#more screentime than willy

[wabbitears]

feddy movie

[earthyleo]

so... hotd is oficially a comedy series now?

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Action

So, this is a interesting one to talk about. Not only is this the first episode in all five seasons to not be written or directed by Thomas Astruc in any capacity (though the other three writers on his team, Melanie Duval, Fred Lenoir, and Sebastien Thibaudeau still wrote this one), not only is it not connected to the ongoing plotlines of Season 5 in any way, but this episode was made with the help of the Breteau Foundation.

For those who don't know, the Breteau Foundation is an organization that works together with schools by giving children access to technology for their lessons, helping them with their psychological needs, and teaching them about ways to protect our environment. This episode was even made available on the Breteau Foundation's website for free in addition to educational materials meant to teach kids about recycling.

Yeah, when we were kids, we got excited whenever the teacher played an old episode of The Magic School Bus or Bill Nye the Science Guy in class, but nowadays, TV shows are producing episodes of their shows specifically so they can be shown in class. And I'm not talking about those half-assed science lab worksheets with pictures of SpongeBob on them either.

The point I'm trying to make is that there was clearly a lot put into this episode, and it's all for a good cause to help teach children about how to protect the environment in order to ensure a better future... and of course, I'm still going to make jokes about it, because I'm just some schmuck on the internet who isn't backed by a major educational foundation.

Let's get into the 27th episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fifth season: Action

We start off with Marinette and Adrien heading over to the Liberty so they could be told about the pollution in the Seine River by their class' resident environmental activist, Myl—Nino, I mean, Nino. No joke, Nino gets more lines in this episode than Mylene does, even though ever since Season 2, Mylene has been established as the one to protest polluting the environment. I get that she already had a lot of screentime in an earlier environmental episode (Mega Leech), but why would you have Nino be the one to help spearhead this protest instead of Mylene? Hell, the plot of another episode started from him trying to get him and his friends out of helping Mylene plant trees for the environment (Party Crasher), so this makes even less sense.

I should also get this out of the way by pointing out a few continuity errors in the episode. For one thing, Marinette is stuttering around Adrien when she had mostly gotten over that issue after “Derision”, Kagami is now one of the avatars for the Alliance rings, something that had been established in “Revelation”, and the episode mentions that the Alliance rings are made of plastic when the season finale shows that they're actually made of metal. I don't want to harp on this too much, as this episode obviously wasn't meant to really tie into the main plotline so it would be easier for kids who aren't familiar with the show watching this episode, seeing how this was meant to be viewed as a standalone story. Besides, compared to other plotholes in the show like the ones I'll cover next time, these are fairly minor.

Nino tells Marinette and Adrien, and by extension, the audience, that the Seine River is full of pollution, and the Liberty has recently been converted into a makeshift water treatment plant. The problem is that with a recent increase of plastic in the Seine, it's becoming harder for the Liberty to filter out all of it. Hey, here's an idea: Maybe don't set up your homemade water treatment plant in the longest river in Paris.

The reason for all the new plastic comes from a recent ad campaign promoting some vending machines that sell these paper fans that were designed by Gabriel and are sold by a man named Bertrand King, who looks like a cross between Willy Wonka and Colonel Sanders, down to having a southern accent in the English dub.

Nino suggests that Adrien talk to Gabriel himself, but as usual, Adrien doesn't think he'll listen, so the kids decide to go to Bertrand King's company while picking up an order for plastic containers for the Dupain-Chang bakery... even though I'm pretty sure most bakeries store pastries in paper instead of just plastic.

Nino has the others dress up in disguises, but like most of his plans this season, it fails miserably, so Marinette comes up with a little story about Adrien meeting up with Bertrand. The kids make an impassioned presentation to Bertrand, asking him to help change the way he operated his business like making his fans out of more biodegradable materials. Surprisingly, the man whose entire livelihood revolves around selling plastic doesn't want to listen to the people saying everything his company is doing is wrong.

Bertrand: This is all intentional. It's the wonderful cycle of throwing away and buying again that makes my fortune. If people didn't throw away and buy new items again then I, Bertrand King, would no longer be the King of Plastic! So, there is no way any of this is changing.

Wow, a rich person in Miraculous Ladybug turning out to be a total jerk? What an unexpected turn of events.

Bertrand points out how much plastic is used in everyday society, using pens and the Alliance rings as an example, and seeing how we cut to the next scene afterwards, we can assume he had them thrown out. Oh, come on, you couldn't even parody The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air like you did during “Migration”? The kids then try to go to Andre and Gabriel for help protesting the fans, but because one's a corrupt politician and another helped make them, they won't do a thing. Marinette tries to ask Nadja, the local news anchor, but because the ad revenue from Bertrand's company funds the channel she works for, she can't do a thing or else she'll be out of a job.

This leads to the kids deciding to do the sane thing and HACK THE NEWS BROADCAST SO THEY CAN MAKE A SPEECH ABOUT POLLUTION.

Because it's not like Marinette and the others could have just gone to another news network with this story or uploaded it to the internet instead, right? And sure, scowl at the camera while you're giving this presentation too. That won't make you look like a bunch of eco-terrorists at all. The kids give a presentation about how dangerous plastic is, and how people can use fans made of more biodegradable materials like bamboo instead. Also, we get cameos from Jess, Aeon, and Fei, but they're pretty much there just to remind viewers that the New York and Shanghai specials happened.

Of course, the episode's following RWBY Volume 8 logic, so rather than view them as a bunch of lunatics who hijacked a news broadcast, the public immediately turns on Bertrand's company, arguably faster than what happened with Andre in “Mega Leech”. Speaking of, Andre and Gabriel change their opinions to make themselves look like they were always against Bertrand, and seeing how this episode aired after Season 5 ended, didn't really sit too well with viewers.

Bertrand calls out Gabriel for lying, but Gabriel doesn't care, secretly using this as an opportunity to akumatize Bertrand into King of Plastic through his pen.

King of Plastic has a pretty underwhelming design. It's clear that the intent was to make him look like plastic, and there is a noticeable reflection on his body, but other than that, it doesn't really fit the anti-plastic moral. I think maybe if they did more to make his movements seem more stiff like a living doll, or at least make him look less like he's made of candy, it could work more. The Miraculous power this time is the Bee Miraculous' Venom, which he can use through one side of his lance to stun any victims so he can use the other side to turn them into plastic statues. It's sort of like the dollmaker episode of Arrow, only we don't get to hear the sound of anyone's esophagus hardening.

King of Plastic makes short work of Andre and the local police squad, and Adrien is forced to put teaching Marinette Mandarin on hold so he can transform into Cat Noir, while Marinette transforms into Ladybug as soon as she's alone. After he transforms Adrien's bodyguard into a plastic statue, King of Plastic fights Ladybug and Cat Noir, eventually transforming Cat Noir's staff into plastic too. Even though he was originally akumatized to get revenge on Gabriel, King of Plastic leaves the Agreste Manor and heads to the Liberty to get revenge on Marinette and Adrien's friends instead... for some reason. Even the episode points out how weird this is.

Cat Noir: Didn't you want to take revenge on Gabriel Agreste?

Ladybug: He probably has more than one enemy.

After following King of Plastic there with Cat Noir, Ladybug summons her Lucky Charm, getting a plastic bag. Because it's already made of plastic, it can't be transformed, which gives Ladybug an idea. She tells Alya to activate the Liberty's water treatment function, intentionally overloading it before Cat Noir Cataclysms the engine. This jettisons the collected plastic and overfills the deck of the Liberty, trapping King of Plastic so Ladybug can break his lance. So in an episode meant to teach kids about how dangerous plastic is, the day was ultimately saved by plastic. I'm sure that won't confuse any kids watching this in class.

Ladybug de-evilizes the Akuma, tells Bertrand about how dangerous plastic is, and he immediately vows to change his company's ways before Ladybug gives him a Magical Charm as useless as a plastic toy before she uses Miraculous Ladybug to fix the damage.

The episode ends with Bertrand funding the repair of the Liberty before vowing to change the way his company operates, as do Tom and Sabine, who now sell their products in eco-friendly containers. Unfortunately, with all the renovations being made to his company that come with moving away from plastic, Bertrand had to stop funding this groundbreaking cancer research institution in America in order to prevent his company from going bankrupt.

Anyway, this episode was pretty good. I honestly didn't have a lot of problems here. The plot was pretty straightforward, the themes of how easy it is to perpetuate companies that damage the environment were handled pretty well, and the main characters were pretty active.

Even the greedy corporate asshole meant to be a stand-in for real life executives was handled pretty well, having some quirks that make him stand out while showing how ignorant he is to the situation without making him completely insufferable. This episode could have easily gone the Captain Planet route with Bertrand, but they showed he wasn't intentionally endangering the environment because he felt like it, but rather, because he cared more about his company making money, even showing him ultimately realizing the error of his ways.

If there's one problem I had, it's with the way the Akuma fight was resolved. I get that any other Lucky Charm wouldn't have been immune to King of Plastic's plastic powers, but I feel like weaponizing the plastic the heroes spent most of the episode fighting against in order to stop the Akuma sort of muddles the message the episode is going for. It's not the worst way to resolve an Akuma fight, but it just bugs me personally.

While I still think “Mega Leech” did a better job with the environmental message, overall, this episode did a pretty good job teaching the moral it set out to teach.

THE BIGGEST IDIOT OF THE EPISODE IS... ANDRE (THE OTHER ONE)

Shockingly, nobody really acted that stupid this episode. Yeah, the kids were pretty naive thinking they could make Bertrand change his company's way of production, but still took action when that didn't work. Andre, on the other hand...

While Gabriel and Nadja had their own reasons to support Bertrand (Gabriel for Monarch reasons and Nadja for financial reasons), the only reason Andre went along with the fans polluting the environment was because they happened to have his image as one of the designs, and when the public started to turn on Bertrand, Andre acted like he always opposed him, and when confronted with an akumatized Bertrand, begged for his life like a coward and said he would reinstall the fan vending machines. While I guess it's better than having Chloe be the primary supporter of Bertrand's company, I need to reiterate that this aired after the last few episodes of Season 5 tried to place Andre in a more sympathetic light.

[scrubf1re]

I think I’ve figured out the reason why I prefer Meiko’s Meicoomon over Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon.

If you’ve been in the digimon fandom long enough you’ve probably seen/hear comparisons between Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon from Hurricane Touchdown and Meiko’s Meicoomon from tri.

The similarities between both of them that plenty of digimon fans have pointed out are that they are both partner digimon with uncontrollable evolved/digivolved (or in Meicoomon’s case mutated) forms with their respective human partners going through character arcs about realising that for as much as they love their partner digimon and how much it pains them to do so, they’re too dangerous to let live so they end up letting them die to save everyone and put them out of their misery (I have seen some people compare Meicoomon to Yujin's Offmon but I feel Offmon is more comparable to Ryo’s Monodramon and I’ve already made a rant comparing those two). Keep in mind that for this comparison I’m only looking at the partner digimon themselves and not their human companions since I actually like both Wallace/Willis and Meiko which unfortunately I cannot say the same for the partner digimon and I’m going to go over where I felt Meiko’s Meicoomon succeeded where Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon failed. And the reasons are actually a lot more simple than you’d think. My biggest problem with Lopmon and by extension Hurricane Touchdown as a whole is how little character and personality Lopmon has outside of the fact that he’s a partner digimon under the effects of a virus and having undergone a dark evolution/digivolution which can be attributed to how little screentime Lopmon’s personality outside of his dark evolution/digivolution. That aspect of Lopmon’s character only gets two scenes dedicated which is strange given that Lopmon’s dark evolutions/digivolutions get plenty of screen time which can be attributed to bad pacing on Hurricane Touchdown's part. I do think it’s a little weird how I seem to be the only person who has this complaint with Lopmon that I know of.

First is the flashback involving Wallace/Willis, Terriermon and Lopmon’s backstory and how he turned into Wendimon/Wendigomon.

And the second being before he dies and... that’s all we get to see of what Lopmon’s character is like outside of his dark evolutions/digivolutions. The only two personality traits I could get from both of these scenes are that he’s childlike and playful which doesn’t even enough to stand out amongst the other partner digimon in the adventure continuity since plenty of other partner digimon have shown traits of being childlike and playful (as well as those two traits not even being their only character traits including Meicoomon). I’m a firm believer in the idea that there is a huge difference between a character being simple (for example Jo/Joe’s Gomamon comes to mind as while being undeniably simple, as he’s rather brash, confident and loud to contrast his partner) and a character being underwritten (I’ve already criticised Ryo’s Monodramon for more or less the same thing before) and unfortunately in a story where we are supposed to feel sad when Lopmon dies I don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to criticise said story if the character dying doesn’t have much character to begin with.

In comparison Meicoomon has plenty of scenes where we get to see what her character is like outside of the fact that she’s the source of the infection and how her mutations have much more violent personalities. The first 20 minutes of part 2 of tri being a great example of this since even when we limit ourselves to just the first quarter of determination since we see multiple different traits of Meicoomon such as her having a tendency to wonder off on her own, being easily scared, playful, being rather dependent on Meiko and naive despite being an adult/champion level. These aren’t even the only times we get to see the traits as they are more consistent than you’d think since we actually do see them again in later points in tri including flashbacks.

I don’t think it takes a genius to see where I’m coming from since a lot of the points I made in Meicoomon’s favour can basically be attributed to the fact that Hurricane Touchdown is only a single movie whereas tri is 6 OVAs (or 26 episodes if you’re watching it on a streaming service like crunchyroll and other examples that I don’t feel like typing down). I feel like another contributor is the fact that when we first see Lopmon in Hurricane Touchdown he’s already dark evolved/digivolved into Wendimon/Wendigomon whereas when we first see Meicoomon in tri it’s kept a mystery as to what her importance to the plot is which is why she gets so much more screentime dedicated to establishing what her character is like compared to Lopmon who only gets a single flashback and 1 scene afterwards.

Because of this, it’s way easier to get sad over Meicoomon’s death since we actually get a decent amount of screen time to what her personality and character is like outside of the infection (which is still a simple character mind you, but being a simple character is not the same as being badly and/or underwritten).

A point I have seen some people made in Lopmon’s favour in comparison to Meicoomon that I don’t really seem to get is that when Lopmon dies he briefly becomes Cherubimon (Virtue) before disappearing whereas Meicoomon doesn’t briefly become Rasielmon when she dies. The reason I don’t get this criticism towards Meicoomon is that the people I’ve seen make this complaint claim that her not becoming Rasielmon means she wasn’t purified when she died even though Meicoomon appearing in her regular non mutated self could also be interpreted as her being purified since that’s what Meicoomon is like when she’s not a rampaging mutated digimon. Gonna be honest this complaint feels more like an excuse to complain about a lesser known digimon not getting their anime debut in a scene where if that did happen... you’d change absolutely nothing about the story other than Rasielmon waving goodbye to Meiko (a digimon Meiko’s never seen before mind you) instead of Meicoomon before disappearing. Honestly if Cherubimon (Vice) briefly turned back into Lopmon instead of Cherubimon (Virtue), you’d change absolutely nothing about Hurricane Touchdown’s plot since Cherubimon reverting back into Lopmon could still be interpreted as him being purified anyways. I dunno this complaint feels very surface level and difficult for me to agree with given the points I’ve made. Anyways TLDR: the reason why I feel Meiko’s Meicoomon is better written than Wallace/Willis’ Lopmon is that Lopmon is extremely underwritten outside of the fact that he’s a partner digimon under the effects of dark evolution/digivolution and that digimon’s personality and character outside of that has way too little screentime anyways whereas Meiko’s Meicoomon doesn’t have the same problems. I don’t really know what else to type here.

[lemongrablothbrok]

Was watching my favorite movie, Almost Famous, like a week or two ago. First of all, I'd just like to say, I could blog about this movie all fucking day, every fucking day, and intend to eventually (because I'm a masochist and like a challenge, damnit) do a post on every single Led Zeppelin reference that I could find in the movie (and there. Are. A lot. Probably literally more than there is of any other band or artist. For realsies), as well as an entire post of its own doing a character analysis of Vic, the Led Zeppelin fan (because I feel like he matters a lot more than his maybe two minutes of total screentime might suggest). But anyway...

So, I'm watching the director's cut, like I usually do (the theatrical cut just doesn't do it for me anymore), and there's one scene that (I'm pretty sure?) didn't make it into the regular cut of the film, but...like...

So, it's near the end of the movie, and Russell, the lead guitarist of the fictional band Stillwater, is having a conversation with the band's lead singer, Jeff, after butting heads with him for the entire movie and both of them coming to terms with the fact that...well...they don't like each other very much. And they're discussing whether it really matters if they like each other or not, and I think it's Jeff who says something like he thinks them liking each other might have been a detriment to the band, if anything, and how he's heard that all of the great duos hate each other or don't like each other or don't get along or whatever. Which, you know, cool, is true for maybe some of the most highly regarded rock groups (the Davies brothers in The Kinks, Joey Ramone and Johnny Ramone, and even Lennon and McCartney by the time The Beatles ended), clearly not all of them, though, but you know, hyperbole and all that. The real kicker, though? The fucking irony in that assertion, that none of the great duos in music get along? You know what song is playing in the background while they're talking about this?

"The [motherfucking] Rain Song", that's what. Like...uh...Jeff...you hear that song that's playing right now? Actually, probably not, since it might not be playing in-universe at that moment, though in Almost Famous it's sometimes hard to tell the diagetic (sp?) from non-diagetic music. But...like..."The Rain Song" is playing. Your argument is invalid, Jeff. Do you have any idea. Any fucking idea, Jeff, how much the duo responsible for that song (both in the writing and, quite possibly, the subject matter itself) don't hate each other? Like, pretty much the polar opposite of hate each other? Like, whether or not you believe that Page and Plant ever touched each other's no-no bits, what's not really up for debate is that those two men love each other like woah, whatever the nature of that love may be, doesn't matter, they are, for all intents and purposes, fucking married, they've both said so themselves. Yes, even James Patrick "No-Homo" Page.

I think Cameron Crowe definitely did that on purpose, and I appreciate the irony in the juxtaposition between the dialogue and the background music, is I guess what I'm saying. Listen, he was given special permission from the guys themselves to use a handful of Led Zeppelin's songs in his movie, he wasn't just going to slap them on any old scene all willy-nilly.

[playcraze]

I have lots of problems with the new episode, but I'm not gonna really get into them tonight since my mood was completely ruined by many things lol 🥲 so Imma just put up some pros and then maybe explain the cons in another post

This design is so silly. The lava lamp belly honestly worked better than whatever they were doing with Bumblebee

This image honestly has me cackling my ass off cus why did they approach each other like that 😭

Millie's design is so bonita I love her omg (she honestly deserves more screentime and I feel like she deserves better than the end of the episode which was HUMILIATING 🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦)

This guy. He's so scrungy willy and looks like he would enjoy some 2000s rock music (deserves better too)

Idgaf what Viv does, she can't ruin these two's dynamic by putting some pointless ass jealousy into the (still flawed due to writing but) one good relationship of the show 😒 they're one of my reasons I'm still holding on 😔

And THIS

"It's just my time of the month"

Mox is trans and no one can say otherwise

[dokoni-mo]

What do you think of the Mike is not an Afton change? I personally like it but if they get rid of my girl Elizabeth and make Garrett the new Charlie I will throw a fit

For me it was really unexpected,, but i kinda see what they're trynna do??

It seems to me like they're trying to base the movie (or perhaps movies if they make more) moreso on the books rather than the games because I heard that there's a lot of similarities between them as well as easter eggs

But tbh the lore is like,, all over the place LMAOO so perhaps they're trynna fix it?? I have no clue BUT it was a good movie I highly enjoyed, my only beef was that Willy should've gotten more screentime

[emeraldspiral]

I wouldn't say it's entirely devoid of sexism. It doesn't depict female characters in a sexist way or address sexism as a part of every day life, and that may be because the show takes place in a futuristic setting with the idea that sexism wouldn't be as much of a problem, or because Jhonen just didn't want to address contemporary politics that might date the show.

But there's definitely an unconscious bias reflected in the show, probably due to most of the creative staff being men with a huge blind spot for how underrepresented female characters were. Irken society supposedly treats female Irkens no different than males, and yet there are only 5 female Invaders (6 if you count Tak) out of over 30 Invaders. The Massive's bridge crew appears to be entirely male and crowd scenes feature almost entirely male Irkens. In fact, I'm not even sure if there are any female Irken background characters besides the 5 female Invaders.

If you look at the main cast you have three male characters, Zim, Dib, and GIR, and one female character, Gaz, and of the three Gaz gets the least amount of screentime or character focus. Among the secondary main cast you have the Tallest, Professor Membrane and Ms. Bitters, so three more male characters and only one more female character. Then you get into the characters who played a significant role in one or two episodes. For female characters it was pretty much just Tak, Moofy, and the Delouser. For male characters you had Keef, Bill, the Planet Jackers, Shnooky, Poop Dawg, Slab Rankle, Officer Squidman, Iggins, Agent Darkbootie, the Mysterious Mysteries host, Sgt Hobo, Service Drone Bob, Skoodge, the idiot aliens from Abducted, Nick, Chickenfoot, Lard Nar, Mortos, Willy, and Sizz-Lor. So that's 3 female characters (4 if you count Tak's ship as female and separate from Tak) and 22 male characters.

I don't think Gaz or Tak ever talked to each other in Tak the Hideous New Girl or with any other female characters in the entire show. I don't think Moofy or her troupe talked to each other in The Girl Who Cried Gnome and I'm not sure if Ms. Bitters and the Delouser spoke directly to each other in Lice either.

The only interactions between female characters I can recall are Ms. Bitters addressing her female students, the Delouser monologuing to Gretchen about the Lice queen, Gaz talking to Tak's ship in ETF, and maybe Jessica gossiping about Zim in Bestest Friend if you count the other girls at her table listening.

Literally, one of my favorite things about Invader Zim is like… the complete lack of sexism?

The girls/women actually act like people, which is quite revolutionary for a 2000s cartoon.

As a girl growing up in the 2000s, who preferred more adventurous cartoons (which were often directed towards boys) this was always a struggle for me, because that particular genre was often times rife with sexism/misogyny, with girls often being portrayed as either an accessory to the main protagonist or the butt of countless stupid jokes, and it honestly sucked.

Hooray for Invader Zim!

[the-irken-pony]

I’d be interested in seeing a RHM post

also am I the only one who finds it bizarre that RHM was able to reflect Henry’s fire attack in the ‘dirk’ option?

YES THAT'S EXACTLY THE KIND OF THING I'M TALKING ABOUT AND WANT TO WRITE ABOUT

More specifically, he’s shown off 3 special abilities that a) aren’t possible for normal people to achieve and b) aren’t granted by his cybernetics. These abilities are:

1) Reflect, a magic reflector seen during the Dirk sub-option in Infiltrating the Airship

2) An unnamed shockwave attack seen during the Yo-yo sub-option in Infiltrating the Airship

3) Bottled Time, a Spirit capable of slowing down or stopping time seen during the 😒 “Spirit Forme” option in Completing the Mission

Coincidentally, these all occur under the circumstance that the Right Hand Man is fighting Henry to try and protect Reginald. Also, with the exception of *maybe* Reginald in the latter case, Henry is the only one to bear witness to these abilities, and these are the only times Right Hand Man ever shows such abilities off. Which, when you compare it to how little issue he seems to have with getting every small bit of convenience out of his cybernetics that he can, kinda confuses me.

It’s possible that he just thinks that these are limited in use, but I find it incredibly unlikely that this is the case. Given how he shoots lasers willy-nilly it’s not like shockwave wouldn’t be useful to him, and given his well-established need for speed I doubt that he wouldn’t abuse the hell out of Bottled Time unless he had a REALLY good reason not to. The only one that would be limited in this way is Reflect, simply due to how rare magic casters actually are.

The only other reason I can think of for him to not use these abilities hardly ever is that he’s keeping it a secret from others. What reason he would have for doing so is beyond me, but whatever his reasoning for hiding his abilities, he wouldn’t be the only one to do so.

Kado Ito is the only person who’s explicitly stated to keep his special abilities a secret, but him not using his powers until Henry (or Ellry, in Kabbitz’s case) uses his own abilities is a trait he shares with both Right Hand Man and Kabbitz, the only other characters with special powers, except for Henry and Ellie themselves. (Any of Charles’ special powers come from his helicopter, so he doesn’t count.)

With all of this comes a bunch of questions. Why is it so rare, and exactly how rare is it? Out of ~400 characters, are these 5 characters really the only ones with these abilities, or are there more we don’t know about? Why do some keep it secret? Is it more common for those with special abilities to only use them in rare circumstances like Kado or Right Hand Man do, or to flaunt them like Henry does? Does RHM have more than these three abilities that he simply hasn’t shown off?

I admit this post was only half about Right Hand Man, but what I wanted to write about in the first place were these abilities and their extreme rarity relative to his overall screentime and use of cybernetic enhancements. And quite honestly, this wouldn’t be nearly as fascinating to me if characters with special abilities (aside from Henry) weren’t as rare as they are.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

The Goonies: The Characters

No matter how good a story is, how great the cinematography, or how subversive the genre-usage, a movie cannot stand without use of characters.

Characters are perhaps the most vital element of any story ever told.  An interesting plot helps a movie greatly, but without a use of compelling characters, it falls flat on an audience who doesn’t care about the well-being of the people pushing the story forward.  Viewers need flawed, interesting people, moving the story and trying to overcome conflict, in order for a movie to feel satisfying.

Or, they can have a bunch of bickering children stumbling and screaming their way through caves, led by Head Goonie: Michael “Mikey” Walsh.

Only Sane Man Mikey is the glue of the group, bringing the Goonies together in an adventure, instead of just a bunch of kids hanging out in someone’s living room.  He’s got the initiative, he’s the Determinator, and the Leader, and also, surprisingly, the Heart, in a rare combination.  He’s the one jumping at the call, the Kid Hero armed with the Rousing Speeches in his desperate attempt to save the Goondocks.  It would have been easy to make Mikey the most boring of the bunch, but he’s not, if anything, he’s the most interesting.  He’s certainly the most inspiring.

Mikey is the driving force of the entire story.  Despite the fact that he was reluctant to let his friends in the attic in the first place, once he’s there, he’s instantly pushing for his end goal.  As much as Data is the inventor of the group, when you get right down to it, Mikey is probably the smartest of the bunch.  It’s Mikey who figures out where they need to go, Mikey who leads the Goonies through the tunnels, Mikey who convinces them to persevere, to not ride up Troy’s bucket, to leave Willy’s private stash alone.

He’s dedicated to the point of almost insanity at times, judging from how Brand has to pull him back from going back after the treasure when the cave collapses.  He’s also very interested in One-Eyed Willy himself, and acts like he knows him, or understands him, anyway.

“One-Eyed Willy. Hello. I’m Mike Walsh, you’ve been expecting me. Haven’t you? Well, I made it. I beat you. I got here in once piece. So far. So, that’s why they call you One-Eyed Willy. One-Eyed Willy. We had a lot in common, huh, Willy? You know something Willy? You were the first Goonie.”

Apparently, Mikey sees a little bit of himself in this pirate, perhaps as a fellow leader or adventurer, or even a fellow outsider.

Like I said, Mikey could have been the blandest character in the bunch: just filling in as ‘the leader’ of the group, but instead, he’s as quirky as they come.

Despite the fact that this is an ensemble film, with every character sharing about the same amount of screentime, Mikey is clearly the protagonist, no questions asked.  He is the character with the goal here, and as much as it benefits everyone else, it’s clearly his mission, his quest.  The others are just along for the ride.  Mikey is the character the audience is meant to identify with the most: he gets the most insightful dialogue and we as viewers identify more strongly with him as a character.  

Although he’s one of the last characters introduced to the audience, it’s very clear right away who the story is about based simply on the Protagonist Problem: basically, do they have one?  And while it’s clear that the other Goonies aren’t happy about moving away, none of them are taking it as hard as Mikey is.  He is, immediately, the character with a Problem, and he’s also the only one to jump at a solution.

He’s the idealist.  He’s cool under pressure (for the most part).  He easily takes charge, despite his tamer personality in comparison with the others, even over the older kids, and he’s nice to boot.  His goals are easily defined, he’s active, going after his goals and overcoming obstacles, he seems to be the perfect protagonist, if it wasn’t for one thing…

Mikey never really changes.

Sure, he throws away his inhaler by the end, which could be interpreted as symbolic of development, but honestly, Mikey is very much the same kid at the end of the film that he was at the beginning.  Same personality, same worldview…even the same goals, which is another big protagonist no-no.

Most great protagonists have goals that change from beginning to end of the film, as a sign of their own developing character, but Mikey never does.  Instead, he ends the film getting exactly what he initially set out to get: enough money to save the Goondocks.  Sure, he has the relatively minor goal along the way of ‘staying alive’, but in the grand scheme of narrative stakes, to Mikey, clearly the treasure is all that matters.

The question is…is this a bad thing?

Well…no.

The thing is, Mikey is only one in a group of seven main characters, and while some of them have more screen time than others, when you come down to it, that’s a lot of characters to balance, meaning a lot of dialogue split up, and a lot of audience focus divided.  In other words: Mikey doesn’t get development because he doesn’t have time.  There’s just too much going on for the audience to stack character growth on top of it.

While there’s not nearly enough time from a script perspective, there’s also just no time from a linear perspective, either.

The story of The Goonies takes place around, give or take, a day, and while there are a few stories where development is done over that time, (Such as 12 Angry Men, actually) the fact is, twenty four hours is a really short period of time to change who you are as a person, or even change your goals.  It’s very difficult to cram in the story, the characters, and everything else in such a short time span, and heap a deep, meaningful character arc on top of it.  There’s just no time.

So, does that damage the film?

Not really.  Like I said in the genre article, The Goonies is a roller-coaster adventure of a film, without much in breaks.  There’s a lot going on all at the same time, and honestly, in order to keep the pace up, it’s for the betterment of the film that they didn’t try to cram Mikey’s character development within.

To be fair, it’s not as though he doesn’t change at all.  But he changes about as much as the rest of the cast do, in very similar ways: kind of like his brother.

Brandon “Brand” Walsh fills out the other side of the sibling dynamic between himself and Mikey, the older brother who gets annoyed with him, but is also supposed to be taking care of him.  As much as he starts out the film looking like he’s at least trying to be an Aloof Big Brother, when the chips are down, his Big Brother Instinct comes out, protecting Mikey from actual danger.  Beginning the film as somewhat of a Butt-Monkey, ending up Hoisted by his Own Petard in the form of his exercise equipment, at first, Brand looks like he’s not really going to be terribly involved in Mikey’s Goonie adventure.

In the end, though, Brand turns out to be One of the Kids.  But for careful viewers, that’s not really a surprise.

Even Brand’s first scene, where he interacts with Mikey, it’s pretty clear that although there’s a bickering dynamic between them, there’s also sympathy and affection.  Brand knows that Mikey doesn’t want to leave, he understands and he tells him so.  He hugs him and brings him inside when Mr. Perkins comes by with the papers to sign over the house.  And sure, Brand bullies him a little and shoves him around and Mikey repays the favor by tying him to a chair with his own exercise equipment and running off, but that’s typical sibling stuff, as anyone with siblings can tell you.

Although Brand does initially try to ‘take charge’ and occasionally gives the marching orders, in the end, he leaves most of the leading to Mikey, which is a little strange.  Once or twice he takes over, and is the most protective of the group, but while he may do most of the ‘planning’ here, he lets Mikey’s goals and priorities take center stage for a while.

Brand’s other chief ‘item of note’ concerning characterization is, of course, his relationship with Andy.

It’s mentioned fairly early on into the film that Brand is supposed to go out with her, and we see her once or twice, but it isn’t until she and Stef show up to check on Brand that we get to see any of that relationship.  It’s sweet enough, aside from them constantly choosing the wrong time and place to attempt a first kiss, with Brand taking a side-role of protector for Andy specifically, again, showcasing that defensive side that comes in handy for the rest of the group from time to time.

But there’s more to the Goonies than the Walsh kids.

Probably the most recognizable of the characters from The Goonies is Lawrence “Chunk” Cohen.

Chunk has most of the most memorable lines and scenes in the film, elevating himself in pop culture beyond simply the ‘Fat Comic Relief’ and klutzy, cowardly character that the movie seems to be pigeonholing him into at first.  See, even though Mikey’s the one with the goal and character arc concerning the treasure, Chunk’s character arc revolves around the Fratellis.

Of all the Goonies, Chunk is the first one to get involved in the story.  He is the first character we see indirectly interact with the villains of the story, when he spots the car chase, and by the end of the film, he is the character that has interacted with them the most, being drug around, interrogated, and locked up by them as a result of being left behind by the rest.  Fittingly, his arc has very little to do with One Eyed Willy, and everything to do with the criminal family that he happens to fall into, to the point where they’re almost his arch-nemeses instead of the rest of the Goonies.

While an initial viewing could give viewers a very basic impression of Chunk as just the ‘token fat kid’ of the group, the fact is, he is one of the only characters who gets any real growth.

Chunk is established almost right away as the Boy Who Cried Wolf, a teller of tall-tales that have rendered him completely unbelievable to his friends and the local police force.  By the time he has an actual story to tell, nobody around him is ready to buy it, and honestly, it’s hard to blame them.  Some of his stories do sound ridiculous, and even the one that he’s telling now about the Fratellis would be hard to believe, if the audience didn’t know for certain that he was telling the truth.  Of course, although he is able to feel vindicated when the Goonies discover he’s telling the truth, his tendencies to exaggerate backfire on him spectacularly when the police don’t believe he’s in trouble, and he’s left on his own.

Well, not quite on his own, but more on that in a minute.

Chunk primarily holds up the B-plot of the film on the villain’s side, arriving at the end to play hero and bail the rest of the Goonies out, proving to them, and then the rest of the authorities at the end, that this time, he was right, and proving his bravery after an entire film of attempting to chicken out.  But as impressive as his last-minute heroism is, Chunk isn’t in this alone.

Despite being separated from the group fairly early on, sparing them from his complaints, hunger, and clumsiness, Chunk finds another ally in Sloth, the Fratellis’ brother, and befriends him, forming the ‘Brains’ to Sloth’s brawn, coming in to save the day and even adopting him at the end of the film.

Chunk is the most memorable Goonie, not just for the Hawaiian shirt and plaid-pants combo that he’s rocking, but because he has a lot of very memorable and iconic scenes, possessing a pretty unforgettable (and loud!) personality and an arc: from zero to hero, when nobody, not even his fellow Goonies, expected it, complaining through the entire early adventure, and overall displaying an overwhelming desire to Not Be Here, making it all the more impressive when he goes after them with Sloth to rescue them.

But there’s more to the Goonies than just the leader and the breakout role.

Clark “Mouth” Devereaux is not the easiest kid to get along with.  A Deadpan Snarker Jerk with a Heart of Gold, Mouth is the member of the cast with potentially the most Meaningful Name: he never shuts up.  A classic case of ‘With Friends Like These…’, Mouth comes across like the most antagonistic character in the film other than the actual villains at times, abrasive and loud, bullying the rest of the group and picking fights with Stef.

Unfortunately, Mouth’s…mouth, can get him into trouble.  Quite often, in fact, like when he can’t let well enough alone and ends up getting threatened with having his tongue cut out.

With that said, though, Mouth does have his uses, and they’re not all to do with smuggling treasure in his most distinctive trait.

Fittingly, language is where he comes in handy: he’s the only one who can read (and speak) Spanish, leaving him as the obvious choice to translate the map, and also to translate the Walsh’s housekeeper’s exclamations that the treasure is not entirely lost.  Without him, the treasure hunt is impossible.

Mouth may want the treasure as badly as the rest of them do, but he is far less idealistic than Mikey is about it.  He’s the last of the kids to believe Mikey in the beginning, and while it can be chalked up to his overall personality, there is a dash or two of Hidden Depths implied about him, notably in the wishing-well sequence:

“Yeah, but you know what? This one, this one right here. This was my dream, my wish. And it didn’t come true. So I’m taking it back. I’m taking them all back.”

Armed with a comb and occasionally appearing as though he’s deliberately striking a pose in order to look cool, Mouth is actually one of the first to start falling apart when their lives are in danger, crying and panicking with the best of them.  (Again, he’s only thirteen.)

Despite having the loudest personality, Mouth is content to let Mikey lead the group, hanging back and picking on all of them, but by no means not one of them.

There is, of course, one more thing of note about Mouth as a character, and that is his dynamic with Stef.  The pair carry a belligerent tension, bickering and snapping at each other throughout most of the film before demonstrating genuine affection towards each other (with a deleted scene referenced involving Stef promising to keep Mouth alive when they get pushed off the plank).  It’s a hint at something going on between them for sure, but it’s also a fairly good example of Mouth’s relationships with everybody: he’s a lot more bark than bite, irritating and loud for sure, but a loyal friend who’s more than ready to help you look for treasure, even if he doesn’t 100% believe in it at first.

Like the rest, he doesn’t change a whole lot from beginning to end, with the adventure perhaps simply knocking some of his cockiness away and even leaving him a little nicer, but again, just like Mikey, it’s hard to say: this is all over the course of one, very exciting day.  More on that later, though.

After all, Mouth’s hardly the last Goonie of the bunch.

Richard “Data” Wang is the inventor of all things Awesome but Impractical, falling somewhere between Bungled Inventor and Gadgeteer Genius.  The Smart Guy, Data is good with his Homemade Inventions for sure, but there’s a bit more to him than that.

While the other Goonies (especially Chunk and Mouth) can best be remembered for being annoying or clumsy, or dropping things, or talking too much or too loudly, or setting off booby traps, Data is actually pretty even-keel.  He’s excitable, and he really doesn’t want to move to Detroit, but overall, he’s fairly content to be the least talkative Goonie, letting his Dynamic Entries speak for themselves.

He’s a smart kid, and he actually is the only one who one-ups the Fratellis at any time, using his inventions to trip them up and hurt them, after the same inventions saved his life earlier.  Data certainly does have a flair for the dramatic (best seen when telling Mikey that he won’t be taken alive) and is an energetic kid, proving himself as reckless as the rest, but he has a good head on his shoulders.  He’s the one who discovers the counterfeit machine, and it’s fairly safe to say that without him and his Slick Shoes, the Goonies probably wouldn’t have made it out alive.

Like the others, Data doesn’t change much – in fact, he probably changes the least.  This could be due to the fact that again, this is all over the course of roughly 24 hours, but it’s also possibly just a side-effect of being the most even-keeled of the bunch: he’s quieter, and therefore, we hear less from him, meaning we see less of his flaws.  Still though, Data’s a solid character, hugely entertaining, likeable, and memorable.

Now for the other outliers:

Andrea “Andy” Carmichael begins the story as first The Cheerleader and Dude Magnet, and then The Load.  Clearly not used to this style of Goonie Adventure, Andy kind of becomes a Hysterical Woman throughout a good portion of the journey, needing to be comforted a few times in order to keep her head.  It’s hard to blame her: between the skeletons, the guns, and getting locked in a tunnel is pretty frightening, but Andy doesn’t do a whole lot (especially early on, during her Heroic BSoD) and manages to not retain much of a personality throughout most of the film, chiefly appearing at first to serve as a token female character and to be in love with Brand.

But there is more to her than that.  

Even early on, Andy demonstrates a little more backbone when she elbows Troy in the lip and ditches him to go find Brand, and although she initially just follows the Goonies to hang out with Brand (and then to escape the Fratellis), she ends up becoming one of them when she makes the choice to stay instead of riding up the wishing well, sending up his letterman jacket instead.  It’s a big step for her, a demonstration of her true alliances (a deleted scene was to include her being sworn in as an official Goonie at this point, actually), and sets her up for the rest of the film as being more ready and willing to actively participate in the adventure.

Near the end, Andy has to come through to save everyone, as she’s the only one who can play the piano even a little bit, and it falls on her to play the bone organ in order to get them away from the Fratellis and towards the treasure.

Andy actually has some more growth than a few of the others: she steadies out and truly does change, becoming a true Goonie by the end of the film, proving herself more capable than when she began.  Although she doesn’t seem to have a stake in the treasure, she’s just as determined by the end to get it, and celebrates with the rest of them by the end.

In a way, she shares that with the other Goonie outlier: Stef.

Stephanie “Stef” Steinbrenner doesn’t really seem to serve a whole lot of purpose within the story besides being another girl Goonie so there isn’t just one.  She’s a friend of Andy’s, the Tomboy to her Girly Girl, who splits off to join her to find Brand and then ends up swept along with the rest of the adventure, and there doesn’t seem to be much more to her than that.  She’s a Sarcastic Devotee, who feels Surrounded by Idiots: she trades snark with the best of them and tends to feel (rightfully so) that the people she’s around aren’t exactly geniuses.  She’s loyal though, and sticks by Andy and the other Goonies until the end, proving just as determined to get to the treasure and get out alive as the others.

Stef serves as a reality check, another cynic who’s just as frightened as the rest of them, like Andy, without a stake in the final treasure, and while she’s never officially branded a Goonie, the implication by the end is clear.  She sort of takes on a belligerent ‘big sister’ role throughout most of the film, and although she doesn’t have much of an arc, she is entertaining to watch, which honestly sums up the entire cast pretty well.

The characters of The Goonies do not exactly ‘grow’.  There are small things: Andy’s growing courage, Chunk being finally right, Mikey’s growth as a leader, Data’s inventions being useful, Mouth taking some of his snarky edge off, and Brand being a better big brother, but honestly, these are very minor things in the grand scheme of the story.

The characters in The Goonies are not deep, whether it’s the actual Goonies themselves or the villainous Fratellis, who are mostly characterized by striking a balance between being comedic and being a genuine threat.  There are no huge life-lessons being learned by these people, and they aren’t really doing a lot of growing so much as they are running for their lives.

In a film that is essentially a ‘roller coaster’, The Goonies is not designed to have seven major characters with fulfilling character arcs: like I said before, there’s simply no time.  It’d bog the story down for each character to have a moment of growth, to change significantly from beginning to end.  In this case, the best thing about the characters is actually their consistency from beginning to end: there’s little change, and as a result, the audience never has to recalibrate to something else going on within the story.

In other films, this would be a huge problem.

A feature-length film where there is no discernible character change is typically not a good call, but in this case, it works for multiple reasons.  The story is too fast paced and focused on too much to allow for consistent breaks in plot that allow for character moments, and with the extremely short timespan, a big change would actually come across as forced and unrealistic.  The characters are children forced into a tight spot, where their chief concern is their own lives.  There simply isn’t the option open for development.

However, where the film lacks on ‘growth’ of characters, it makes up for in everything else.

The chief purpose of a character is to be there for the audience to like, to be invested in.  There are actually plenty of films where characters don’t change a lot, classic movies that are well-liked because the characters, although unchanging, are hugely entertaining and interesting.  Films like Back to the Future or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off don’t suffer from characters who don’t do any changing due to the fact that the main characters are fun to watch and have the audience’s attention and interest.

Which is just what The Goonies does.

Everyone can find a Goonie to relate to: the leaders, the loudmouths, the geniuses, the attention-seekers, everyone has a place here, and even adults who have hopefully grown out of some of the more immature kid-like behavior, there’s still the glimmer of familiarity in these kids.  Like I mentioned before, we relate to these kids, and we want to see them win.

The Goonies as a story is designed to have simple, relatable characters for the audience to remember, and if that’s the goal, then it works perfectly.  There are no deep characters with complex motivations here, and that’s a good thing: it fits the tone of the film consistently and coherently.  Every character here is likeable in some way, memorable, for sure, and sticks with an audience enough that the audience wants to stick with them too, and wants them to succeed.

In the end, the characters of The Goonies make you care about them, make you root for them.  They carry the story and do it all in a way that’s plenty of fun to watch, and when it comes down to it: that’s exactly what characters should do.

Whether you like or hate them, a character is there to make you care, and The Goonies certainly do their job.  They leave a strong impact, and as a result, we remember these characters and their quirks long after the movie is over for a reason.

Join me next time where we’ll be looking at the 80s cultural impact on the creation of The Goonies.  Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next article.

[hankwritten]

TFComics Rewrite

I am currently plotting an outline for a TFComics, and I want to get my thoughts about fixes to canon and possibly get feedback. Since this is a rewrite there’s really no *spoilers* or anything, so I’m willing to answer all questions about what I plan to do. Also some characters I’m not so sure about how I want to retool them, so if your have ideas for your fav let me know!

Disclaimer:

This rewrite is intended to critique the content/choices made in the construction and telling of the Team Fortress 2 comic series. It is not a personal attack on the artists/writers/directors or any of the creatives that made contributions to this series, nor is it meant to substitute or replace the official release. This work is transformative in nature, and relies on an understanding of the source material to be understood. TF2 and its characters belong to Valve.

TFCR is working on the assumption that the audience has read the original comic, and as such will skip over scenes and plot points that are unchanged from the original. I don’t think it needs to be said, but this fanfiction will not make sense if you are not familiar with the source.

I also recognize that there are strengths within the comic’s writing and weaknesses within my own. Namely, that Valve writers are gods in the realm of comedy, and I’d rather not try to match them in the regard. As such, I will state up front that these will not be as funny as the TFComics. That is not to say there won’t be jokes (either ones transplanted from the source or some of my own) or that the tone of this will be terribly grimdark, only that my focus will be on improving story structure and character development as those are what appeal to me.

 The Broad Strokes

The goal of TFCR is to give a more engaging story for all the mercenaries we know and love, as--let’s face it--the TF2 mercs are side characters in their own damn story. These are some of the planned improvements.

There will be reason for each of the mercs to actually be there. As it stands, the motivations for almost every character besides Pauling and Saxton Hale are vague and unsatisfying. We’d usually say something along the lines of “money” for hired killers, but clearly Scout doesn’t even know if they’re getting paid, and some of the other characters are even worse. The hunt for the Australium is, therefore, boring. MacGuffins usually are, but at the very least the characters should care about the item even if the audience doesn’t. This work aims to give each of the nine mercs a motive and a reason to be in the story instead of just replaceable joke dispensers.

Explain what “Team Fortress” means, and how it relates to RED and BLU. Long and short: the nine mercenaries we see on the team are not from either RED or BLU but rotate between the two, and were the individuals selected to fight the robots. That means all things do happen to all characters. As Valve pretty much goes with “whatever is funniest at the time”, it’s very hard to make a cohesive theory about “where the hell is BLU team?”, but I’ll do my damndest. We’ll also examine Team Fortress’s relationship with the other capital T Teams, and why they’re considered the “rejects” of the bunch.

Comics 1 & 2 will be removed from the timeline as they serve no purpose, only taking what needs to be known about the plot’s setup and jumping straight to A Cold Day in Hell.

We will introduce the Classic Mercs right away so they can generate threat and play against the TF mercs when they do actually meet head to head.

We will not be killing off Gray Mann. (Not preemptively anyway.) In fact, there will be more focus on him and Olivia as villains facing off against the Admin, providing her foil as the TF2 and TFC mercs provide foils for each other.

I considered waiting until the final comic was out to begin working on this, but that may never happen. Jay Pinkerton said he may reveal what plot they had in store eventually, but considering it took Half Life over a decade to get the “I was once a Valve writer but my NDA has expired and now I can go buck wild” treatment, I’m not holding my breath. The main reason I wanted to do this is that the Administrator’s motivations are not interestingly foreshadowed, to the point where there aren’t even any good fan theories out there. That said, WritingDispenser and Riddle of the Sphinx helped come up with a pretty fun one, which was actually the inspiration for me to get off my butt and start plotting this.

There will be no queerbaiting. This refers both to HeavyMedic (which has been simultaneously used as wink wink nudge nudge joke many times and as encouragement for fans to play their stupid hat game) as well as lesbian Pauling (since femme lesbians are the preferred method for front facing LGBT representation across almost all media, but video games especially). If you need to understand why lesbian Pauling is an issue, Sarah Z coined the term “queercatching” in order to describe word of god confirmations on characters sexualities that are not followed up on in the text. I recommend the full video on it.

Due to the importance of immortality in the theming of the comics, respawn will not be a thing. Deaths we think should have happened previously will be explained as close calls, or that Medic can heal a short time after death. Medic and Scout’s deaths will be cut in the story itself, as after Sniper died and came back, them doing the same thing kinda lost their punch.

Scout

There will be no ScoutPauling hints. It doesn’t make sense to give screentime to this relationship because Valve obviously doesn’t think it’s going to go anywhere so why make Scout turn down advances from other hot women? I mean I get Expiration Date was a Thing but it feels like Scout’s whole motivation shouldn’t be reduced down to chasing a girl who doesn’t like him back.

He’s here because he lost his life’s savings in bad investments and needs the money. That’s it. Which is still somehow more than his canon motive which is question mark question mark question mark

He, Soldier, Spy, Demo, and Pyro all start the adventure with Miss Pauling.

Engages with Heavy on a genuine level when they go to collect him, Heavy doesn’t blow him off when he tries to level about dead dads.

There will be no DadSpy reveal. The way Spy treats Scout has never been “deadbeat dad feels bad about abandoning his kid” but more “this is someone I would kill without a second thought if I felt like it” which makes his reveal in comic 5 feel very disingenuous. I don’t think Valve even had this plotline in mind until comic 3, as #2 still has Spy seeming only to care about Scout’s Ma and not Scout himself. It also makes “seduce me!” retroactively weird.

Uhhh hooks up with Zhanna. This one isn’t critical I just think it’s funny.

Soldier

Soldier is going to be the Ur example of the Admin not treating her people well, as we’re going to lean into the whole “Soldier was only mildly messed up until the whole lead poisoning” thing.

He’s here because he’s blindingly loyal to the cause. He’s actually going to very little from canon because of this actually.

Might be the reason Team Fortress has a reputation of being the lower tiers of the Teams, but that doesn’t mean he’s damn good at his job. Fatal flaw is that he’s unstable, and even though the courthouse plotline won’t be in this fic, it should be noted that he actually does cause problems for the other protagonists due to his short temper. He’s a risky asset, but still essential.

There will be a minor explanation for the WAR! Comic, but I think that’s better saved for Demo’s analysis.

Pyro

Pyro is the character you could cut entirely from the comics and have the least change. Now, they’re going to be Pauling’s right hand. Let me explain.

Engineer and Pyro are implied to live together, and Pyro doesn’t have anything better to do than go with Engie after Team Fortress is disbanded. Rather than having a reveal, we will see some of what is going on with the Admin and friends early on, and see what leads up to her sending Miss P the note that kicks off the whole plot. However, while Engie needs to stay and look after her, Pyro’s skills aren’t useful here, and they are sent as a direct messenger to help Pauling.

They’re loyal, and unlike Soldier rarely mess up orders. They’re also partially mute, making them ideal for handling sensitive info. Pauling trusts them to handle the burning of “Elizabeth’s” paper trail.

Will be using they/them in the narrative voice, but other characters will refer to them as he/him. I considered going with it/its because that’s bubbled up in popularity again, but ultimately I decided against it.

We’ll get glimpses to their train of thought, but like the comics they will remain virtually silent.

Demo

Demo’s role in the cast is going to be very similar to Spy’s. The events of WAR! involved him nearly dying and Soldier taking the win, and he’s very bitter that after all those events *apparently* mercs can just be switched around teams willy nilly and don’t have to kill each other anymore. (As the audience, we know this is because the Admin found out the “make them so angry they won’t ask questions” wasn’t a long-term viable solution, and instead brought TFI forward as a neutral third party that was pretending to mediate the gravel wars.) But Demo’s suspicious, and is only along because he really has been miserable since he lost his job.

This conflict will eventually come to a head, more on that in the Sniper section.

Is fairly forgiving with his teammates. Doesn’t like Sniper but I’m willing to drop a little angst during that submarine scene. Is glad to see Medic actually. Here to be some glue to hold this merry band together.

The Eyelander will not be forgotten after 2 comics because I love this character concept and I think it was underutilized.

Drunk jokes will be kept to a minimum. What I liked about WAR! and Bombinomicon was that it took Demo and showed that they knew how to make him funny without making him one note, which they sort of did in the early TFComics but stopped in the later ones in favor of him….being asleep for the whole plot. I promise 100% awake Demo in my rewrite.

Demo likes Pauling on a personal level, but has trouble reconciling her with his feelings on TFI.

Doesn’t get knocked out by moonshine because. Seriously? Poisoning the Demoman with alcohol? In what world does that work.

Heavy

Not too much to change. Scout doesn’t accompany him when he goes to look for the secret Australium cache, and he engages with Mags and Saxton (which will be when the audience finds out what they’ve been up to) and actually cares about what’s going on with them. He thinks Darling is up to something. Which he is, he’s attempting to unseat both Gray and Helen due to long family history.

Will at least mention Medic. Their reunion falls a little flat since it mostly relies on Meet the Medic for context, as they don’t really interact in the comic. There can be a bit of a flashback to what it was like as all these mercs broke up.

I know uhhh Valve seems to think found family is really dumb, and that these murderers could ever like each other is silly or something, but the mercs do? Like each other? For the most part anyways. 

Bronislava and Yana come alone for adventures, not just Zhanna. Again, no real reason, but sometimes I get to have tacky fanfic stuff in my own fanfic because I Wanna.

Engineer

Engie ruminates on his family history of allowing all this bullshit to happen and just kind of shrugging. Basically Moss’s analysis of the Conagher themes.

Has put a lot of time, sweat, and tears into BLU and now TFI, isn’t willing to let it fall now, even if Admin is basically living on borrowed time. He’s doing this because of the ‘ole sunk cost fallacy.

Also we get to see more of Pauling and Admin’s relationship through his eyes.

Medic

Congrats on being the one merc with an actual arc, Medic! As a reward, you will not be changed much.

I’m actually going to use Medic’s section to say that the Classic mercs will be referred to by their first names in order to differentiate them, and we’ll get little previews of what they’re like from Medic’s perspective before we actually see them fight Team fortress. The battle at the submarine will be more of a fight in this sense, working it out so it seems like surrender is the only option after Sniper is killed.

Final fight with Cheavy will be...not blocked so awkwardly. I mean this is now a textual medium so my work is already halfway done, but still the pacing is so weird. Shudder.

Sniper

These are the big guns. Most changes, even more than Demo. He’s been actually hunting for New Zealand/the Australium cache on his own, and doesn’t want Pauling interfering, saying for a he knows she could have been the ones to kill his adoptive parents.

(She hasn’t, but the Admin did actually order them killed in an attempt to stop Sniper because she thought she could prevent the exact thing that is going on right now which is that Sniper is considering trying to get at it.)

Sniper doesn’t know this, but Pauling, Demo, and Spy eventually convince him to share his findings and help them get to New Zealand.

Spy

Similar to Demo but is less conflicted about it. He knows just because he likes someone doesn’t mean he won’t have to kill them later. 

Spy knows about who killed Sniper’s parents, and tells Demo, sort of as a test to see where his loyalties lie. He also knows that Pyro is Pauling’s confidant for certain things.

Demo questions him about what he’s doing here, whose side he’s really on. But you know. Spy is Spy and he was never really on anyone’s side but his own. When it comes down to it, it might be exactly as Scout thinks: that he’s ditched them all and run off when he had the opportunity. But, big damn hero, comes back in the end.

He’s here mainly to “keep an eye on things.” Also maybe because his gf asked him to keep an eye on her son :)

[891movies]

830 to go (third of the way through!!)

a night at the opera (1935, dir. sam wood): ngl i struggled to get through this one. i liked duck soup fine enough but i feel like the marx brothers might not be for me.

häxan (1922, dir. benjamin christensen): an excellent example of early documentary filmmaking (and one that doesn’t exploit any indigenous people for once!). the “modern” segment trying to find rational explanations for witch hunts by blaming signs of witches on “hysteria” was pretty funny. it’s not that complicated mr. christensen, they just hated women.

steamboat bill, jr. (1928, dir. buster keaton, charles reisner): i think i officially like keaton better than chaplin. this might be the funniest of keaton’s films i’ve seen so far; the gags in the last part are especially incredibly impressive. though keaton’s dad had no business being this judgmental about his son who he left as a baby and hasn’t seen in twenty years!

ma rainey’s black bottom (2020, dir. george c. wolf): i think this is best known for being chadwick boseman’s last film and he absolutely kills it. viola davis deserves all the praise as well. this is based on a play and it very much feels like it, which i’m not the biggest fan of, but i can forgive indulgent monologuing when the acting is this good.

willy wonka & the chocolate factory (1971, dir. mel stuart): i saw the johnny depp version as a kid and i remember not liking it but i loved this movie! gene wilder is perfect, the kids all do really well with what they’re given, and i just love the overall design and feel of this movie. very 70s!

wr: mysteries of the organism (1971, dir. dušan makavejev): i think the ideas this movie presents are very interesting (though i think i only understood about a third of it) but what surprised me most is how funny it is. actually, scratch that, what surprised me most is that this movie that has several explicit sex scenes is up on youtube and has been for about eight years. 

mulholland drive (2001, dir. david lynch): this movie has been on my to-watch list for a solid decade and i’m so happy i finally got around to watching it and that i loved it as much as i did. i didn’t know what the hell was going on half the time but i like movies that confuse me! 

young frankenstein (1974, dir. mel brooks): i adore a lovingly made parody so this was right up my alley! gene wilder was great but my favorite was madeline kahn, who i wish had more screentime. you also gotta love a frankenstein movie that places this much emphasis on the creature’s dick size. 

up next: i’ve got she’s gotta have it cued up to watch tomorrow. i also wanna watch more movies from the 70s, it was my biggest blindspot going into this and i’m discovering some real gems. maybe the last picture show or fantastic planet? very excited about woodstock though that will have to wait until i have the time and patience for a three and a half hour documentary. 

[cherrymoonvol6]

hey i just finished watching julie and the phantoms so here’s a quick “““““review”““““ on it. lmao

this show is VERY disney channel esque. once you know that, it’s easy to enjoy it for what it is, but if that’s not your thing there’s not a lot to enjoy for you, sorry.

the fact that most of the high school kids look like actual teenagers really cement that last fact lol but i do appreciate that they got a bunch of kid actors to portray the characters. like, i just love looking at nick and realising he looks so much like fellow teenager streamer tubbo, that shit fuels my soul. in contrast though, the guys from sunset curve give me whiplash. luke is supposed to be 17, which i’m guessing is 1-2 years older than julie’s age in the show, but he just looks like he’s on his mid twenties and it never fails to take me out.

because of the amount of kid actors/disney channel vibes, the acting ranges from mediocre to good. the standouts for me were alex and willie. despite being the “sober” one of the three, alex’s delivery was on point and he got the most laughs from me for that exact reason. willie is quite standard most of the time: i think his first scenes with alex made him feel real to me, sort of charming but also a bit awkward and giddy. he stepped up his game on that scene where he finally tells the band what’s actually going on. for the first half of that scene, he came off to me as stressed, if not a bit embarrassed/guilty for the bad things that he caused. it was at that moment where alex pushed him and he says that he really cares about him, that the emotional impact of the scene really struck me. like, up to that point i didn’t see how much that stress actually came from the anxiety that willie felt from getting these people that he genuinely cares about under trouble. it completely shifted the scene from me and it’s like i felt the same whiplash that alex, luke and reggie did, and i was surprised that it landed so well for me. but yeah, anyways. er, all actors do a good job in the emotional scenes, which is just enough, so in general i’m pretty okay with the performances (excluding all the disney channel laugh track esque moments that didn’t land at all for me but, eh)

the pacing of the show was good for the most part: just when it feels like it becomes aimless, a new plot thread begins and gives the characters something to do. i also liked that the stakes were pretty high by the end of the season, despite not keeping the tension for long enough imo. although the show doesn’t waste that much time with dumb, inconsequential plotlines, the whole liar thing with flynn was extremely annoying despite being resolved quickly and rather lightly as well. it’s just, blegh, excuse for a new song and also filler for the episode. i think the show did a much better job with the subplot of julie’s brother finding out about the ghosts, since the scenes are always charming and don’t really put the plot on hold like flynn’s part did.

i also wish the show did something... interesting? with the archetypes of the disney channel characters it presents. i think the sharpay evans clone (CAN’T remember her name </3) had something going on for her when she said that it was unfair that julie was getting so much attention since she put all the effort into her project from the start, but her complaints seem so stupid when it’s revealed that her dad is the fourth member of sunset curve. like, she’s just some spoiled brat that has everything handed out to her, why is she mad? if she was in julie’s situation she’d find it even easier to get back in the music program or whatever it’s called, due to her daddy’s influences. why am i supposed to feel something for her when she claps for julie at the end of the show, out of the blue? she’s literally been an asshole in every other scene. likewise, nick simply doesn’t have a personality. he just humors julie from the start and makes it kinda like he’s always had a crush on her, and there’s like no scene in which he looks actually happy to be with his gf. why is he even dating her? why hasn’t he tried to be with julie all this time? he’s likeable yeah, but only because just as the audience he likes julie and wants to get closer to her, and doesn’t offer anything interesting - which is a shame because i do think him and julie have some chemistry. lastly, caleb is a textbook classic disney villain (flamboyant, evil to the core, queer coded, fucking gay and evil, did i already say flamboyant). surprisingly i’m of the opinion that he’s exactly what he needed to be lol. i like that the show gives him exactly the amount of screentime that he needs, and presents a big threat and a nice expansion to the ghostly part of the universe of this show. he’s also the best vocalist in the cast so all of his performances are a blast.

i also feel like they underused trevor’s character. idk, there could have been a lot more to him than just stare in amazement/fear whenever he sees the dead members of his former band singing with julie. i think julie’s dad filled the quota of sorta-incompetent adult just fine and we didn’t need him to be like That. it would’ve heightened the emotional impact of the death of these guys and maybe him apologizing for erasing sunset curve’s legacy could work as a nice character moment AND a red herring for their “unfinished business”, idk.

about the songs, i feel like the creators wanted an excuse to bring the 2000s pop-rock vibe back and i wholeheartedly support that decision. my favorite one is probably edge of great, but there’s not a song in the soundtrack i truly dislike. also for the love of god please give alex more solos </3 his voice is my favorite.

watching this show was a reminder of what i hate from first seasons/movies lol. i’m always afraid of the creators making it so these 10 episodes are only an introduction of themes and situations to be resolved and explored in other seasons. i feel like the biggest offender of this category is (netflix’s) ragnarok, and 3% is as usual the one who did it right. i’m conflicted as to where does jatp fall in this category. i wouldn’t exactly say that the focus of this show was on julie’s reintroduction to music after her mother’s death: like, she literally starts singing by the end of episode 1. the show clearly wants to follow up with caleb’s business, which is also the chance for the band to meet other ghosts who are in the same situation as willie. and the last scene where caleb possesses nick’s body shows like, how willing they are to go into that route lol. just the comparison of those stakes makes it..... blegh. i think at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, right? i enjoyed this show for what it is and in terms of personal entertainment, i’d still give it an 8/10. good stuff. fun songs, cute characters. looks really good!

[curestardust]

if you want: sport/competitive climbing focus / female main cast / minimal fanservice / actually interesting characters? / (the art/animation are... far from great tho)

Even before I started watching this anime, I was already starting off this review with my usual “why can’t we have sports anime with girls that’s not oversexualized” rant but “IwaKakeru” actually... surprised me? Now, don’t get me wrong, the anime does suffer from problems (mainly technical) but there was way less fanservice than I thought it’d be and I got to experience an actual coherent story. Low standards? Maybe so, but when it comes to this sub-genre, I think it’s acceptable.

As the title says, the anime focuses on “Sport Climbing” or more specifically competitive climbing. You know, those indoor climbing walls with the colourful rocks on them? That’s it. Now, in big competitions there are actually 3 disciplines: speed, bouldering and lead. Bouldering is what the anime mostly focuses on and it’s the most known type of climbing cause it’s just... climbing. Get from A to B. But this sport is actually more complex than I would’ve thought. With routesetters designing the walls so scaling it would involve dynamic moves, difficult to grasp edges and so on.

Our main character, Konomi, is looking for a club upon joining High School and runs into an indoor climbing wall (I mean, it’s outside but you know). She meets a club member there, Jun, who seems very rude and stand-offish. Skipping forward, Konomi actually gets to join the club and we meet the 2 other members as well as other affluent climbers at the first competition.

Konomi is an interesting character but not very relatable. She seems to be a prodigy in everything she does. She used to be a prima ballerina when she was young, then became a puzzle game focused gamer, winning multiple competitions. These 2 previous experiences, the posture, balance and core strength from ballet and her analytical skill for how to tackle a wall from gaming, make her an incredible beginner. All is left for her is to gain physical strengths.

In my opinion, Jun’s story is more relatable. She started climbing very young and got obsessed with the sport, to the point where it was her whole focus in life. She lived with the mentality that climbing can’t just be taken up “willy-nilly” and that it wasn’t a “game”. Yet, seeing Konomi not only get to where she was but surprass her in mere months when she has pured her soul into this sport for years, destroys here resolve and in the end has to go back to her roots to find out why she was even climbing at all.

Well, as you can see, the characters are a big factor in what makes the anime good. While Nono and Sayo, the other team members, have less screentime they still have their own story in the background. Some of the background characters also play important roles in helping our protagonists grow, in a way that I particularly enjoyed. The introduction to the specifics of the sport is also very clear and easy to understand, with the anime going from low-stakes to high-stakes, failures and victory.

The BIGGEST problem this anime faces is its visuals. But I’m not really talking about the art itself, while it’s nothing spectacular, it’s perfectly watchable. 2 things really stand out though, in a bad way: one is the symbolic representation for characters. For example, one climber is called “the spider” and one “the black panther” and sometimes these characters are portrayed as these animals (like when Fujita makes a big jump and she “turns into” a panther). Sometimes the way Konomi analyzes the walls, these Candy Crush-like very lame looking blobs appear and then “light up” showing the correct solution like in a puzzle game. I think these were supposed to look good but they looked very goofy. The second problem is the way the climbing is animated. As in, it’s not. It’s mostly just still shots or a blur. The ending to the anime was also a little jarring and some of the side characters ended up ultimately being completely pointless in the grand scheme of things.

But! Did I enjoy “IwaKakeru” despite all its flaws? Yes! Maybe because my expectations were below 0 from the get go but I actually was immersed in the characters’ stories and progression. Also, did the anime make me want to try the sport it focused on? Also yes! If I’m ever in better physical condition, I’d definitely like to try indoor climbing now that I actually know a bit about it. 

Don’t go into this expecting a jaw-dropping anime but if you’d like to know more about this sport, watch a somewhat decent female focused sports anime with minimal fanservice and don’t have anything more pressing to do, give this a go.

[7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | There was actual money spent on this

[adultswim2021]

Sealab 2021 #32: “Splitsville” | November 23, 2003 - 11:15 PM | S03E06

Debbie and Quinn break up, which causes everyone to go CRAZY! There is also a Battle of the Bands going on with Dr. Virjay and some other dudes. One of them is voiced by Dave Willis, which is always nice to hear. Well, dudes all hit on Debbie, and then she gets into a largely off-screen cat-fight where the dudes are like “SEXY CAT FIGHT YES” and they ‘bo out, and also Dr. Virjay’s band destroyed the nuclear reactor because they think it’s drugs and holy fuck is this a terrible episode.

This is also the first instance of Murphy-less Sealab to reach our television screens. Harry Goz has died. Long live Harry Goz. The episode actually appears in a much different order on DVD. This and one other episode exist as a bridge between premortem and postmortem Harry Goz Sealabs. That other episode is called Frozen Dinner. On DVD (which I assume is presented in production order) they appear before the episode where they introduce Capt. Murphy’s replacement, Tornado Shanks.

There’s a scene in this where Dr. Virjay and his band play Fishin’ Hole by Donnell Hubbard, which I’ve just learned is actually a BAND formed by Matt Maiellaro and Barry Mills. There is no man named Donnell Hubbard. Did I not put this together the last time this song was used (Legend of Baggy Pants)? I guess I didn’t, even though I credit the song to Matt. Anyway, this is the second time on the series that they basically stop the show to showcase this song. It’s a good song, arguably the best part of the episode. I wish they could’ve but a longer song in there, like MacArthur Park.

There were two things I liked: one, Stormy’s card to Debbie which reads “CHIN UP CUTIE” (INSIDE) “I THINK YOU’RE SAUCE-SOME!” and it’s a little picture of a dog with a bowl of spaghetti turned over it’s head. Funny! And then later Sparks says Debbie looks like a steak drizzled in slut-sauce. I don’t think I ever laughed at that line before in my life, but for some reason I appreciated the turn of phrase. It’s too bad the only two gags involve sauce. I guess I like-a-da-sauce (or juice, which is what the line actually is in the thing I’m referencing).

The catfight thing is kinda gross. It seems like an ironic joke, maybe, but I just picture Adam Reed getting a huge boner, beating off between drafts while attempting to get the scene cut down to a TV-14 rating. I guess I wish they either dropped it all together or just cast live-action pornography women to suddenly stand-in for the cartoon women and actually film a nice one that we can ALL beat off to, and not just Adam Reed. In fact, if a caption popped up saying ADAM REED IS NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH THIS during it, that’d be pretty good. So, live-action women slapping each others pussies and a MacArthur Park interlude is how I would fix this terrible episode.

MAIL BAG

It’s a mail bag party / who could ass for more

Kinda don't appreciate the disrespect for The Army Show> I know its your nature as someone who "hates the troops" but The Army Show was more than that. Sure if it lasted passed 9/11 it would have been significantly more reverent to the military but there was no danger of that happening because American audiences cannot take that much screentime of Posehn and a Higgins. They are simply too weird looking.

I watched it didn’t I. I mean... jeez!

Hey dude you mentioned Brian Posehn awhile back and I just wanted to let you know: Metal by numbers, 1-2-3. Follow these rules and you'll see. Cookie monster vocals or yell like a wookie. Metal by numbers, cookie-cookie-cookie. Metal by numbers, 1-2-3. This is the gay part with melody. Even a baby could do it, just give it a try. Sounds like Maiden or Metallica or Every Time I Die

Wow is this real

every episode of every adult swim original program reviewed by a middle-aged dipshit. go here if you wanna start at the start: graphic footage of a live birth of a piglet, not cute, covered in blood and worms

oh I just hate it. I simply detest it. You are worms

I've been wonder why you haven't updated since you posted a skeleton GIF for awhile and then I realized I was going to the wrong blog. Why did you post that skeleton GIF though? LOL!

Shout out to Simpsons Night, my other bad blog about bad shows. I posted it there because I wanted to, jackass

The other shoe has to drop on Eric Wareheim right. Tim knows this and has been doing more and more stuff without him every year while he is out on yachts with noted troublemaker Aziz. I just don't know if I can bear it. What if he tried to grope Whoopsie Goldberg.

I truly know nothing concrete except that he has a lot of sleezy sex and is a traditional horn dog. I mean, the sheer number this guy’s putting up makes one wonder what small percentage of those “sperm encounters” could be “100% lethal”. What I’m saying is that purely on a statistical level there’s a significant sporting chance that he has killed a woman with his dick. But, as long as she consented I can’t complain

[imaginedigimon]

What will it be like if Digimon Adventure 02 had more dynamics between Davis and Yolei? What will it be like if they were a romantic canon shipping in the show?

I was about to say, “Didn’t I already do a Daiyako canon thing” and then reread a fifth time and saw the “in the show” part. But, again, canon is a different concept for everybody, so I’m not terribly sure what you want there. I shall, however, try my best.

More Daiyako Screentime

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve watched 02 (I keep wanting to rewatch it but then have the urge to rewatch 01 instead... because I’m just dumb like that) BUT from what I remember, most screentime between Davis and Yolei is spent on them disagreeing and arguing

Had they been allowed to spend some more time alone, hopefully they would be able to bond over, perhaps, feeling pressure to live up to their mentors’ (Tai and Mimi, respectively) expectations and hopefully be as cool as their elder DigiDestined were

There is a moment of silence and just staring at their hands

Then Veemon interrupts, BUT I THINK WE GET THE POINT

Hopefully this would lead to more of the fun banter we sometimes see between T.K. and Kari in canon, and perhaps... the occasional lingering look when the other isn’t looking... *mischievous chuckle*

Anime rules dictate there must be AT LEAST one moment of ending up in an awkward position, so. That definitely happened and caused them both to blush.

Anime rules also dictate that they MUST have a few times of being unable to properly talk to each other and then I guess Yolei ends up either slapping him or pushing him away and stalking away, to which Davis yells “WHAT DID I DO?” and even T.K. can’t translate for him

Davis probably sleeps more than even I do sometimes, so Yolei’s probably the one tossing and turning and wondering why she can’t stop thinking about Davis

I heard some rumor that the Japanese version of 02 showed T.K. kissing Kari in the episode (yes, that one), but I’ve never been able to confirm this, so I don’t think they’d ever show Davis and Yolei kissing if they had made them the canon ship

But boy, do I wish I could see Yolei kissing Davis’s cheek like Willis kissed hers (what a GOD, honestly, that was such a power move)

If anything, there would be a slight moment of them holding hands or something *cries in Sorato is the reason I fell in love with Tai*, BUT AT LEAST THIS WOULD BE CUTE AND NOT JUST THROWN IN THERE FOR KICKS AND GIGGLES I’m not bitter what do you mean LMAO

So anyway, yes, it would be majorly cute and also why is it so easy to sway me to the different ships in Digimon

--------

And so there we have it!