewhere yourself (or watch the show I guess).

Ultimately while getting through this was pretty arduous for me, I still have to have some appreciation of how dedicated the show was for its vision and I'm glad works like it can exists. And the creators clearly have a lot of love to the Toku shows, which is also endearing to me. Still Tiger & Bunny will remain my early 2010s buddy cop superhero anime of choice.

[rapha-reads]

Unrelated things I manage to evoke in my thesis on Beauty and the Beast, modern fairy tales and self-love (titled From Folktales to Fantasy: Beauty and the Beast, Contemporary Rewritings and Self-Love), a list (caution, long post ahead):

Hayao Miyazaki's environmental tales.

In contemporary rewritings of folktales and fairy tales, these revised critical versions often follow the major issues of the time: the feminist tales of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood of the 20th century are amongst the prime examples, but one may just as well cite Hayao Miyazaki's contemporary environmentalist and anti-war stories.

Arthurian Legends:

Nonetheless, ages change, people’s priorities change, ways of life change, and with these evolutions, heroes and stories mutate too. They evolve, but they’re never forgotten. King Arthur and Merlin are still household names, even after a millennia and a half of legends; their stories followed the times and took on new shapes to keep on meaning something to their audience.

Le Roman de Renart and "Le hérisson, le chacal et le lion" (the hedgehog, the jackal and the lion, a traditional animal tale in North Africa, Tamazight in origin):

Animal Tales are the first chapter of the ATU Index, going from ATU 1 to 299, in which the characters are talking animals usually interacting between themselves (think Roman de Renart or the tales of the hedgehog, jackal and lion in North Africa).

*On the subject of the hedgehog, the jackal and the lion, I really recommend looking up their stories. If you like cartoonish stories of the clever fox and the stupid wolf, Tom and Jerry style, you will like them.

Narnia (actually referenced a few times, the thesis does talk about Fantasy, but CS Lewis is quoted only the once):

In the dedication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis wrote “some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again”. As the reader ages and grows up, the taste for stories also evolves.

Neil Gaiman (completely out of the blue, I just wanted to quote him at least once):

the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast with all its space left to creation easily lends itself to the new scene. “Fairy tales”, Neil Gaiman writes in the introduction to Fragile Things, “are transmissible. You can catch them, or be infected by them.” They are, in their most basic form, in the bare bones of their structures, the “currency we share with those who walked the world before ever we were here.”

Doctor Who (I will find a why to quote DW in any circumstances, just watch me):

“The Universe generally fails to be a fairy tale. And that’s where we [the helpers and the leaders, heroes, doctors, teachers] come in.” That’s where writers and storytellers come in. Crafting stories is recreating a kinder, more merciful and fair world, where good wins, evil is defeated, love is everything, good deeds are rewarded and bad actions punished, justice is served and honour is upheld.

Edith Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet + more Narnia, because I will also find a way to talk about the Pevensies:

Harper spends six weeks with Rhen and Grey, and when she comes back to DC, six weeks have also passed. This is different from most Fantasy novels which actions happens in both Primary and Secondary Worlds; from Edith Nesbith’s The Story of the Amulet (1906) to Lewis’ Narnia, the passage of time in the Secondary World never matches the passage of time in the Primary World—the Pevensies spent close to two decades being kings and queens of Narnia, and yet at their return in England, not a single second had gone by, and they were back to being children again, a fact that I have always found cruel; they were adults, competent and regal, soldiers, scholars and diplomats, and then they were back to being children, powerless and ordinary.

Yet another Narnia quote - in my defence, I use Tolkien's On Fairy Stories as one of my major reference, so I had to give some room to Lewis too - + me being very French:

C.S. Lewis does write that “adventures are never fun while you're having them” (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Narnia book 5), but après la pluie le beau temps—storms never last forever, and the adventure always ends. That is what Fantasy tells the reader: you will go through hard times, but there will always be joy to find after the sadness.

MeToo, Greta and Malala (I swear it makes sense):

Belle just wants to be left alone with her wood-carving tools. What introvert passionate about their hobby doesn’t understand that? Lucie wants revenge on the man who hurt her; that is the whole point of the MeToo movement. Nyx wants to save her people and is ready to sacrifice herself for the cause; real life heroines fighting for their ideals are the idols of today (Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai…). Harper represents the everyday life of millions of poor, disabled people, not only in the USA, but across the world. Beast wants to be loved; don’t we all?

*I actually really love that one tiny paragraph.

The "we live in a society meme" (aka the beginning of the descent into madness of the writer):

In meme terms: “we live in a society”. And that society can be crushing, draining, destroying. How then does one uphold one’s sense of self and worth when everything conspires to ruin and empty one’s heart and mind? Even though the meme is originally absurd, it quickly became a satire of the world in which we live now, where there is no place nor time to slow down, to just breathe, to take care of others, to take care of one’s self, because there is always a bill to pay, a meeting to run to, a deadline looming close, a train to catch.

Queerness (by the way if you guys know any queer retellings of B&tB please send them my way):

Depending on one’s level of ease and comfort, the co-existing inside the community requires more or less efforts and concessions to one’s authentic identity and tastes. Consider, for example, the way homosexuality and any form of queerness have been and are still viewed in many parts of the world throughout time: the main history of the queer community is to hide away an authentic, personal part of who they are in order to stay safe within a larger community that discriminate against expressions of queerness.

The "mortifying ordeal of being known" meme (sos, the writer has lost the plot):

By agreeing to play the game and follow the rules, no matter how adverse to one’s authentic nature, we tacitly agree to be seen. There is another meme, that first appeared in an essay for The New York Times in 2013: “the mortifying ordeal of being known”. The full quote goes like this: “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” In essence, trying to hide and conceal one’s authentic self is to deprive yourself from being truly known and loved for who you are; it is to take the risk of being only superficially known and loved for who you pretend to be, the role you play, the mask you wear.

The "I can fix him" meme (what the heck is the writer talking about):

Here is a third meme, much more recent, born on Twitter in 2019: “I can fix him. I can make him better.” While the urge to help your neighbour is perfectly honourable, it can sometimes take on a sort of narcissistic veneer: it becomes no longer about the person you want to help, but about the power you can exercise over that person by turning them into the exact image of them you have, no matter if this image coincide with their authentic self or not.

Shakespeare (hell yeah, finally! Okay, it's not R&J, but still; who am I if I am not rambling about Willy):

The self is not a stable entity. It evolves, adapts to its circumstances, to the situation at the hand. “All the world's a stage and all the men and women are merely players” (As You Like It, 2. 7. 139), Shakespeare was already writing at the end of the 16th century. The deal has not changed. Everyone keeps playing a part that they believe is what society demands of them.

And finally... Kintsugi. Just for fun:

The Japanese art of kintsugi consists of repairing broken pottery with gold, letting the breaks and the defects visible, thus making them part of the history of the piece. Being broken therefore is not a sign of weakness; it becomes another sort of beauty, a sign of strength. The Beast’s curse breaks him down to his base nature, but ending the curse does not mean that the breaks disappear.

[agentnico]

Dumb Money (2023) Review

Does anyone else think that Seth Rogen looks like a cuddlier version of David Boreanaz? Angel's stoner brother? No? Anyone? Alright then, just me as always.

Plot: Everyday people flip the script on Wall Street and get rich by turning GameStop into one of the world's hottest companies. In the middle of everything is Keith Gill, a regular guy who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock. When his social media posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets wealthy -- until the billionaires fight back and both sides find their worlds turned upside down.

Looking back at the COVID pandemic, now it seems so strange that that time even happened. A time of dread and uncertainty, now almost feels like a 2-year blip, where things were off but then all of a sudden we have returned to normal. Doesn't seem real. Think of Thanos snapping his fingers and dusting half the world's population away for 5 years and then they all come back and it's back to regular hijinks. Regardless, the pandemic lockdowns were crappy, but one of the few glimmers of hope and goodness came from that whole GameStop stock event when a bunch of Redditors and online geeks managed to take down multiple Wall Street hedge funds that were originally gaining money from other's people's losses. Reading about it on the news was absolutely mad, and naturally, now we have a movie about it.

If you're looking for a factual detailed behind-the-scenes depiction of what occurred, and also if you're seeking out a lesson in finance, Dumb Money isn't that type of movie. I'm sure there is a Netflix documentary out there that delves deeper into the ins and outs of it all, as for this movie, this is very much a classic David vs. Goliath tale of regular people sticking it to the man. The combination of winning personalities and a mind-blowing reality makes for a very entertaining film, if not profound, yet this is a prime example of a crowd-pleaser. And to be fair, with all the politicians, tech firms, and media that get sucked into the events of the movie, it does seem like director Craig Gillespie has taken some creative liberties in inflating the revolutionary aspect of what was ultimately achieved, as even though the situation that transpired is undoubtedly absurd and the type of I-cannot-believe-this-really-happened situation, I feel the movie made it a bigger deal than it actually was. The over-dramatization is self-aware in this movie though, as the hedge-fund billionaires here are presented as very cartoon-villain-esque, with Pete Davidson's character even observing in-movie how the rich Wall Street joes seeming to have come straight out of a Disney animation.

It boasts a solid cast too, with Paul Dano showcasing yet again that he doesn't always need to play creepy dudes, and that in fact, he can be very likable and heartwarming. Though for those who have seen Okja that should not come as a surprise. Shailene Woodley as his wife shares good chemistry and the two performers commit to the meaning behind the meme-ry. Seth Rogen, Vincent D'Onofrio, Sebastian Stan, and Nick Offerman are fittingly slimy and evil as the Wall Street chaps, with America Ferrera and Anthony Ramos as some of the regular folk who managed to cash in on the action round out the cast well. Dane DeHaan pops in too as a company sales rep and is entertainingly unrecognizable. That being said, with this huge cast of characters there is, perhaps, a little too much bouncing around between stories, and not all the plot threads land powerfully. Pete Davidson as Gill’s layabout brother doesn’t add much, and America Ferrera as the nurse, as sweet as she is, doesn't really get much to do besides look at her phone all the time. Then again, who didn't spend hours upon hours staring at their phone during lockdown, am I riiiiiight??....

Gillespie’s directorial style is funky and fun, and he tailors his film to the subject matter. Again, it's nowhere as deep or clever as, say, The Big Short, however, it's an entertaining and empowering movie that showcases what can happen when people actually come together to show it to the man. Though could have done less with that brass language in the soundtrack. Nearly every scene was accompanied by some rap about f**ks and ducks. And yeah, I get it, Dano's character likes cats in this, but saying the word pussy seventy-five times isn't high-brow humour. Nonetheless, Dumb Money is an easy watch. Definitely the best choice between it and The Expendables. No shade. Now - let's go buy some stocks!!

Overall score: 6/10

[lovely-sayori]

(I apologize in advance for any mistakes. English is not my native language.)

I don't really think that they're all Mary Sues. These are rather not fully thought-out things / is just a science-fiction animated series designed for more young audience (especially the Rescue Bots), who would focus their attention on the action rather than being focused more on the plot of series and flaws of the characters themselves.

But I will say in defence of this characters, that their not that Mary Sues.

For the TFP trio, for example, Miko often escaped from the base after the Autobots and ended up on the battlefield multiple times, where she observed the battles between the two factions. And it’s quite likely, that she picked it up from bots and could somewhere teach herself how to fight behind the scenes too. (About Apex Armor, I can only assume that it can simply somehow adapt to its wearer, regardless of it's race)

I agree that Jack didn't stand out much in character, there is practically nothing much in common between Optimus and implying the title of the chosen one is quite unnecessary. (But he's has his shining moments in some ways in the plot of several episodes). However, I understand why Optimus gave Jack Vector Sigma. Raf is too young and is unlikely to be able to handle this level of responsibility, Miko is too impulsive and reckless. But Jack, on the other hand, is older, more responsible and (I think) adapts well to tense situations, although at times he has his "pulling out Miko" moments.

It's easier with Raf, because the kid is a fucking genius, who in his free time (presumably he had a ton of free time), is into science and technology.

I haven't seen much of Cody, but from tiny snippets of scenes where Cody was, I'm sure that him befriending all Autobots, doesn't make him Mary Sue. There is some people in real life, who actually can befriend everyone just fine.

Can't disagree more about being poorly explained origins of Sari (so we can only theorise, how she got in Sumdac's laboratory) and therefore being granted with the key that has some dosage of Allspark power (although the last one is more for the plot in the series). But Allspark is not only a life giver or can bring Cybertronians back to life, but it also contains knowledge and maybe behind the scenes TFA Prime crew (mainly Ratchet) and probably professor Sumdac himself have taught her something about robotics.

Which Transformers Reboot Human do you believe is the most Mary Sue-ish? XD

Sari Sumdac: 

* Chosen by the Allspark to be the keeper of the overpowered Allspark Key, turns out to be secretly cybertronian all along (without her origins ever being properly explained) and later became overpowered as well as instantly skilled in anything robotic when she upgraded herself with the Key… 

Jack Darby: 

* Chosen by Optimus Prime to become a fellow prime (somewhat) as well as the keeper to the Vector Sigma Key and is kinda implied to be the chosen one in general… 

Raf Esquivel: 

*Somehow able to understand the beeping Bumblebee (it’s never explained) and has computer skills that rivals the ancient and powerful Soundwave from the start… 

Miko Nakadai: 

*Has the most detailed as well as colorful outfit out of all the human characters and gains instant combat skills after stealing the Apex Armor (which she shouldn’t be able to control so easily)… 

Cody Burns: 

Has the power to befriend all Autobots, no matter how jerky or grumpy they are… 

Keep in mind, you can think a character is Mary Sue-ish and still like them! 

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Prime!

The first eight episodes of Sonic Prime are out! I've been busy for obvious reasons this past week (I kinda released a video game), but I've now seen all eight episodes, and as such can give more structured thoughts on them.

Overall: pretty good! I like it! ...But it's not 100% there yet for me. In the spirit of Festivus, I'm here to air my grievances.

Let's start with one of the highest points. First and foremost, this show looks great. We FINALLY have a Sonic cartoon that actually looks like the games with no asterisks attached, even across multiple wildly different AUs. And everything from small acting choices to big, bombastic fight scenes is a joy to watch in motion thanks to the fluid, expressive, fast-paced movement, with characters pleasantly squashing and stretching in fun ways. It's so fun literally to just watch Sonic's face move in dialogue scenes. God, I wish the cutscenes in Frontiers had animation this good. I get why they don't, but still.

And those action sequences! Man, some of these are the most fun fight scenes in any Sonic cartoon ever, period. Lots of great shot choices, a good mix of recognizable moves from the games combined with new ones and improvisations, I could go on and on. The shot of Sonic leaping backwards down that long stairwell, only for the camera to pan around beneath him and show his friends following suit? There's a reason why they put that in the trailer. It rules. This isn't the greatest action series ever - it still has your typical kids' action cartoon problem where the stakes rarely feel adequately high and you can turn your brain off during fight scenes - but it's fun to look at in a way that previous Sonic cartoons haven't always been.

Really, with how strong the presentation is, it's the writing that tends to let the show down in this first batch of episodes. The writing isn't even bad - there's some really cool stuff to latch onto, and I'm optimistic about them leaning more into what's interesting as the plot continues to develop. It's just... well, it's a Man of Action cartoon.

I'm going to nitpick a lot here, so I want it to be perfectly clear that I like Sonic Prime. I think it's a solid cartoon, and firmly on the high end of the Sonic cartoon spectrum. There's a lot that I'm into, and if someone told me it was their new favorite Sonic cartoon, I could absolutely see why. It mainly just has three things working against it:

It can't decide whether or not it actually wants to be wholeheartedly faithful to the games.

It was very clearly written to be a weekly TV show and not a Netflix show dumped in large batches.

The bar has been VERY high for Sonic content this year across every other medium.

Faithfulness to the games

As has been touted in interviews, Sonic Prime is actually canon to the games, and in many ways it's slavishly faithful to them. Which only makes it weirder when it isn't.

The thing that'll immediately stand out is the new voice cast they had to get because Canadian production laws blah blah blah. Now, they're all good here, particularly Deven Mack as Sonic. His take definitely sounds similar to previous takes on Sonic, but I think he manages to find a nice middle point between the youthful enthusiasm of movie Sonic and the more experienced heroics of game/IDW Sonic. He's great. And not to knock Cindy's performances, but I think Shannon Chan-Kent's voice might actually fit Amy just a liiiiittle better here. But the problem is it gets harder to view this as the regular game cast and alternate timeline versions of them when everyone always sounds a little off. Knuckles in particular is really weird because his AU counterparts have a completely different voice actor, and neither particularly sounds like his current voice in the games. I have no idea why.

For another example, Green Hill is used as a setting in a cartoon for the first time ever, and it looks exactly how you remember it. Cool! But it's also framed as the place where Sonic and all of his friends live 24/7, which has never, ever been true in the games. Even Knuckles is here with no explanation for why he isn't guarding the Master Emerald. (One might think that not drawing attention to Knuckles' job allows the writers to just pretend it doesn't exist, similar to what Sega does in many games, but then we get a literal 16-bit flashback to him guarding the Master Emerald in Hidden Palace.)

This would be a totally fine concession if this show was just doing its own thing like every other Sonic cartoon. The different universes are all different bad timelines for Green Hill, with Sonic spotting the unique iconography of the level buried beneath whatever's taken over South Island this time - a smog-filled Eggman city, an overgrown jungle, an abnormally high sea level - to drive home how wrong the AUs are. It also explains why Sonic can always find the AU versions of his friends in Green Hill, and it probably cut down on the number of sets they had to model. But because it is canon to the games, things like this distract me as a hopeless Sonic nerd. It also leads to some repetitive dialogue in the first few episodes as characters constantly comment on the presence or lack thereof of palm trees, because their only reference for what the world is supposed to look like is Green Hill.

Rings are also treated as a minor plot point early on to incorporate another thing from the games, as Sonic is late for the big battle against Eggman because he was off collecting extra rings. But despite how often it's brought up in that context, they aren't actually a factor in the fight at all, and then rings are never seen again in the AUs.

Also Orbot and Cubot are in this in the regular universe and then we never see them again? Are they going to come back??

This extends beyond these pedantic nitpicks, though. To me, the worst offender of the show selectively choosing when to care about the source material is the dichotomy of the character writing in the alternate universes.

Every AU will have one or two takes on one of Sonic's friends (Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, and Big) who are The Interesting Ones, the spotlighted characters for each subplot. These are the ones that get actual character arcs, and they feel like they're written in conversation with their original game counterparts in interesting ways.

In the dystopian world, Tails is known as Nine, a cynical loner inventor who was never saved from his bullies and inspired to be a hero by Sonic - but who, when pushed, is still a good kid deep down. In the jungle world, Amy is the extremist Thorn Rose who rides around on a giant Flicky like it's a chocobo and prevents foragers from "stealing" from the forest, possibly riffing on her bond with the Flickies in SA1. She's still looking out for the little guy, she's just doing so at the expense of everyone else. And in the pirate world, Knuckles is the captain Dread Knuckles, who instead of diligently guarding a magic rock was a pirate obsessed with obtaining a magic rock, and who swore off of that quest (and fighting in general) after it cost him the trust of his original crew.

These characters and their interactions with Sonic are all fun - Nine in particular provided a lot of my favorite emotional moments so far - and it feels like it gets at why you would do a multiverse story like this in the first place. You get to examine the characters from other angles! It's just that then there's... the rest. Characters who aren't the focus will just kind of get inserted into roles as Man of Action rests on broad cartoon tropes instead of actually doing anything with the Sonic source material. The dystopia of New Yolk City feels like a good fit given the history of the franchise, but then the other two worlds we've seen so far rely largely on stock "tribal" tropes and pirates going yaarrrrr.

I'm biased, but the worst off here seems to be Rouge, who has yet to get her spotlight universe (assuming she gets one next). This really stings because she's spot on in the regular universe. She hasn't been retconned to be part of Team Sonic, she's invited herself over because she's got her eye on the Paradox Prism (even dropping in unannounced at Tails' workshop). She's got a bit of that playfulness that makes her so fun, and the animation is able to lean into it. But then you go to the other universes and it's all gone.

Pirate Rouge is pretty fun, I'll admit, but I'm shocked they don't play up her love of gems there. Rebel Rouge (yes that is her literal name, the other rebels call her Rebel) gets to be a spy with a fun dynamic with Knuckles at first, but it quickly devolves into her just being the serious, responsible girlboss leading the rebellion who acts as a straight man to Sonic's snark. In other words, she's a lot like... Sally? I hate making that comparison because SatAM/Archie fans have been derisively comparing literally every new female character in the franchise to Sally since the '90s, but it's really hard to shake. (Similarly, it's hard to shake comparisons to Bunnie and Mecha Sally with Rusty Rose, the evil cyborg version of Amy with extendable limbs.) And Rouge's jungle universe counterpart ("Prim Rouge") is also just kind of there as the no-nonsense leader of the tribe, similar to Rebel.

And it's in scenes revolving around the blander of the AU characters when I'm like... man, I kinda wish they'd just made a show about the regular game universe without having to watch Man of Action bust out the pirate joke book and write the dollar store version of Princess Mononoke. I want to spend more time with the actual characters. Because they nailed the tiny glimpses of the game world that we got. This isn't a constant thought I have - again, I like the show, and the major AU characters are cool, and I like seeing new things be done with Sonic. But I'd be lying if I said I never wished the show had gone a different way. My perfect Sonic cartoon continues to elude me...

Story construction

Let's back up a bit and describe the basic premise. On the regular version of Sonic's Earth, things are business as usual, although Sonic seems to be getting a little too cocky and taking his friends for granted. During a fight with Eggman, Sonic accidentally shatters our new macguffin, the Paradox Prism, creating a series of new bad timelines in which he never existed. In that way, I might almost compare it to a multiverse-hopping adventure version of It's A Wonderful Life. A pretty solid emotional throughline to give the show a little more heft. In each of these worlds, Sonic helps set things right with the alternate versions of his friends and finds another shard of the Paradox Prism in an attempt to restore his world. He also usually faces off with the Chaos Council, a team of five alternate Eggmen who are all different ages.

Beyond the fact that there are like five versions of most characters, it's not THAT complicated, especially in a time when damn near everything in pop culture is doing multiverse shenanigans. Which is why it's frustrating that the script seems to think it's fucking House of Leaves.

For the first few episodes, Sonic has a VERY hard time grasping the fact that he's in an alternate universe. This is to be expected to some extent - Sonic is our point of view character through all of this, and it's a kids' show, so he's got to go through a process of figuring things out so that it can be explained to the kids at home. The problem is that it takes him damn near the entire first mini-arc in New Yolk City to figure it out, which starts to come off as insulting and leads to EXTREMELY repetitive dialogue where Sonic wonders why his friends don't remember him and where all the palm trees went. You'd think that by the time Nine explains that his personal history is completely different from how Sonic remembers his time with Tails he'd get a clue, but no, not really. He continues to meet alternate versions of his friends, stubbornly refer to them with their original names, and wonder why no one remembers their previous adventures together. This then somehow even continues into the second universe, the jungle one, where he somehow thinks he's still in New Yolk City and wonders why the cyberpunk rebel versions of his friends are all covered in leaves and wielding spears now. Thankfully, by the time he reaches the pirate world Sonic finally gets a clue, so this isn't a pattern that's going to continue. But it does make the first few episodes a drag.

This, the many recaps, and the out-of-order presentation of scenes back in Green Hill so that they can have a flashback to the regular universe in every episode for context really make it clear that this series was written for TV, not for Netflix. It's assuming that every single episode is going to be some 7-year-old's first episode and that they need to have everything explained again. I'd probably be a bit more sympathetic towards this repetitive, patronizing writing if it actually was airing on Cartoon Network, rather than being a Netflix show where they're dropping eight episodes at a time.

Stiff competition

This is the least fair of my complaints, but I gotta say it. As solid as Sonic Prime is for the most part, it looks worse at the tail end of a year when we've been FEASTING as Sonic fans.

We got a movie sequel that pivoted HARD into game elements, giving us both really great takes on the characters and interesting remixes of old ideas. The IDW comics are still going as strong as ever, with the continually compelling arc of new villains Surge and Kit and now the wildly inventive and downright beautiful to look at Scrapnik Island. And, of course, we got Frontiers, a return to form for the series that adapts it to a semi-open world with the best and most interesting story we've had in god knows how many years.

And then we've got Sonic Prime, a pretty good cartoon that between fun action scenes and interesting story ideas frequently relies on genre pastiches that were tired 30 years ago and jokes that aren't particularly funny.

I think reading Scrapnik Island #3 really put this into perspective for me. Which, again, isn't fair. The comics target older kids and are ALWAYS heavily tied to established continuity, and a comic miniseries can afford to go way more niche than a Netflix show. But Scrapnik is just doing such amazing and original things, bringing back long-forgotten elements of the games and recontextualizing them in fascinating ways. That mix of both the heartwarming sight of the Scrapniks finding happiness in their new lives and the EXTREMELY atmospheric horror aboard the ruins of the Death Egg. It rules! It takes elements hardcore fans wanted to see again and tells a totally new story with them that's unlike anything we've seen before in the franchise. It's really, really hard for "what if Knuckles was a pirate" to compete with that.

But we're still early in Prime. Things are getting more interesting over time, with Sonic acclimating to the dimension hopping and more crossover between the different universes. Nine discovering a completely dead, empty world and wanting to start from scratch there was also really interesting, and I'm curious if that goes anywhere. Again, I've been nitpicking a lot, but the show is pretty good and I've enjoyed my time with it overall. I just don't quite think it's 100% there yet. But I definitely think it could get there within the next 16 episodes.

Misc thoughts

Rouge sleeping like an actual bat is cute.

I like that the environmental themes of the series are such a big focus here! They fall to the wayside too often

I like that the AU characters have different names for the sake of telling them apart, but some of them are pretty bad (the aforementioned Rebel Rouge) while others I just don't get. Why is the old man Eggman named Dr. Done It? Why is the teenage one Dr. Don't?

I thought the scene where Sonic was trying to talk to the New Yolk City crew after a battle and they had to keep ducking under a laser that was still slowly circling the room was funny

The new shoes and gloves are ugly and I think it's really contrived that they magically transform into the perfect tools for every new universe

Between this and Frontiers it's becoming a pattern that Tails and Knuckles can get explicit flashbacks to previous games to highlight their histories with Sonic, while Amy can't. I don't know what to make of this

Thorn is pretty good overall but I do think the flashback depicting her as just randomly snapping one day when her friends pick one too many berries is so hokey that it wraps around to being kinda funny

I've neglected to mention Shadow, but I like him okay in this. It's definitely modern Shadow, but I think "hardass, no-nonsense rival who thinks Sonic is an idiot who acts without thinking and thus wants to kick his ass" is a decent place for Shadow to be in, compared to just The Vegeta, even if it's not my favorite version of the character. I'm curious to see what his role is in the rest of the show, especially given the cliffhanger, and hope he's able to work together with Sonic instead of just being a pissed off antagonist the whole time.

I hate baby Eggman

[transformers-fan-continuities]

Spotlight: Ties That Bind

This one’s a doozy folks! If you missed the last spotlight you can go read it here, but strap in for The Ties That Bind, an absolutely brilliant take on humanformers. It’s hosted here at @tiesthatbind-tf��� created by @artsy-hobbitses​!

Q) Give us a run down of your cont! What's it about, what's it called, what's it like?

Ties That Bind is a humanformers-based original continuity which is part Science Fiction and part Alternate History where the invasion of Quintessons and introduction of their technology to Earth in 1920 sets the world and humankind on a completely different trajectory. The active narrative spans a period from 1920 to 2070, covering the First and Second Quintesson Wars, the interplanetary Antillan War (leading to the creation of Unicron on Mars) and the Great War which involves the Autobots, Decepticons and Functionist stalwarts, and how it affects the characters.

The cast is pretty sprawling and the narrative is mostly centred around human drama with bits of humor interspaced and a dash of horror (mostly centred around how the previous government often chose to utilize the technology left behind from the Quintesson Wars to create new systems of oppression, which affected many of the characters, in the name of worldwide rebuilding efforts).

Q) What characters take the lead here? Any personal favorites?

I will admit to this continuity being very much heavy on the relationship between Old Bastards  Optimus Prime and Megatron, which is given considerable weight as they were best friends who had known each other since childhood and were deeply intrinsic to each other’s growths as individuals, which makes it all the worse when guilt and betrayal enter the party. Despite being captains in two corners of this battle, there’s a part of them that just cannot let go of their pasts together and they need to reconcile with how this will affect their agenda (Megatron) and how they lead their team (Optimus) who don’t necessarily share their history.

Other characters with significant development include:

Starscream, a Cold Construct in a toxic working relationship with Megatron with whom he is hiding a dark secret, who struggles to balance the underhanded viciousness he believes he needs to gain power and his innate desire from his Senate days to make the world a better place. 

Windblade, a Camien native who fights her government’s apathy concerning the situation on Earth which they see as unsalvageable compared to their more Utopian society. 

Prowl, a Cold Construct raised from childhood to be a cop in a police state, who finds out that he was brainwashed several times  to ensure his obedience and efficacy as a government asset and is now working to reclaim some semblance of the humanity he was never allowed to feel and figure out how much of him is who he really is and how much is programming.

Hound, a sheltered Beastman who joined the fight to ensure that Beastmen the world over would have the same rights he did in his homeland of Shetland Isle, but is forcefully stripped of his humanity and faced with his animal side during the war and has to relearn what personhood means amid his trauma.

Q) Is there a bigger point to this, like a theme or some catharsis? Or is it just fluffy fun?

God with the amount of time I spent sleepless trying to figure out how the logistics of this or the semantics of that were supposed to work in universe, I cannot for the life of me say it’s fluffy fun, but I can’t exactly say it hasn’t been pretty engaging either!

There’s elements of war being messy for everyone involved where there doesn’t seem to be a clear line between friend and foe at times, but I think for most part it prescribes to  Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief that people are inherently good, but are corrupted by the evils of society. Despite its dark themes (Including but not limited to child abuse, torture, illegal experimenation  and brainwashing), love and friendships do prevail, kindness does beget kindness, found families are made, even the smallest actions matter, and things do get better because there are people on both sides who genuinely want to, and strive to make it better.

With Cold Constructs and Beastmen, it also delves heavily into what it means to be human; to have agency and personhood.

There’s also a strong undercurrent of taking responsibility for one’s actions, even if they were made with the best of intentions (Avoidance of this is what eats up Starscream and Megatron from the inside, and what Starscream eventually embraces).

Q) How long have you been working on it?

There’s two answers to this!

I’ve had a Humanformers-related universe going all the way back to 2007 around the time the first Bayformers came out---basically I had a choice between learning to draw cars or draw people (I was an anthro artist back then) and I immediately chose people.

The 2007 draft however had no worldbuilding or connective storylines and was mostly a fun little venture into character design and practice which were actually instrumental to me experimenting and learning how to draw humans properly.

I left the fandom for about a decade and when I came back to it in late 2020 around September via the War for Cybertron series on Netflix, I immediately got hooked on the 2005 IDW comics I missed out on and wanted to get around to updating my old designs as well find a way to translate several of the concepts I wanted to explore in a human sense, so the 2020 update became its own full-fledged original continuity with detailed worldbuilding and history.

You can see the artistic evolution of several characters from their original incarnation below!

Q) It’s incredible to see your artistic improvement too! Give us a behind-the-scenes look! Show us a secret ;))

Say hello to my workspace! I’ve been working exclusively on the Ipad Pro since late 2016, which is fantastic because I can basically whip up concepts and sketches on the go anywhere. Nowhere is too out of bounds to work on TTB!

Also, do enjoy this sneak peek at true!form Rung, whose synthezoid human body took years to perfect.

Q) YESSSSS alright I must admit this is one of my favorite Rungs, and certainly my fave within TTB. Amazing. Phew, anyway. Where did you draw inspiration from? What canons, what other fiction, what parts of real life?

TTB was initially conceived as a faithful retelling of the IDW 2005 narrative before it was transformed into its own continuity and as such, it borrows heavily from concepts and mirrored plot lines introduced in that run! I chose to have the series inspired off it specifically for the amount of history and worldbuilding it introduced to the franchise.

Anime like Gunslinger Girl and Beastars inspired the depictions of Cold Constructs, especially the more harrowing aspects of their upbringing as government assets instead of children, and Beastmen (Beastformers) in TTB.

I haven’t depicted the world itself in my art all too much, but the architecture from Tiger and Bunny, which has sort of a futuristic Art Deco feel to it, is what you’d usually see in major cities. There is an in-universe reason for that---with a Point Of Divergence set in 1920 followed by 25 years (an entire generation) of progress basically being kicked to the curb due to the Quintesson wars, mankind was basically in a time-locked bubble until the end of the wars, and by then their heroes were 1920s-style rebellion leaders, which lead to 1920s fashion (especially among the Manual Working Class---Megatron, Jazz and Optimus all rock 1920s fashion at some point of their lives) and architecture being celebrated and retained as sort of a reminder of how things were before The Invasion. This anime’s background design is also where I adopted the tiered system TTB’s major metropolises are often built on (with each tier being designated to a different working class) from.

The main artistic style itself is a love letter to 90s cartoons, in particular Gargoyles’ deep and drama-driven character narratives and designs as well as The Centurions’ take on body armor logistics.

I also take inspiration, especially armor-wise, from the characters’ given heritage and background. As an example, Hotrod who is depicted as Irish has the flames on his armor done up with Celtic knots. Welsh aristocrat Mirage’s armor bears olden knight-style filigree and has his Autobot logo designed as a coat of arms. Indonesian Soundwave’s armor and Decepticon logo takes cues from Batik and Wayang Kulit while their mask is based off the Barong.

Q) They are absolutely gorgeous! Show off something you're really proud of, a particular favorite part of your cont.

The worldbuilding in general! Most Humanformers I’ve seen tend to treat it like a fun exercise which it is and is definitely valid, but I found myself wanting a full-fledged world to lose myself in and I sought to try and make that world myself by drafting a detailed history and timeline of events which would affect ongoing narratives, having indepth worldbuilding to include almost all societal aspects of the universe and  expanding on the concept of Beastmen and Cold Constructs existing in a human setting.

I’m not so secretly proud of the research and diversity included to make the cast look like the multicultural, globally-based team that they were meant to be instead of being locked to a single region! My original draft from 2007 was, to put it simply, quite culturally monolithic and I wanted to improve on that aspect with TTB.

I’m also proud that I’ve kept to it this far! I’m a notoriously flaky person jumping from one idea/fandom to another and to have kept at this continuity for the better part of ten months is honestly a personal feat.

Art-wise, this scene depicting a young Megatron working alongside Terminus and Impactor (cameo by @weapon-up-wallflower​‘s OC Missit!)  is definitely one of my favorites since it helps build up the world they live in and plays to familial bonds and comfort found in one another despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Q) Everything has come together so beautifully, you absolutely should be proud. What other fan canons do you love and why? Would you like to see them interviewed?

I am dying to hear more from @iscaredspider​’s Sparkpulse continuity! Her designs are MIND-BLOWINGLY GORGEOUS and I want to hear more about what inspired her to work on it!

Also YOU. Yes YOU BLURRITO. LET ME HEAR MORE ABOUT SNAP.

Q) [wails and squirms away in the mortifying ordeal of being known but in a very flattered way] I WILL SOMEDAY I PROMISE aflghsdjg thank you QwQ

Well that was fantastic, Oni, thank you muchly! A magnificent continuity with so much to look forward to! Coming up next is another personal fave of mine, the first inspiration for SNAP, so stick around...

[karanseraph]

Today's Double feature is Age of Extinction (2014) and Transformers One (2024).

General notes: these movies are made 10 years apart. Interesting. That means that like Transformers One came out in the 40th Anniversary year of the brand that Age of Extinction must have been around the 30th Anniversary, when there was that whole Thrilling 30 thing.

Transformers is animated adventure type genre movie while Age of Extinction is a live-action (with animated robots) movie in a sort of action blockbuster genre.

I didn't see many parallels between the two movies, not in the way I did with the other double features, where there's some clear parallel or an example of reversal from one movie to how the same element was treated in the other movie.

I've been trying to think how to word or to technically describe the difference in the whole feel and structure of these movies. It's kinda like if we imagine them as novels, then Age of Extinction was written in an omniscient POV which can show us directly things that happen millions of years ago or can show us different events from around the world that are happening at the same time. The audience doesn't experience the actions of Cemetery Wind team through the Autobots or Yaeger family, but the audience sees the actions of Attinger and his Rogue CIA group even before the Autobots learn the details. Which, I think lessens the impact when the protagonists do learn what is happening, because the audience already knows. We already know Ratchet got killed when Optimus finds out about it, for example.

In Transformers One the POV is somewhat more limited. The flashbacks and lore-drops have a diegetic presentation as Alpha Trion's recordings and presentations show the audience these past events as the characters are also learning of them. I feel this has more impact.

IIRC there are a very few instances in which the audience sees events in Transformers One other than when Orion or D-16 are present. I think there are a few scenes in which Sentinel reacts to the race or speaks with Airachnid that arguably is not in the usual limited POV following Orion and D. But most of the movie does follow them. There's even a fade-to-black when they are knocked out and taken by the High Guard. We don't witness how they are transported and find ourselves the audience there looking at Starscream on his throne. We also, don't see what happens with Elita between the time she's fired by Darkwing and when she enters the train where Orion, D, and B are hiding. But, we do later see her encounter with Airachnid when Orion is not present but only in contact over comms. It's not strictly one or two perspectives, but it is limited and expands only as needed to show a significant event.

Age of Extinction (and most of the Transformers live-action movies) jump around showing us what people all over the planet are doing. It's like the movie equivalent of reading a Dan Brown novel.

Whereas Transformers One, we could imagine, is more like reading a YA Science-Fiction/Fantasy novel that closely follows a few characters.

I think in terms of the ranking of the movies, Age of Exitinction is maybe very slightly above Dark of the Moon for me. Both movies still probably have way more human characters than they need and have some genre and tonal differences. And Age of Extinction has the time-skip/new team hurdle to get over. And Age of Extinction also has the weird episodic muti-ending feeling. *BUT* Age of Extinction has scenes of robots talking to each other and not just being props in the background. Bee doesn't talk/radio as much in this movie, I felt, but when we get Hound, Drift, and Crosshairs interacting with each other as well as Bee and Prime it's something that was missing from the previous movies. Like, some of the characters like Jolt, Dino/Mirage, Sideswipe had some actions or one-liners, but they didn't really have much interaction or personality. The bots in Age of Extinction have enough personality to have rivalries and disagreements but work through that to still save the world. Road Warrior Megatron + Sentinel Prime were much better than Galvatron. He was a lame villain. And those KSI bots were so generic (but intentionally because mass-produced knock-offs in universe) the way so many generic Decepticons showed up in scenes of Revenge of the Fallen or Dark of the Moon. But, Age of Extinction also has Lockdown and he felt like a villain with swagger.

So, this thing that Age of Extinction actually did better than the previous movies was then 10 years later done *even better* by Transformers One, in which they just made all the characters the bots, whether the main protagonists, antagonists, minor supporting characters, or background extras.

Since I found out that Transformers One is on Paramount+ in my region, and since I still have access to this service, I've been watching it every day and then watching some other Transformers content I have access to. Back-to-back like.

It's only been a few days.

The first day I watched Transformers One and then about 6-ish episodes of EarthSpark 'Season 3 '. Transformers One IMO, is the superior work. I don't hate EarthSpark (the obvious shift between seasons 1 and 2 does frustrate me). It generally does a lot of things I like. One of them is that it has an interesting animation style in which the 'Transformers Bots' come out looking very toy-like and the special effects 2D in style and it makes me feel like the whole thing is someone playing with toys, but in a good way (except one of the kids I'm playing with wants to go in a direction I don't like). Anyway, Transformers One is just a more epic thing all around. It's from the same era but made with different style and design. Less like toys (weirdly, considering Director, eh?) and more like an animated Science Fiction/Adventure in general. Also, arguably deeper resonance in the characters and their arcs.

The next day I watched Transformers One and then Rise of the Beasts, which only came out a little more than a year before. So, similar era of media, again. Animation vs 'live action' (but we know those bots are all animated just in a 'realism' style). The characters look pretty good to me in both. And the plots and characters and their arcs are different, but both are interesting and have resonance. I mean it's like the 'brothers' that turn into enemies with one, but then in the other it's largely about these two (three but Primal is so ahead of the others) guys from different planets trying to do their best for their own families and coming together to fight a destructive force. So, both movie are pretty epic. I kinda want others to watch these back-to-back to see what they feel, because one movie is like the one splitting apart and the other is about separate people joining as one.

Now, today I'm watching The Transformers: The Movie (I believe I own this one) and Transformers One back-to-back double feature. I'm still in the midst of this. But I think TF:tM holds up. It's 80s as Hell, right? 1986 up against 2024. But if I think about it in terms of "was this good or typical of its time" then both movies looked good in their era. Both animated, though different in technique and style. Both make use of Quintessons while the main foe is someone else. Both pretty epic plots. Both have that sort of cultural resonance where Transformers One does have those sort of Prince of Egypt vibes (I see what you did TFWiki) or like shades of Set and Osiris or vaguely The Lion King where there's a pair of close characters who split apart dramatically with betrayal. And Transformers: the Movie is very Hero's Journey itself borrowing heavily from Star Wars. Both these movies made use of some amount of celebrity casting and it worked. Transformers One several more girl or woman type characters than Transformers: The Movie, but that's also likely reflective of the eras in which they were made. Transformers One still mainly has the one main pink heroic girl and dark bad girl characters which is a thing with this whole genre of the action toyline adaptation, but yes, many other different types of bots in the background.

I think maybe Bumblebee tomorrow?

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2021 anime overview: Quick Takes

Now for my Spring 2021 anime thoughts! I’ve decided from now on if a season’s like, 20- to-24 episodes I’m just going to wait ‘til it’s done to review it unless I feels super passionately, so though I watched To Your Eternity (it’s good!) and MHA (eh), I’ll comment on them next time. Also, for the record, I watched the first eight eps of Joran: Princess and Snow of Blood but I dropped it because it had clearly crossed the line from entertainingly dumb to boring dumb. 

I will probably give Supercub and some other stuff a shot later, this was a stacked season! May give updates on all that later, but this is what I have for now.

ODDTAXI

Quick Summary: A mild mannered middle-aged walrus taxi driver is drawn into a case involving a missing girl, yakuza, Youtube clout-chasers, manzai comedians and idols with big secrets.

It’s rare to walk away from media and be like “that is a singular experience I will definitely never see repeated again” but ODDTAXI is definitely one of those. A tense noir thriller murder mystery starring cartoon animals that spends an entire episode detailing the one (cat)man’s very fall into darkness triggered by addiction to gacha games and an online auction for a novelty eraser? Also there’s a porcupine Yakuza who speaks entirely in rap? Also there’s tons of meandering conversations about stuff like manzai comedy and the struggle to go viral on Twitter?

Admittedly, I had a hard time getting into the first episode, the dry meandering humor not being enough to hold my attention while I was sitting still, but once I watched this while I was working out at the end of the season, I found it an easy binge. A ton of characters with dark secrets or dangerous ambitions, each with their own part to play in a tableau of intersecting events- and it all actually comes together really well.(As for the female characters, it’s a pretty dude driven story, but they do get nuanced characterization and even some good heroic moments from one of them.)

 It’s a great example of a carefully planned narrative paying off, with all the twists appropriately seeded and foreshadowed to reward viewers who paid attention. Even when it ended on a perfect “OH SHIT” moment and denied me closure, I couldn’t help but respect it. If you that all sounds interesting to you, definitely check out the first couple episodes and see if you like it- you’re likely to have a memorable, satisfying experience!

Shadows House

Quick Summary: Emilyko is a ‘living doll’ who’s told she was created to act as the ‘face’ of her shadow master, Kate. The shadows and their ‘dolls’ all reside on the mansion and are required to pass a ‘debut’ to prove they’re a good pairing. If they don’t pass, they might be disposed of. And so the mystery of the Shadow mansion grows...

This slice of gothic intrigue was my favorite of the season, tied with ODDTAXI. With an interesting premise, slightly tense undertones and a strong focus on character building and relationships, it kept me hooked the whole way through. And for any squeamish fans put off by the hype about it, don’t worry, while there are some suspenseful elements, I wouldn’t qualify it as horror. I thought the relationship between Kate and Emilyko might end up being a completely sinister one, but it’s thankfully a lot more complex than that and it’s really interesting to follow how both their characters and relationship grow. The focus of the show is, unsurprisingly, on the “dolls” slowly discovering their autonomy and personhood as they struggle under the rigid system imposed on them by the mysterious elders of this weird Victorian mansion. Can they develop a more equitable relationship with their shadow “masters” (who are also shown to suffer under this system)? There’s a lot to dig into there, and the show has the characters develop through learning to understand and appreciate each other, which is pretty heartwarming. Our hero, Emilyko, is the typical plucky ball of sunshine (they even nickname her sunshine), but she’s also shown to be clever in her own off-the-wall way and she bounces off the far more subdued and cynical Kate well, not to mention the other ‘dolls’ she ends up befriending. 

What’s more, the show spends plenty of time to developing several other character pairings and combinations, and they all have their own interesting dynamic that makes you want to see more of them. Same-gender bonds are at the forefront of this show, and many of them are ripe for queer readings (I definitely appreciated the healthy helping of ladies carrying ladies), but even outside that it’s nice to see a show where a strong, complex bond between girls is at the forefront. My only real complaints about the show are the anime original ending is noticeably a bit rushed (though it’s not too bad, and leaves room for a season 2) and I wish the animation used the whole “shadow” theme more strikingly (like the opening and endings do)- instead the colors are a bit washed out which makes the shadows blend into the background sometimes. The “debut” arc also drags a bit in places, but it makes up for it by having a lot of good character integration.

I hope to check out the (full color)! manga soon and see more of this quirky, shadowy story. There’s some physical abuse depicted, sad things happening to characters and naturally the whole “oppressive familial system” thing, but otherwise not much I can think of to warn about. I give this one a big rec, especially If you’re a fan of gothic fairytales and stories of self discovery.  

Zombie Land Saga Revenge

Quickest summary: In this sequel season, everyone’s favorite zombie idol group must claw their way back into prominence after a disastrous show- the fate of the Saga prefecture LITERALLY depends on it!

This was a fun follow-up to the first season- if you liked the first zombie-girl romp, you’ll probably enjoy this one. In fact, there were a couple areas it improved on- namely, Kotaro failed, ate crow and embarrassed himself a lot more this season, which made him more likeable (as did the fact the girls gained a lot of independence from him). This season also shed more light on what the ‘goal’ of this zombie raising project is and what kind of shit Kotaro got involved with to make this happen, and it’s appropriately off-the-wall and ridiculous. We finally got some backstory for Yugiri too! I wish it had focused on more of her interiority, but she got to be a badass in it, and it was a treat to see this zombie idol show turn into a period piece for a couple episodes (also her song ruled).

 Tae also got a cute focus episode and there was a particular SMASHING performance early on! Also That revelation last season that had the potential to turn creepy hasn’t yet, and hopefully never will. The finale was heartwarming with big hints of more drama to come- I’m definitely down for more zombie hijinks!

Vivy: Flourite Eye’s Song

Quickest Summary: A songstress AI named DIVA (nicknamed Vivy) is approached by another AI named Matsumoto, who says he’s from the future and they must work together to prevent AI exterminating all of humankind 100 years from now.

This show is absolutely gorgeous visually with some really nice action scenes, but when it comes to the story my feelings basically amount to a shrug. It’s fine! I guess! Vivy starts out as an interesting layered character- and I guess still is by the end- with her stoic but stubborn determination bouncing off her fast-talking bossy partner Matsumoto well. She never listens to him, which is delightful. The way the show took place over the course of 100 years was an interesting conceit as well. However, it bought up a lot of themes and then sort of... dropped them. For instance, Vivy interprets her mission (PRIME DIRECTIVE if you will) as protecting humans at all costs, no matter how destructive said humans are or what their fate is supposed to be, and is perfectly willing to murder her fellow androids to do this, showing she inherently thinks of androids (herself and her own people!) as less worthy. Which is a little alarming! There’s a very dramatic point in the show where they bring this up as a potential conflict for her character but then it’s sort of...dropped. Pretty much.

Actually, despite the premise, the show doesn’t dip into the “AI rights” as much as you think it would with the main theme being more about Vivy’s search to find her own creativity and discover what it means to ‘pour your heart into something’. Vivy herself doesn’t actually care if she has rights or anything. Which is in some ways fine, because ‘AI as an oppressed class’ has been done to death, but IT’S ALSO KIND OF IN THE PREMISE, so that means that the show just shrugs really hard at a lot of the questions it brings up  basically just going “humans and AI should work together probably” and that’s it. There’s a lot that feels underexplored. The antagonists in the show also either have motivations that don’t really make sense or have boring hackneyed motivations. In the finale in particular, it feels like a lot of things happen “just because” and it falls a little flat.

I also have to warn that one of the arcs focus on a robot ‘pairing’ where the dude-coded robots actions toward his partner are straight up awful and rob her of her autonomy, but it’s played like a tragic love story. I suppose you could read it differently too, but it definitely made me go ‘ew’ the story seemed to want me to sympathize with this robo dude,

Overall, I wouldn’t anti-recommend this show, it’s an all right little sci-fic romp (and definitely SUPER pretty). My favorite element was definitely the episodes where Vivy develops an entirely new (an loveable) personality, because it played with the idea of of an AI getting “rebooted” really well and interplay between her two “selves” was done really well. But there are a lot of other parts of the show that just feel...a little underexplored and empty, making me have an ‘eh’ feeling on the show overall. It’s definitely an ambitious project, and while it didn’t quite stick the landing, there’s something to be said for a show that shoots for the stars and falls short over a show that just languishes in mediocrity.

Fruits Basket The Final

Quick summary: The final season of that dramatic drama about that weird family with a zodiac curse and the girl who loves them.

It’s very weird that after not cutting a lot out, they kinda sped through some material for, you know, the finale. I guess they thought they couldn’t stretch this final arc to 26 episodes? Or weren’t cleared for another double cour? However, though there were a couple places that felt awkward, despite being a bit condensed it mostly held together pretty well for a D R A M A T I C and ultimately heartwarming conclusion. I was really disappointed they kept the part where Ritsu cut their hair for the ‘happy ending’, I thought  their intro episode not showing them in men’s clothes meant the anime had decided their presentation didn’t need to be “fixed” but WELL I GUESS NOT. That was the only big upset for me though, otherwise the adaptation went about how I expected, sticking to the source material. Furuba has a lot of bumps, from weird age gap stuff to ...gender, but it also has a lot of important feels and great character arcs. It was a gateway shoujo for many and has its important place in animanga history, so I’m glad it finally got a shiny, full adaptation.

[crusherthedoctor]

Can you list anything you unironically like in the games (and cartoons and comics) that you don't like?

I won't bother mentioning music, since that goes without saying and is to be expected for a Sonic game... unless you're Chronicles.

Sonic Adventure 2 (mixed gameplay-wise, annoying story-wise) - While I prefer Sonic's SA1 levels for a number of reasons, I still think his and Shadow's gameplay in SA2 is fun on its own merit. I also don't mind the treasure hunting gameplay returning or how big the levels are this time around, since Knuckles and Rouge are still fast and not '06 levels of slow. It's mainly the gimped radar that creates the unfortunate domino effect of making them a problem.

- Introduced Rouge, one of my favourite characters for how playful she is and how she's a lot more nuanced and intelligent than you'd expect.

- Some genuinely good scenes, like Eggman's trap on the A.R.K and Sonic escaping from the G.U.N. helicopter.

- Had some good ideas going for it, like the Pyramid Base and the Biolizard as a scientific monster instead of an ancient one.

- Despite my thoughts on the backstory itself (or rather, its execution), Shadow has enough depth and subtle qualities and occasional unintended hilarity to stand out from the typical dark rival characters you see in media.

- The Last Scene's music in particular is one of my favourite cutscene tracks in the series.

Sonic Heroes (mixed gameplay-wise, loathed story-wise) - The gameplay is fun when you're not being screwed over by repetitive combat, overly long levels and/or ice physics.

- Boasts some of the most consistently Genesis-worthy environments in the 3D games, up there with SA1's and Colours'.

- The in-game dialogue that isn't the same tutorial drivel repeated ad nauseam can be interesting, funny, etc.

- Reintroduced the Chaotix, which provided me with another character I quite like in the form of Vector.

- Bringing Metal Sonic back in full force and front and center in the plot after a long absence (not counting cameos and the like) is a perfectly fine idea. Just... not like this.

Sonic Battle (decent yet repetitive gameplay, mixed story-wise) - Emerl's arc is compelling, and it earns the emotional weight of having to put him down at the end.

- While some characters are iffy (read: Amy), other characters are extremely well-handled. Shadow is probably the prime example.

- Gamma's belly dance healing animation is fucking hilarious.

- When I was young, and the game was first announced, I was really excited about being able to play as Chaos. This proved to be my downfall when it turned out he was arguably one of the worst characters in the game due to being slower than me during the writing process, but I still recall that excitement fondly.

Shadow the Hedgehog (comedy classic) - The sheer amount of legendary stupidity this game has going for it makes it practically impossible to actually hate. It helps that it's not quite as white-knighted on the same level as '06... usually. You know you're in for a unique experience when you hear a gunshot every time you click something in the menu.

- By extension, Black Doom never gained an unironic fanbase like Mephiles/Scourge/Eggman Nega did, which means I'm a lot more willing to take Doom's dumbass brand of villainy in stride. He even has a unique design... a terrible one that rips off Wizeman granted, but alas, even that is a step-up from Fridge Shadow and Bumblebee Eggman.

- Despite being... well, Shadow the Hedgehog, some of the environments would fit right in with any other Sonic game, like with Circus Park, Lava Shelter, and Digital Circuit. Even the Black Comet levels look pretty cool.

- This game understands amnesia better than IDW does.

Sonic '06 (what do you think?) - The obvious one: Shadow's character was handled pretty well, even if it came at the cost of everyone else being a dummy and being forced to interact with Mephiles.

- Like SA2, there are some good moments, like the Last Story ending sequence with Sonic and Elise.

- In the greatest form of irony ever, I like Solaris as a concept and design(s), and its backstory has potential to serve as a parallel with Chaos without being a complete ripoff. Iblis sucks, Mephiles sucks, but I'm fine with Solaris.

- Introduced legendary characters like Sonic Man, Pele the Beloved Dog, Hatsun the Pigeon, and Pacha from The Emperor's New Groove.

The Rivals duology (apathetic outside of Nega-related grumbling) - There were some cool zone ideas in both games that were sadly let down by the restrictive and limiting gameplay. I particularly like Colosseum Highway for thus far being the only full-on Roman level in the series instead of merely having a couple minor hints of Roman, and Meteor Base for the unique scenario of the space station being built into an asteroid. These level concepts and others deserve a second chance IMO. (At least Frontier Canyon got a second chance in the form of Mirage Saloon, amirite?)

- Ifrit has a better design than Iblis. Not saying it's amazing, but the Firebird motif it has going on is a lot more interesting for a fire monster than the Not-Chaos schtick they had with Iblis.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (a very frustrating gaming experience) - Erazor Djinn, A.K.A. Qui-Gon Djinn, A.K.A. Dr. N. Djinn, A.K.A. I'll Take It On The Djinn, A.K.A. Not From The Hairs On My Djinny Djinn Djinn, is one of the best villains not associated with Eggman in the series. He's a Mephiles-type character done right, and there's actual weight and reason to his actions, however sinister or petty.

- I don't have strong opinions either way on Shahra as a character, but the Sonic/Shahra friendship is sweet and well-handled.

- The ending is one of Sonic's greatest moments. The sheer contrast between how ruthlessly he deals with Erazor and how comforting he is towards Shahra speaks volumes... Still gonna make fun of the mountain of handkerchiefs though. (Before anyone lectures me, I understand the significance of it and can even appreciate it from that angle... doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun at it. :P)

- Another game with some redeeming environments. I love the aesthetic of Night Palace, and Sand Oasis looks gorgeous too.

Sonic Chronicles (my personal least favourite game in the series) - Uh...

- Um...

- Er...

- I like Shade's design?

Sonic Unleashed (overrated game and story IMO) - The obvious two: the opening sequence and the Egg Dragoon fight deserve all the praise they get.

- Seeing Eggmanland come to life was an impressive moment to be sure. While part of me does feel it didn't quite measure up to what I had in mind (ironically, the Interstellar Amusement Park ended up being closer to what I had in mind), it still looks badass and works well for what it is. I also don't mind the idea of it being a one-level gauntlet... key word being idea.

- Obviously, the game looks great. Not a fan of the real world focus (real world inspiration is fine, but copy-pasting the real world and shoving loops in it is just unimaginative), but it can't be denied that the environments look good.

- This game pulled off dialogue options a lot better than Chronicles did, since they didn't rely on making Sonic OoC.

Sonic and the Black Knight (just kind of boring all around) - Despite my gripes with the story (Merlina wasn't nearly as fleshed out as her unique anti-villain status deserved, which ends up severely undermining the ambition of the plot in more ways than one, and the other characters go from being useless yes men for King Arthur to being useless yes men for Sonic), I will admit it provides interesting insight into Sonic's character.

- Like '06 and Secret Rings, the ending is very nice... well, aside from Amy being an unreasonable bitch ala Sonic X at the very end.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (apathetic) - The admittedly few new concepts sprinkled within had promise. They may not have been as fleshed out as they could have been, but level concepts like Sylvania Castle and White Park, bosses like Egg Serpentleaf and the Egg Heart, and story beats like the Death Egg mk.II being powered by Little Planet, all could have been brilliant had they been better executed.

SatAM (apathetic outside of SatAM Robotnik-related grumbling) - I'm not a fan of the environments on the whole due to them looking too bland or samey, but there are some exceptions that look pleasant or interesting, like the Void.

Sonic Underground (apathetic) - The character designs make me feel better about myself.

- Does "large quantities of unintentional meme material" count as a positive?

Sonic X (mostly apathetic outside of Eggman's handling) - Helen was a better human character and audience surrogate in her one focus episode than Chris was throughout his entire runtime.

- Actually, most of the human characters not named Chris were legitimately likable. Including everyone in Chris' own family not named Chris. Hilarious.

- Despite arguably having the most Chris in it, I actually don't mind the first season that much, partly due to slight nostalgia from seeing it on TV when it was new, but mostly because Eggman actually acted like a villain for the most part, and certain other characters weren't quite as flanderized yet. It's season 2 and onwards where things started going off the rails IMO. (Incidentally, Helen's episode was part of season 1...)

The Boom franchise (apathetic) - Along with Chronicles, the games provide yet more proof that just because someone isn't SEGA/Sonic Team, that doesn't mean they're automatically more qualified to handle the series.

- The show had some good episodes here and there, and Tails' characterization was probably the most consistently on-point out of the cast.

- Despite not exactly being favourite portrayals for either character, even I'll admit that many of Knuckles and Eggman's lines in the show on their own were genuinely funny.

Archie Sonic (pre-reboot is mostly terrible, post-reboot is mostly... bland) - Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think back to Ken Penders, and suddenly I'm filled with a lot more confidence.

Sonic the Comic (apathetic) - Fleetway isn't a comic I tend to recall much of aside from how much of a loathesome cunt Sonic is, but IIRC, Robotnik's portrayal is pretty good. Different, but good.

IDW Sonic (stop pissing me off, comic) - Putting their handling aside (and being too obviously "inspired" by MGS in the latter's case), Tangle and Whisper are good characters IMO.

- Same goes for Starline, before he was killed off-screen and replaced with Toothpaste Snively.

- Execution aside (noticing a pattern?), the zombot virus was a fine concept on its own and an interesting new scheme for Eggman.

- I get to remind myself that I've never drawn scat edits and posted them publicly on Twitter.

[ruby-whistler]

Alright curious anon here. All this is /dsmp /rp from here on out unless otherwise specified and is refering to characters. If i make any mistakes or am misinformed please let me know! So by the cat was nothing compared to mushroom henry i was meaning more toward the fact that the cow was killed as a punishment for something not worth or ok for it to be killed for at all and the fact that it belonged to tommy, wheareas the cat was killed more to annoy dream and belonged to tommy. (1/?)

alright then another lengthy reply, here i come! /lh /dsmp /rp

Dream also did not seem to mourn the cat much, shrugging it off with a "just more motivation to break out".

it was killed to hurt dream, not to "annoy him". it doesn't matter who it belonged to, c!dream was attached to it and it died, which had an effect on him and also further proved his point about attachments being weakness and caring getting you hurt, and it's still very sad.

you say that it was not ok at all to kill mooshroom henry, but the cat's death wasn't ok either, so i really don't see your point.

again, i disagree it was "nothing compared to" either way. i never meant to compare them in the first place, i was simply talking about the cat and c!dream so i don't see why it is in any way necessary to drag c!tommy and other dead pets into this. /nm

also, it isn't true he didn't mourn it. he is a very reserved person who doesn't show his feelings much, that's true, but the cat death still changed the way he acted afterwards, as well as the attempts he made to prevent it. he didn't "shrug it off", he yelled about it because he was understandably upset.

You mentioned that propganda was used to make dream seem like a tyrant, could you specify a bjt? Cus im a little confused srry /gen. Because the most i can remember from the lmanburg era at least is him being called a b'tch or other similar insults. You also mentioned how trauma responses can be differet which is true! I agree! Do you have any ideas to what caused dream the trauma?

wilbur would continuously make him out to be some sort of oppressive, tyrannical force, in front of his troops - a prime example of this being the lyrics of the l'manberg anthem itself and the l'manberg declaration of independence.

actually! here's a nice thread about l'manberg's establishment complete with links, timestamps and evidence :]

i also said in my previous post what could've possibly caused it, but since the character intentionally hides his emotions from the public, it would be difficult to see how things really affected him - which is why the way his spiral went is the majority of the evidence that would imply it, however it does make sense within the story as well with what i mentioned last time.

I would like to note that for sapnap at least had reason to leave dream. Some examples off the top of my head are dream leading an angry fundy to sapnap's pets on purpose, resulting in some deaths, dream assisting tommy in burning down sapnap's effiel tower where he got engaged to karl, and dream giving tommy either mars or the other fish at the battle of the lake. Idk about george tho other then the whole mexican lmanburg/el rapids thing and decrowning him

c!sapnap was actually at fault for most of this, and it wasn't really ever betrayal on c!dream's part.

c!dream is a mediator and he wants to stop everyone's conflict - c!fundy was angry because of c!sapnap's actions, and hence it made more sense for c!dream to centre him on c!sapnap's animals instead of running around killing everyone's pets (at that time, all c!dream knew was c!sapnap did something really bad and c!fundy wanted beckerson / mars from him, which were also his and c!george's fish).

c!sapnap was an instigator, and in multiple conflicts during the time as well as before he'd align himself against c!dream. he isn't "loyal" per se, he causes chaos and the reason c!dream helped c!tommy was because, c!sapnap, again, killed his pet. the first l'manberg war and then the 16th are signs of the fact that c!dream and c!sapnap were willing to fight together in actual war, but these small conflicts where c!sapnap continuously picked fights weren't about personal loyalty, nor did they seem to affect their relationship at all.

c!george was never really hurt by c!dream either. the dethronement was him very obviously being a guilt-trippy drama queen, but, well, that's just the character. he had stolen the l'mantree while he was supposed to be the diplomatic figure of the greater smp, which is why c!dream was justified in - very politely, may i mention - taking the duties off of him (seeing as he was also trying to keep him safe and c!techno had already assassinated him once).

Im pretty sure i remember cc!sam stating that his character never canonically physically tortured dream during his subathon but take this with a grain of salt as i am looking for the clip currently. So to the best of my knowledge dream did not have a physical contact trigger during tommy's visit which! I rewatched the vod and dream actually was first to hit tommy and i can give you my full writing downs but 10/12 of the phy-

you never finished this point because you had to go do something, but i'll reply to what is here at the moment (i suggest writing these down before sending next time, or even writing them out wholly before sending a single one could help avoid stuff like this).

i am 95% sure that the reason cc!sam stated this was because people were suspicious he had already been doing what c!quackity was doing after - torture within the storyline itself is associated pretty much only with what c!quackity is doing, so that's what he meant, just to clear up confusion - the starvation or terrible conditions haven't been retconned, but it was direct torture (like c!quackity is doing) people were asking him about.

i never said c!dream had a physical contact trigger at all, i don't think he had that, though he probably will after the torture.

huh, ok, i'm gonna have to rewatch then, but i remember c!tommy punching c!dream a lot and him just telling him to stop and only punching back to get him to stop. trigger or not, getting hit isn't very pleasant, if you know what i mean.

You mentioned tommy stealing dream's armor unprovoked. Do you have the vod or a general idea of the time so i can find it? Like before lmanburg after another event so and so because if you do not have it i can find it but any help is appreciated.

i am pretty sure you can find the video on cc!tommy's channel! there are also recaps of the disc war on youtube :]

I wanna talk a little on why the Final Control Room was so messed up. For starters, with the way the room was designed. It was small, and had labeled, empty chests with each person's name on them as a mockery. The next reason is that its bascially a kill box.

It's fairly inescapble with the stairs being ones you have to jump up, slowing anyone who climbs them down. The final reason it is messed up is that it is shown to have caused every person who died in it trauma. With tommy there are several examples, the time he saw it with techno, the way he refuses to go near it, the exposure trauma, etc. Fundy also appears to have trauma, as when the Red Banquet executions began, it can be seen as him being afraid of dying last again.

It can Be thought as tubbo having trauma because he buries most of his issues and pretends to be ok. Moreover this event took at least one of each person's canon lives, making it the most canon lives lost EVER in a dream smp event. (This is not hate on any of the ccs btw i loved this scene and its one of my personal favorites). Plus the fact Eret's betrayal just literally happened, giving at least Tommy and Wilbur canonic trust issues.

i wouldn't call the chests mockery? it was a trap. people had traps on the smp before. it was a trap in the middle of war, supposed to end said war by killing them all at once rather than individually which would be a lot more bloody and difficult.

i agree c!tommy and other people might have post-war trauma, especially if they were young during the time, but i think that's because the final control room was "messed up", moreso because the war itself was. it all happened fairly instantly as well? i don't think c!fundy would be able to realize he was the last one standing within the two second before he wasn't.

it "can be thought" and it can be interpreted like that but besides c!tommy there isn't much evidence for them "all" being traumatized by the final control room. of course betrayal would spark trust issues, i understand that.

The probation was humiliating in my opinion because dream was Sending tommy anatgonizing messages through out the whole meeting, plus he had to write a review of his day every single day, which fundy mocked him for.

i mean, it was definitely a strike to his pride, but he was being extremely uncooperative so i don't really blame the other members of new l'manberg trying to teach him to listen for once? of course i know c!dream was riling him up, and that should definitely be considered. i don't think it would be as humiliating if c!tommy didn't make it, is what i'm saying.

for the tommy being toxic to fundy? At least for the examples you gave, to me personally they come acoross as either in a meta way being the cc's bantering or in canon being the characters having banter. If you can send the post with the clips so i can read the tone better that would be cool but if not i will try and find em.

no, these were all in canon. canon isn't only when c!tommy is being nice, it's also when he's being a jerk. /lh

the first one was him threatening c!fundy about kicking him out of l'manberg and undermining his self-worth, and the second one was him trying to get c!sapnap to vote for them via bullying c!fundy.

i found these from a transcript focusing on c!fundy's character, so i don't know exactly where the first one is from, but the second one i am pretty sure is from when the elections were starting with the whole cabinet battle deal and all of that.

there are other instances, and all of them are canon. his personality was never being nice or compassionate, so i'm not really surprised? he still cares about the people he cares about and is very brave, y'know. but this part of his personality is definitely a valid reason for people to dislike him.

I hope the exam went well :). Hope u have a great day! (Ps i think theres something called a submission box to send in pictures? Am not entirely sure sry)

it would've gone well but my work-speed is a tad too slow for the schooling system (considering i'm three years younger than my classmates,,, probably that's also a factor) so probably not despite the fact i knew everything and would've aced it if i only had more time. i did as well as i could so i'm not worried about it, but thanks!

i think you're thinking submissions. sadly, i tested it and it doesn't work on anons, so idk how you'd solve that, maybe make a burner account?

Curious anon here one point you may wanna include in the redemption essay is that c!tubbo or c!tommy do not necessarily have to forgive him. What's important is that he recognizes what he did was wrong (exile, beating tommy to death, manipulating them both, etc) and does his best to make amends. Hope this helps! Can't wait to see your essay

it's out, idk if you've seen it yet, and i think i included enough of that so hope it's all good! :)

the mcc update video is out if you are an mcc enjoyer. It's very neat, if you wanna check it out

yeah! i am a fellow mcc enjoyer, saw it already, thanks for telling me though, i'm really hype for today.

Allo curious anon here sorry if the lots of asks bother you. I was just curious if i could share an interesting post i saw today about c!dream :0 (not necessarily negative i think? More of a statement of an often-confused canon)

sure thing! i don't know what you mean by often-confused since, the entire fanbase is very confused always, and often selection bias plays into the perception from both sides, but sure :]

you also sent in a thing for the other anon who said they didn't know what c!dream did that bad; pretty sure they couldn't really be alerted since, not sure if they watch my blog that closely, but i'll summarize your points just in case and add some notes;

the repeated blowing up of l'manberg (in my mind that's largely a positive since i,, despise that country, but fair enough), revealed c!ranboo as a traitor (they seem to be friends so i also,, think that might've been planned between him and enderboo), sent ghostbur away (i don't think c!dream knew it was dangerous for him and wanted to actually hurt him, but idk), participated in fighting against c!sapnap when he killed people's pets (that's only negative against c!sapnap and didn't seem to hurt him much at all), and then the whole vault scene where he was allegedly planning to steal people's things (though saying he would & being stopped beforehand and doing it are two different things, frankly).

so i still agree with the other anon that a lot of the hurt he did "to the entire server" (he only negatively interacted with like,, a half of them) is exaggerated both by the characters and the fandom, but i guess that's a consequence of most people seeing him as a threat to everyone's happiness rather than a complex personality.

Also he was aware of the butcher army going to kill techno but only got involved because he saw an opportunity to get a favor. (As he knew in advance due to him telling techno to get a totem, watching from afar instead of interveing or manipulating tubbo out of it)

i don't understand this at all, i'm sorry. how do you know he only helped techno in order to get a favor? last i remember he was only doing it to protect and strengthen his alliance, and techno came up with the whole favor thing entirely on his own. you might've not watched techno's perspective or their prior interactions, idk, but this really is a misinterpretation in my eyes. /nm

sorry if that is overly dream negative i just wanted to let yall know cus you seemed unaware -curious anon

nah dw, i watch the smp and i watched all of these things happen so, wouldn't say unaware, but thanks.