#the last is a silly comedy thing that's only like that because the narrator is a silly guy

[ancientmyrddin]

completely unreasonably, I have three wip ideas rattling around in my head.

[organchordsandlightning]

Ooo can u rec a few of ur fav horror books love love love spooky reads :)

🤩oh man here we go let me open the book. a bunch of them under the cut!

Haunted House Classic - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson Not the first haunted house story by any means, but a lot of modern haunted house stories draw from this one specifically. A wealthy old man invites a group of people to investigate his house to find concrete proof of the supernatural, only for things to go awry as they realize the house is haunted. Gets really mind-trippy towards the end. Modern - The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas Our protagonist marries a rich man to escape a life of poverty and gain some stability in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Mexican government. As she stays at the hacienda, however, it becomes very clear that something is haunting and watching her every move -- as the staff vehemently deny anything happened to the master of the house's first wife, the protagonist turns to an unorthodox priest for help.

Humor

Grady Hendrix is probably the biggest name in horror-comedy right now, and I'm really enjoying his stuff! My favorite so far of his is How to Sell A Haunted House: in the aftermath of her parents' sudden death, a young woman returns home with her burnout brother to try and figure out what to do with her parents' sizable (and possibly haunted) puppet collection. Really tugs at the heartstrings with the plot being utterly off the wall. Also enjoyed Southern Book Club Guide's to Slaying Vampires by him, about a small southern town that realizes they have a vampire in their midst!

Shlocky

I always have to recommend Riley Sager's books because they feel like reading a B-list horror film: they can be silly, they can be a little shallow, they can be full of unnecessary twists, but they're also a lot of fun and feel like they run with a lot of horror tropes. Home Before Dark is his best-known: growing up, the protagonist's parents exploited the so-called spookiness of their family home (very much a la Amityville Horror). As an adult, she returns to her childhood home and realizes it might not all have been fake.

Sci-Fi Horror

The Annihilation series by Jeff VanDerMeer is really good: a group of scientists given only by their title (the biologist, etc) explore this strange new territory filled with secrets and suspicious creatures, only to realize they may have a traitor in their midst. The first of this series is my favorite, and the dream-like narration might not be for everyone, but the imagery is stunning (and if you do read and like it, audio drama Syntax is heavily inspired by it!)

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington: My god, an asteroid is about to hit Earth (very, very slowly!). To investigate what it's about and how to stop it, a former astronaut and their team go to explore it... only to realize there's more secrets than they realize lying inside, and that it may not be an asteroid after all. Really spooky, ending made me emotional.

Fake Oral Histories (Oral Histories are some of my favorite subgenres of books in general! Basically like World War Z - not written in explicit prose format, but taking advantage of other ways of displaying the story - newspaper articles, interview transcripts, court hearings, etc!)

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks - Speaking of, the guy who wrote World War Z! A town is found massacred, seemingly by the mythic Bigfoot. Journals and various other articles are found around town that explain the weeks leading up to the final slaughter. Really tense, had a lot of fun.

A History of Fear by Luke Dumas - Grayson Hale, AKA the Devil's Advocate Killer, was sentenced for the murder of his fellow graduate student. His account of what happened is found in his jail cell following his death, where he describes how he was approached by a man who he believes to be the actual devil. The framing device for the book is an editor trying to explore more about the Hale case, and it is really fun seeing the editor's version of the story (interviewing people in the Hale statement, seeing conflicting newspaper articles, etc) and how it compares with Hale's. I do have to give a massive religious trauma/homophobia CW on this one though.

Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven - I have commitment issues about calling any singular book my favorite, but Fantasticland holds a special place in my heart. In short: a series of interviews from a bunch of Disneyland-esque theme park workers, mostly teenagers, about an incident in the park. A hurricane forced everyone to evacuate but the employees, who hid in underground bunkers. Soon they emerge to see the damage, but in the several weeks it takes for the flooding to clear, all social order breaks down and gangs start to form: the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, the Mole People, all based on different areas of the park. I just think it's really cleverly done and a lot of fun (and also, you know, a little horrifying).

[canmom]

I haven’t seen the movie, but the OP is less about the movie and more about preaching the Story Games way of doing things, and I think that discussion is worth following.

(As far as that goes - stories where roleplaying game mechanics apply diegetically are usually extremely nerdy comedies such as The Order of the Stick, because it’s inherently quite a silly concept. Even in OotS, the rules apply only when it makes for a good joke, and it will play loose with the rules at other times. As Ash says, that is less to do with the specific flaws of D&D as a game. A story written to conform to the rules of Apocalypse World would also feel quite awkward, I suspect.)

I love Apocalypse World, which was one of the most ingenious and coherent games to come out in the last decade. I like many of its spinoffs and offshoots. However, having returned to playing D&D after a long time playing exclusively story games of the PbtA-and-friends lineages, I think it’s worth discussing what D&D does offer, which those games broadly do not - to identify the design tradeoffs that were made, and try and figure out what else lies in the possibility space...

My group is only to some degree a battlemap-and-minis group. The layout of combat is frequently left to abstraction. Combat in my experience can take a long time, potentially an entire session or even multiple. However, it does not get boring. Of course, that’s in large part down to the players being on a wavelength, and a very skilled DM who knows how to inject a fight with narrative tension.

The thing that D&D’s combat offers is a sense of solving puzzles. You have certain resources such as spells, with certain effects and constraints on their use. You have to work out how to use these resources to pull off whatever it is you’re trying to do.

For example: we’re fighting a vampire in a burning building (our fault), there’s a child we want to rescue trapped inside a room. My character has used all of her spells and the only thing she has left is a teleport which triggers on self-injury, a new ability she has never used so far. So I come up with the idea of having her cut her hand to teleport inside the room, where she can quickly clear the obstacles blocking the door. I narrate it as an offering of blood to her patron, pleading for the power to save this child.

This wouldn’t be so coherent in an Apocalypse World-like. Sure, a PbtA game could result in the same behaviour - indeed we could imagine a move:

‘when you get injured, you instantly teleport somewhere nearby. roll +wizardliness. on a 7+, pick 1 of: you can choose where you land; you escape your attacker’s attention. on a 10+, both.’

with the same result - but most of the time moves work on a much broader level of abstraction. The specificity of this teleport ability, and the fact it was a desperation play on limited spells etc. means there is a level of challenge to playing the game - a system complex enough to demand I try to solve it, rather than something that’s just a narrative prompt engine. This increases the sense of identification with my character and her struggle.

Now, you could certainly argue that a lot of that isn’t really something that comes from the printed books that constitute the product ‘5e D&D’. A lot of it depends on ad-hoc rulings by the DM, which are not spelled out in the book the way the MC’s moves and principles are spelled out in Apocalypse World. You could also fit many of the DM’s decisions in this game into the PbtA moves, which constitute some of the best DMing advice ever printed.

However, by its design - diegetic resources and relatively involved mechanical interactions - D&D opens up and encourages this mode of more challenge-oriented play, ‘how will we solve this one’. This extra substance adds a certain amount of narrative weight - winning through a clever plan that’s coherent on the mechanical layer feels more satisfying than simply rolling dice well and providing a flashy description.

Of course, a good MC in Apocalypse World will succeed at the principle ‘make Apocalypse World seem real’, and it does have a certain amount of game state in the wound clocks and ‘hold 1’ and so on, but it is inherently vaguer than D&D, putting a lot more into the fiction itself. This isn’t a failing - it’s a tradeoff, which both games make differently. Abstraction and concreteness both offer advantages.

Since this experience of solving puzzles and winning is inherently a game thing (a ‘ludic’ pleasure), it’s hard to replicate in other forms of media. The kind of fiction that best approximates this aspect of D&D is the sort of battle shōnen manga and anime where characters have extremely specific, limited powers and the fights are more about coming up with inventive ways to use these powers, rather than just being the stronger guy. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a paradigmatic case!

[Some years ago, in fantasy novels there was briefly a fetish for extremely precisely defined “magic systems”, a particular specialty of that one weird mormon guy Brandon Sanderson. That’s gone out of fashion now, because magic systems just aren’t that interesting of themselves, and internal coherence is kind of orthogonal to thematic weight.]

Old-school D&D also makes a different tradeoff. While WotC era D&D tended to be as replete with mechanical options as you’d expect from the makers of Magic, the earliest editions were far more limited, despite being built around a much more challenge-oriented playstyle (the DM was originally a referee!). The time I played an OSR game with @barnacleheretic​, we were incredibly specific about where everyone is standing, what they are carrying, the specific physical actions when we are fighting. There were no moves to trigger or dice to roll for a lot of it, but the framing of the game and Soraya’s DMing style encouraged us to attempt to apply real world logic in a fairly freeform way.

D&D is also not especially good at realising the things I’m praising about D&D. Far too many spells in the book are just variants of ‘do some damage’, which is solvable and boring. Other spells might completely negate one class of challenge, if perhaps opening up other possibilities. e.g. once your players can fly, there is no point putting a large gap they have to cross - it’s just a lock and key puzzle at that point. Or they might be ‘save or lose’ spells which end the scene anticlimactically with no escalation.

(It’s on the DM to work around this. Maybe the party have to escort a group of NPCs, so they can’t afford to fly everyone over and have to choose. Maybe you stretch them thin, so the party flying over a gap means they won’t be able to use other spells later. Or you bite the bullet and escalate the power level to face them with aerial threats.)

So designing a suite of interesting powers that reward ingenuity without the sort of ‘trivialises everything’ combinatoric explosion of 3.5e casters is a hard design challenge. Working out the right balance between ‘challenge’ and ‘look at the cool shit you can do’ is another one. For my part... I always end up playing Warlocks because the other classes just don’t have as much conflict baked in (and because I always wanna be some sorta chuuni anime bitch x3)

Moreover, the drawbacks of this design philosophy discussed in the OP are real: having so many options pinned down in the book has the function of discouraging the kind of creative solutions you talked about above, like pulling the cloth over the enemy’s head. Since as you say, doing something creative means most likely that means there’s a high risk of wasting your turn. By making the game at least partly about overcoming challenges with limited resources, and making failure usually an unsatisfying loss of narrative momentum, D&D encourages players to play risk-averse, and rely on safe options rather than interesting options. (The extreme of this is the ‘I search every tile for traps’ playstyle.)

You can work around this as a DM, by pulling in some of that story game philosophy (say yes or roll the dice, make failure interesting, pbta MC moves, treating player choices as ‘flags’, leading questions etc.), and creating situations where the players are forced to take risks - time pressure etc. The book won’t help you, but the broader culture of players that defines the game-as-actually-played might get you up to speed on this. It’s also on the players to actually try to have fun - I think a summary of improv principles would be way more useful than most of the skipped-over ‘what is a roleplaying game’ intros in books...

But ultimately I guess where I’m going with this is that it would be nice to have a “best of both worlds” sort of system, with the possibility for surprising solutions and desperate situations in a crunchy game like D&D, but also the push towards narrative momentum, support for ‘fiction-first’ logic, and general clarity and focus of a game like Apocalypse World.

The doctrine of the Forge, if anyone remembered those guys, held that this is a bad idea: the solving-puzzles-and-optimising facet of a ‘gamist’ system, the creating-interesting-consequences-and-exploring-themes facet of a ‘narrativist’ system, and the genre-fidelity facet of a ‘simulationist’ system were said to be inherently opposed design goals. That’s no longer the dominant ideology and we increasingly see games that have both battlemaps and storygame principles, but I have found some of the more recent crunchy designs like Lancer, with their very rigid structure, don’t do a lot for me. Hopefully I’m not just too old to learn a new game... in any case, at some point the answer will be to try to build my own.

Uh, wow, this got long.

Why Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Didn't Use D&D Combat Rules (And Why They Were Right Not To)

The D&D movie was really fun, and since at this point most of my friends play D&D (or at the very least other TTRPGs), almost everyone I talk to on a regular basis has also seen it and liked it. The consensus is that even though there's no "meta" that the characters are controlled by players sitting around a table, or jokes about the DM, the movie feels like D&D. The jokes feel like jokes people would make while playing. The constant pivoting from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C feels familiar to anyone who has spent an hour at a table deciding what to do, only to have a roll go sideways and screw things up. Before I get too far, I should say this post contains some mild spoilers for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

What didn't feel like D&D were the fight scenes. In one scene, a Paladin quickly dispatches a group of enemies before any of the rest of the party even acts, showcasing that even though he's kind of a square, he's an incredible fighter. In another scene, the Barbarian grabs and wears a helmet in the middle of a fight, using it creatively to get the upper hand. During a fight against a gargoyle, the Bard blinds an enemy by throwing a blanket over their head, but gets pulled along with them when a loose rope wraps around his leg. These are all pretty big moments in the movie, and Rules as Written, would never happen at a D&D table, because D&D combat doesn't work like that.

Here's what I think is interesting. The vast majority of the rules of D&D revolve around combat. It's not all of the rules, but most class abilities, spells, items, and rules have a combat focus. So why does a movie that functions partially as advertisement for the game spend so little effort to replicate the bulk of the content of the base game?

In my opinion, it's because, Rules As Written (or RAW), combat in D&D is not, generally speaking, narratively satisfying. Let's look at a few reasons why.

D&D is a game where, RAW, things either happen, or they don't. If someone misses an attack, nothing happens. If someone misses a skill check, nothing happens. DMs can work with this, but in the base game, there isn't a lot of guidance for what to do when a player fails at something they're trying to do. This may seem trivial, but compare that to something like Powered By The Apocalypse, which is much more narratively focused. In those games, a full miss means the Game Master changes things up. The enemy gets the upper hand. A new danger surfaces. An NPC is put into peril. Not only does the player fail at what they're trying to do, but something else, bad for the Player Character (PC) but good for the story, happens. On a mixed success, the PC might get what they're after, but at a cost, or with a complication they weren't expecting.

This calls to mind the example of the Bard throwing a tarp over the gargoyle in the final fight of the D&D movie. That's a classic example of a mixed success. He succeeds at temporarily blinding the creature, but in the process, he gets caught up in the gargoyle's rope and is dragged along for a ride. This is a dynamic thing to happen in combat, but wouldn't happen in actual D&D. Instead, a PC would either succeed at what they're doing, and blind the creature, or fail and not blind them. You could argue that the Bard's action was the result of a Natural 1, but that also doesn't fit RAW, because the Bard does succeed as what he's trying to do, and with a Natural 1, he would have failed and been pulled along.

D&D doesn't really reward player creativity. Something like throwing a tarp over a creature wouldn't be likely to happen in a session at all, because in the actual game, it would take a full action to do that, and depending on the Difficulty Challenge (DC) the DM sets, there's a good chance of a wasted turn. Creative actions end up a huge gamble, and when you're playing a game where it could be 20+ minutes before you get to take another turn (more like an hour if you're playing with a Wizard, amirite), you're disincentivized from "wasting" your turn to do something less than optimal. You can describe what you're doing to add to the narrative, whether you succeed or fail, but that brings me to my next point.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this question from Rise Up Comus since I read it a month ago. In D&D, a player can describe all kinds of flavor to what they're doing, and there's no change to the mechanics of the game. You could read this as saying "Oh, well that means you have the freedom to do what you want!" but if you look at game design through the lens of "what kind of play does this game encourage or discourage" the takeaway I have is that description just...doesn't matter to D&D. In my experience, that can lead to a few different unsatisfactory outcomes.

Both players and DM treat combat as purely rolling, and describing only what is required. A DM announces, "The enemy wizard casts fireball, roll dexterity save, take 25 damage. Turn passes to the Rogue." Sometimes players who describe what they're doing are seen as showboating or taking up too much time. Worst case scenario, the DM penalizes descriptive players.

Some players like describing what they do, others don't. This has no mechanical effect on the game. Players who aren't descriptive might be frustrated that an already slow process is slowed down even more. Descriptive players may become frustrated because there's no mechanical benefit to what they're describing, and spend time fruitlessly arguing with the DM that focusing on a weak point of the enemy should give them advantage. I think most tables fall into this category. It's not a bad game by any means, but not everyone is there for the same reason when it comes to combat.

Rule of Cool Table! Everyone describes whatever they want, the dice rolls don't really matter! Combat is generally pretty easy because fuck the rules, if it's cool for the dragon to die based on how the fighter described the attack, even if it's only the first round of combat, hell yeah let's do it! For players who like being more strategic and enjoy the confines of the rule structure because it makes things challenging, these tables can be frustrating. (If you're familiar with Dungeons & Daddies, this is essentially how they play D&D).

Because there's no guideline in the rules, people come to the table with different expectations. Some people want combat to feel like a strategy game, where following the rules in the most optimal way (or combining rules elements in an unexpected way) is mechanically rewarding (usually measured by damage output). Some people want to describe themselves doing cool stuff! Some people don't care about their characters looking cool, but want the story to be compelling. If everyone isn't on the same page, this can lead to players ending combat feeling unfulfilled, and when combat is the bulk of a rules set, it feels strange to me that there's no guidance for DMs or players as to how to incentivize the kind of combat your table is interested in.

This leads to a situation where combat in D&D is the part of D&D that takes the longest, that the majority of spells and abilities are focused on, but it is, narratively, the least satisfying part of the game, unless the table alters the base rules significantly.

If you're not familiar with other TTRPGs, you might be thinking "Okay, but that's why the DM is allowed to do whatever they want and make up new rules! My DM gives inspiration when we describe something cool, that solves this problem!" My critique isn't necessarily of individual tables. DMs and players come up with all kinds of mechanics that aren't in the rules. My critique is that D&D is a role-playing game that essentially has no incentives, and many disincentives, for role-playing during combat. For example, RAW, characters don't really have time to communicate during their turns, as each round takes about 6 seconds. There's no time for banter or negotiation between PCs and enemies. You can see this disconnect by the way people talk about D&D. How many times have you heard people say "I love D&D but I don't like combat?" How could this rift be rectified? Let's take a look at some other TTRPGs.

In 7th Sea, if you take the time to describe how your character is doing something, you get a bonus to your dice pool. In Thirsty Sword Lesbians, when you get a mixed success on a Fight roll, you and your opponent are given narrative prompts to build tension (like flirt with or provoke your opponent). In Kids on Bikes, you can fail or succeed rolls by different number ranks, which determines how significant the successes or failures are. In Wanderhome, you get a token when you "take a moment to bask in the grandeur of the world, and describe it to the table." In Good Society, each player gets a "monologue token" which they can spend to prompt another player to deliver their Main Character's internal monologue. I just played a bad-action-movie-themed game called Action 12 Cinema, where players can boost a roll if they call out the song that would be playing during this scene of the movie, and get an even FURTHER boost if anyone at the table sings it.

Each of those game mechanics gives you an instant understanding into the mood of the game, and the kind of stories its built for you to tell. Even if you've never heard of any of those games, I bet, based on the title and the move, that you could hazard a guess as to what playing the game is like. Dungeons & Dragons certainly has rules that add to the lore of the game, and prompt you to create characters that act a certain way. But when it comes to combat, players and DMs are left to their own devices. Some may see that as a strength of the game, but I see it as a source for a lot of disappointing play experiences.

And it seems as though, at the very least, the writers of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves thought the combat rules were narratively unsatisfying enough that they eschewed using any of them.

[cateringisalie]

My list of bearable Binal Bantasy VII tags is thinning...

But seriously. Being skeptical of Tifa’s narration of past events is not without merit. By the time the Lifestream scene rolls around she has been through three comas and some grevious injuries. The Lifestream scene is as revelatory for her as it is for Cloud.

The new assertion she was in any way actually friends with Cloud is not only in conflict with the OG’s portrayal but counter to Cloud’s development, her development, the growth of their relationship as adults and why (in general) people have them stay together post game.

Its unnecessary, frustrating and further damaging Tifa’s character who is spinning off further from who she was.

That Tifa and Cloud were not actually childhood friends does not mean they do not have a relationship in FFVII. It does not mean they cannot be together. Tifa “falling in love” with Cloud at the water-tower does not for a second make their later relationship any more meaningful.

All this new ship information does is make the relationship have longer longevity than previously assumed. As if whichever relationship has lasted longer is betterer and stronger. As if this should automatically undercut any other relationship Cloud or Tifa can possibly experience.

(in fact - and darkly cynically - this feels a lot more like enforcing that Cloud/Tifa and Zack/Aerith operate in near exactly the same way. The pairs fall in love in record time (two years prior to the Nibelheim incident both times as far as I’m ware), the boys go missing and the girls never move on with their lives. I get the boys have gone missing without a shred of explanation or closure, but now for both of them people are willing to wipe out a quarter of their lives waiting. Teenagers are resilient you know? They will be inconsolable if this happened but they would bounce back a lot faster and cleaner than they would expect. The approval of the never moving on this is purely to keep the shipping uncomplicated. There can only be one pairing for Tifa, there can only be one pairing for Aerith. And if you think otherwise you’re wrong in canon. And who wants to write or read about a non-canon ship? Unless its yaoi/yuri in any case. I am so tired)

Childhood friends incidentally is not, however much some insist, a common trope of the series - unless you stretch it a fair amount and it encompasses a trivial number of the pairings. And none of the big ones (you know; Squall/Rinoa or Tidus/Yuna).

Could Tifa do with more backstory? Of course. Did Tifa’s mother deserve a name? Absolutely! But not like this. Not when Cloud helping round up cats in Remake is now tied to finding Tifa’s cat in a new authored backstory. This speaks again to the constant magpie-ing of existing imagery and moments from older parts of FFVII to feed the present. The retconning in of importance by changing the meaning of otherwise unimportant moments.

Tifa is not and never was under any obligation to like Cloud as a child. She did not bully him, but neither should she expected to involve him in anything she did. I understand the book has muddied this gloriously, but for what effect?

I mean, I know where the desperation to make Cloud and Tifa childhood friends stems from. I know why you want Cloud to have fallen in love with Tifa at like age 5 or something and for Tifa to fall in love with him at 13. And I rail against it all the time that its not necessary. Being first does not mean better.

Maybe I am old, cynical and exhausted, but I kind of like watching Cloud and Tifa grow closer in FFVII. I like watching Cloud and Aeris grow closer in FFVII. I like to experience these things where I can... experience them? I don’t like reading books which assert things in blunt statements that clarify exactly what the writer intended. I certainly don’t have the patience to wait for a later book to clarify what happened on-screen when I have drawn my own conclusions based on my preferences. Especially as this is all contributing to that continued sense that the OG is a smelly, badly designed embarrassment we would rather tiday away for the crime of being graphically inferior (never mind it was championed on its looks on release) and “goofy” (and apparently unable to run the gamut of emotions I remember from serious to comedy, to silly, to tragic, to pessimistic and quietly optimistic and moving).

I’m coming back to this point to stress it - I want to see the relationship growth. Remake gave me that for Aerith and Cloud even if the details aren’t to my taste. First meeting is awkward because hey, random stranger/Cloud is tired. Cloud gets involved and spends more time with Aerith. And the high-five thing is used as a clumsy/awkward/eh but clear metaphor for how their relationship develops over the course of their time together.

To the point that yes, it makes sense for Cloud to want to rescue her. Less sense for Elmyra and Tifa to be “Well they might not vivisect her” and then delay for two full chapters, but the whole thing flows.

And here’s where I get accused of being a fake fan: I don’t like how Cloud and Tifa’s relationship develops in Remake. Flirting. Tifa being mildly fazed by Cloud claiming its been five years. Scared when he almost kills Johnny. Maybe hurt depending on your resolution scene (hey podcast people! No Gold Saucer multiple dates because too expensive? How are there branched resolution scenes in Remake then?). But there isn’t growth. They seem to fit into each other’s lives without worry, bit of flirting, strange super-intense moments jammed into inappropriate sequences (the train roll, climbing the plate, Cloud remembering the promise unprompted, Tifa not actually engaged with Avalanche’s plans). There’s no sense anything has changed between them, the missed five years has done anything to them.

And I’m sure some would take this as proof of correctness. But... somehow Remake is better for realism despite a lot of new clumsy, but this relationship is not dinged for being implausible? No way does that five year gap not seriously impact any prior relationship to say nothing of developing from scratch.

See this was a neat thing about the OG; while Tifa seemed to have an edge over Aerith by knowing Cloud longer, he was in effect meeting them at the same point in his life and more or less starting from scratch with both. Both ships are valid, and even if Cloud is with Tifa come the end, it doesn’t mean he can’t have romantic feelings about both women.

Oh, but Nojima has changed his mind/always intended it this way. And? I can change my mind about liking what he’s written - and my patience and tolerance of Nojima has waned massively since 1997. To the point where his involvement invokes a pained groan from me.

Plus the hilarious attitude that this is from the same people who insisted “the OG will always be there, stop moaning about Remake”. Well guess what? I don’t like Remake and I don’t really want it around. The OG is better.

Yes, Tifa is under-served and sure, it could be clearer about shipping (but the apparent hostility to ambiguity and personal interpretation is deeply distressing. These things can mean something to you and don’t have to mean the same thing to everyone. Interpreting the romancs - again - not a competition).

BUT

I will take the OG version of Tifa where she believed in the cause, where she had friends (again, yes, the relationship between Tifa and the rest of Avalanche is not well depicted, but it was better than actively curtailing it), where she ran a bar THAT ACTUALLY OPENED AND SERVED CUSTOMERS, where she hated Shinra, where she didn’t know how to treat Cloud because she had only really talked to him once in her life and DESPITE THAT that they great closer and spent their last night before THE END OF THE WORLD together over the Remake.

Where Tifa is wary of Cloud for about 5 seconds, twice and then defaults to constant flirting. Where Cloud is near smothering Tifa every second they’re together and she doesn’t tell him to fuck off once. Where she’s allied with Avalanche but hates their methods (and the pacifists are in a shop around the corner and she is not with them because...?). Where she has some absurd contrived plot about medical bills and buying Seventh Heaven for Barret and Marlene.

Which would lead to a whole other rant titled “Marle is the Worst” but this has dragged on quite long enough.

But seriously; if you argue that we can’t hate Remake because OG is always there, then you have to stop applying Remake back to OG and using it as proof. Which is exactly why many people bemoaned the Remake at all. OG is one thing, Remake is another. I don’t care for the latter.

And I know if anyone does read all this it will be about the meanie Cleriths who diminish Tifa for no good reason. And yes, they are indeed acting in bad faith. But what makes you think for a second evidence will convince these people?

In particular, the argument has raged so long and always will because if people do not like a ship they will not accept it as canon (if they care about this as a factor) NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS. Literally. Look at Loki if you want the most recent example of this.

Canon is to many “what I want” and often does not tally with the general interpretation. And you know, if being “canon” or guessing right early wasn’t triumphed as such a vital thing, we might not get these really terrible and pointless arguments.

Canon is a prize but here’s the big secret: fandom - in general - does not care. FFVII is an excellent case example given Sefikura overwhelms the other ships (and I think AZGSC is close?). And that’s not canon. That’s not even in the ballpark of the Cloud/Tifa vs Cloud/Aerith arena (even give that the former is roughly twice the size of the latter, you already won, so please stop?). Canon is only important if you think its important - and you get some more official art of sequences you can gif. And maybe you get kissing/implied sex/marriage/kids, but most of all you get a smug sense of superiority. And the last is why I have no patience with this.

[popculturebuffet]

House of Mouse Review: Not So Goofy or The Ungoofy Is Upon Us!

GG

Welcome back to the RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS. And i’m hitting the ground running to continue the trek after some lessened activity over the holiday weekend. Especially with Christmas season already there.. and.. things to take care of. 

Your time will come, you blighted hell of an episode. But no today we’re talking about something actually good! It’s Not So Goofy! It’s back on in to the house of mouse as this was only one year after the previous episode. We’re on to season 2 though frankly i’d have to re-watch more of the show to spot a difference. The show really didn’t change all that much between seasons. The only difference i’ve heard of is Pete is ENTIRELY absent this season, so my long spiel on him being on the show continues to be worthless and I continue to not regret it. But since I covered most of the stuff I knew about the series and how much I liked it last time we can dive straight into the episode> And this one was a treat for me as Goofy was my faviorite watching this show back in the day and is tied with donald now as my faviorite of the classic characters.. not that it’s hard competition but still I love both. Goofy is kind, clumsy, and a loving father, he’s who we are and who we want to be all in one. As with last time, which you can find on the disney tab on my blog, i’ll be reviewing the host segment seperate from the short’s for coherency’s sake. So with that in mind...

NOT SO GOOFY: Hot Goofy on Beast Action We open with Mickey intorducing the show and everyone chanting house of mouse, house of mouse, which makes me want a version of the show that’s a disney fight club, with over the top smash bros or scott pilgrim style battles. God that’s a project I never completed.. reviewing that series... maybe some day i’ll just start from scratch and do that.. HINT. Point is instead  of Disney Fight Club, we get goofy breaking a bunch of shit, because this episode he’s extra clumsy. Though thanks tot his I am reminded the HOM’s jaintoral staff is the brooms from fantasia, which is a nice touch and we get a nice bit of Minnie sending all of them after Goofy keeps breaking stuff. So despite Mickey being the one interrupted constantly, everyone else is hte one to point it out, Minnie politley everyone else just sorta barging in. I was going to give out about them giving out when none of them were effected but.. really bad wait service really dose impact them all: Donald is co owner so if goofy injures someone he has to help pay the setlement, Minnie runs the staff and has had to have her brooms work double to clean up, Hoarace has to clean up structural damage, Daisy is guest services so she has to hear about it, Clarabelle only heard a rumor and Gus is chef so he has to remake the food. So i’m sympathetic to all of them.. except Gus. Gus your only gimmicks are your lazy, you eat things, and in animations case you only communicate by honking obnoxiously. You don’t get to insult a comedic genuis for doing his bit. 

But Goofy overhears this and is upset, saying they want him to be the oppsitie of goofy, ungoofy. I mean technically your right, but an ungoofy would be something more like this. 

“I WAIT INSIDE YOUR HOUSE UNTIL THE CRESENT DAWN THEN ONE BY ONE YOU’LL ALL BE GONE. “

See nothing like goofy. But no ungoofy in this episode’s case is just goofy acting refined and posh. And to help with that after the first cartoon, aka half the episode as i’m now realizing is standard, is...

I will never get tired of doing that. Rob Paulsen is back as Jose, and does a MUCH BETTER job this time. Though really that’s also because he has more to actually work with this time, so he can actually play the character. Him being a white guy playing a Brazilian is still unfortunate, still not his fault, and was covered more last time. We’ll get into how Jose helps goofy after the cut. 

So Jose helps goofy try to ungoofy himself.. which as established isn’t how that works but hey. So we get a funny montage of Goofy learning the ropes of being significant, getting a turkey on his head, and backslapping jose so hard he flies into the next room and goofy wonders where he is. I don’t have much to add, it’s just funny. It’s why reviewing comedy is hard. Besides being subjective sometimes that’s the most you can say. 

So it works, and Goofy helps everyone in a dignified manner.. and this is where the plot starts to slip up slightly, as for starters Goofy’s apperance is the same, he’s just closing his eyes a lot. He’s also not really doing anything wrong... the closest he gets is massaging bugs out of the beasts hair when he has an itch. 

And that’s because he didn’t ask if they have an open marraige.. I mean they probably do, Belle’s open minded and beast has needs, but still, he should’ve asked. Otherwise it’s going great.  As for where it goes wrong.. it’s because he dosen’t really DO anything bad. He isn’t an uptight jerkass about it or anything, he isn’t mean or tyranical to the customers or dosen’t transition to that he’s just.. not himself. Which isn’t good, btu the most he does in that regard is just not give the goofy laugh. Mickey and Minnie just suddenly kind of decided “Whelp this is bad let’s fix that”. And Disney would do this better, one of the Mickey Mouse shorts had Minnie, swooning over a sophisicated gentelman type on tv, give Mickey finishing lessons which turned him into a snobbish monster who broke up with her for daring to serve Bologna and not having a waiter. That WORKED.. and not just because we got Donald and Goofy kidnapping Mickey. But because we were shown there was nothing wrong with him in the first place, and there was something bad with the change. 

Here Goofy’s just.. compitent at his job. he’s not cruel to say max or clarabelle, he’s just refined. He should be himself, i’m entirely on board with that, but he’s not shown being worse off. I’m not saying he should stay posh, just give him a clear reason why his life is worse off this way is all. It’s basic storytelling.  But since Jose can’t just.. undo his training because he dosen’t know how they bring in Panchito! And we get another delightful song as Panchito tries to give a good lesson on being yourself with the help of his fellow cabs by explaning his long ass middle name... with Rob Paulsen’s voice. Yeah while Rob dosen’t play Panchito outside of song, he does end up voicing him for the number, likely because of his signature rapid fire delivery in music, but still does a GREAT job at that too. Serously I wasn’t just trying to placate people calling him a legend last time, he REALLY is fantastic, he was just given nothing to work with and here the diffrence shows as the song is really catchy, really beautifully animated and really fun and really plays to Rob’s strengths. Again casting a white man as a Latino is .. pretty sketchy, but it’s not Rob’s fault and i’m sure if Carlos was even offered the song, or even if he wansn’t, Rob apologized for it and made sure it was okay> Wether it actually was I don’t know but I can’t genuinely see Rob Paulson as the kind of guy to be racisit or steal rolls or any of that stuff. It’s likely they just knew he could sing fast and wanted to do that and dind’t think through implications. 

The song dosen’t quite work so they play a short, and when that fails Mickey closes the show sincerly thanking everyone and apologizing to Goofy. Goofy is restored.. horay? What do you think ungoofy?

“SOON THE APOTHEOSIS WILL BE APON THEE AND ALL WILL BE GOOF. ALL WILL BE GOOF. “ Oh you always say that Final Thoughts on Not So Goofy Wraparound: Not terrible, but it’s really thin plot wise. but joke and song wise it’s REALLY good, so overall i’d say i’ts just okay> Not a great or memorable plot, or an original one really, btu the use of the cabs is FAR better this time around, the song is really damn good, and there are some good jokes, so overall it works. Like the last one the wraparound is nothing specail, but it’s still deeply entertaining. Speaking of entertaining, let’s talk shorts. 

Roller Coaster Painters:  It’s one of those old “Mickey, Donald and Goofy” have a buisness deals, where all are hired to paint a rollercoaster with the person who does the most getting a free pass for life and Donald naturally being the only one who cares. A paint war insues between Donald and Mickey... mostly because Donald wants the prize real bad and Mickey wants to “give him a run for his money” instead of just helping him because he’s a dick I guess? I dunno, but it escalates to them paiting each other and, in my favorite part, Donald stealing shit from the park to create a paint arsenal for himself, forging the prize to get his revenge. Fun paint base fighting ensues, and Goofy inevitably wins and rips the thing. SImple, but really charming with really fluid and wonderful animation helping accenutate the hyjinks. Really good slaptstick stuff and a VAST improvment over the last episode’s longer short. 

Goofy’s Extreme Sports Wakeboarding:  Just a fun, silly skit of Goofy wakeboarding, my faviorite bit being him doing the tantrum, which his him doing a child’s tantrum in mid-air. What was your faviorite bit UnGoofy?

“BEHOLD MY SEED, THE SEED OF YOUR DOOM, THE SEED OF ALL WORLDS AND THE SEED OF ALL BLOOMS!” 

Awwwwww.... he has a kid now. 

How to Wash Dishes: Another How to Bit. Not as strong as the last one but still fun and throughly relatable as Goofy’s a dishwasher, which having been one twice now, I can relate to his surly disposition at the narrator guy talking it up. The Narrator then.. has goofy run up credit card debt because he’s a terrible person, hijinks ensue, and Goofy ends up.. washing dishes. Overall a fun short, and again relatable as Washing Dishes is not great. Not quite as good as the other two, but still enjoyable because well. it’s goofy after all. 

OveralL Thoughts: This was more like it. While the plot of the main segment was kind of thin and nonsensical in places... it worked because this is more of a comedy show and the wraparounds are more focused on jokes and crossover gags than a real plot, and worked SLIGHTLY better. The shorts were also really great, making this a hell of a lot more fun to watch. Highly recommend it to any cabs or house of mouse fan or if your intrested in house of mouse, this is a good one to try out.  If you liked this review, reblog it, like it, comment etc etc, and if you have an episode of house of mouse, another disney show, or just another show in general you’d like me to cover you can comission episodes by sending me a direct message on here or an ask to get my discord to hash things out there. Right now comissions are ONLY 3 bucks through monday, so get em now while their hot! And until next time there’s always another rainbow.  NEXT TIME: It’s Don Rosa again! Horary!. 

[lachlann-macnab]

BDRP 2020 QUESTIONNAIRE

Your Name: Jean

Characters: Lachlann “Launchpad” MacNab

Pick one of your characters and talk about their growth. What about their story has surprised you? What are you proud of? How have they changed from their original inception to now?

Well, Launchpad is relatively new so he’s still pretty much the same as I envisioned him from the start-

-though I’ll admit that the idea of him having an enormous crush on Seamus/Scrooge was a surprise. I think it only took a couple of little chats with Sav and familiarizing myself with Seamus’ story for him to go “yes!! that’s the one I love!! let me at him!!”.

The funny thing is that it just kind of happened but also has a degree of canonicity to it; Granted, Ducktales ‘17 (the canon that got me into the Duckverse) didn’t delve a whole lot on the relationship those two have...but Ducktales ‘87 does and it’s fucking beautiful. 

But I didn’t know that! I was just familiar with the newest canon -exploring the relationship led me to the older canon and I absolutely love it! I love the way the older version of LP is equal parts silly and capable and I try my best to express that nice balance on my interpretation.

And I wouldn’t have found that sweet spot if it hadn’t been for Sav and Seamus!

Pick another character (or the same character if you only have one) and talk a little about where you WANT them to go. What are your plans for them going into the new year?

Oooh man, this is probably going to sound rude of me, but I want someone to call Launchpad out on his shit.

He is a happy-go-lucky man, he is positive, he does think the best of everyone right from the start, he is honest with that, but there’s also a degree of performativity to the way he interacts with people: he is a people pleaser and he’s also someone who avoids problems/confrotation when possible.

That leads to him having a hard time actually voicing what he thinks when things were serious. Launchpad will default to what he thinks is the most noble/the best option even if he actually hates it. He tries his best to be a reliable dude, but that pushes him to his limits every now and then -and he hates it, but will do it anyways.

I’d love for someone to notice that and point out his marthyr complex to him, or how hypocritical he can actually be when noone is looking. 

Jun did an amazing job at that, with the whole Moon Market incident and that is part of why I love his characterization and- I could rant about how Jun and LP are actually similar, yet different, but I won’t.

Someone please bitchslap my idiot son and tell him to be honest with his feelings, maybe get him to confront his feelings of inadequacy, maybe get him to actually face his problems instead of running away from them, kthanxs.

Pick a thread or a plot that you’re proud of and talk about why you loved it.

I have three threads I absolutely love, each for different reasons:

*Cleanliness is next to... with Jun: Jun called my idiot son out on his ‘noble man’ act. Jun was not impressed with his efforts and pushed him to an actual mini-meltdown because Launchpad didn’t know what to do or say to try and make things better: Launchpad is so used to having his way around people that the moment someone was inmune to all his tricks he...lost it. Big time. And I loved it.

*Untitled with Eilonwy: Both of them clicked instantly and- oh, man, I can’t really express what I feel about it, but:

Launchpad feels an actual, honest, connection to Eilonwy in various ways: both of them are a little bit weird, both of them are learning, both of them were kind of kicked out their comfort zones, both of them love adventure, both of them are fearless (in different ways), but there’s also a curious father-daughter dynamic to them. Eilonwy lacked not only a father figure but also a general actual caring adult one and I guess that’s part of what draws her to LP, while LP is a naturally caring man who also, (betweem the two of us), loves feeling like a good-ish role model instead of the dude people tell you to avoid because he’s an idiot, he loves looking out for people, he loves being understood -and Eilonwy, surprisingly, understands him without even trying. 

They are so very sweet, they just clicked and both of them learn new things with the other: both about themselves and the world. And I love it.    

*Dressed to the nines with Seamus: a.k.a “the one in which Sav let me go absolutely fucking ham”: It began with a chat about the need of gratious fanservice involving Seamus wearing (and getting out of) a suit -but soon became something else thanks to the Halloween task.

We soon got the ball rolling and Black Annis happened in a stupidly organic way (her very modus operandi, I discovered kind of late during the creation, ties way too well with the thread’s title itself and I’ll never get over it), and the mix of terror and action just naturally pushed the rest of the plot into the catharsis Seamus needed after all the stuff he’s been through.

The thread gave us the opportunity to write some mindless comedy, some yearning, some tenderness, plenty of gore, blood, trauma, legit PTSD, then back to tenderness and silliness -while also mentioning and showing a good deal of the things that have made Seamus the man he currently is, with the pretty and the ugly of it.  

I just think it was an amazing character exploration for both Seamus and Lachlann, and I enjoyed every bit of it. I love Sav’s writing, I love Seamus’ characterization, I love how naturally it all evolved, I love how Sav can casually bring something up while plotting and the thing just clicks into place, I love how we just kind of understand where things are going or where we want them to go. Sav’s just amazing at brainstorming and general writing and I feel really, really lucky to have the chance to write with her.

I have no choice but to stan, really.

 And I could go on and on about how the thread pushed both Seamus and Lachlann towards some big character development, but I really don’t want to rant -so I’ll leave it like this.

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 strengths and talk about why you think it’s one of your strengths.

Gee, that’s a difficult one. I guess my strongest suit as of now would be Launchpad’s voice as a character -and I’m not only talking about dialogue.

I think everyone that has read any of my threads has noticed by now that the flow of the narration is an extension of how Launchpad himself feels and thinks: it’s chaotic and emotional, it can get self-conscious and snarky when he, himself, can’t, it brings some exposition while not breaking the simple, chaotic rythm of Launchpad per-se.

In terms of your own writing, identify 1-3 areas of improvement.

This is way easier for me to pinpoint, hah! I definitely need to work on the length of my posts: I know seeing paragraphs upon paragraphs upon paragraphs can make people tired or make them feel intimidated to interact. 

I also need to work on organizing Launchpad’s chaotic thoughts. The narration does get long-winded and sometimes the progression from point A to point B is way too chaotic -so much so that actually erasing it all would make no impact on the overall narration. 

Pick one of your plots, or even just a character, and come up with a list of 3-5 “mentor texts” where you can look for inspiration or research, then write a short (2-4 sentences) why you picked those texts. 

Not texts per-se, but I think a good way to get a feel of Launchpad’s general vibe is to watch “Top Duck” from Ducktales ‘87 and/or “The Duck Knight Returns” and “Double-o-duck in: You only crash twice”; Those episodes do an amazing job in expressing his insecurities and passions.

Now, leaving the source material behind, I think a book he resonates with is “Oh, the Places You'll Go!” by Dr. Seuss -it’s fun, it’s simple and it has an overall heartwarming message: It kind of captures that sense of wonder, discovery and positivity Launchpad both has and wishes to offer other people. 

Another inspiration of sorts for Launchpad is Ferry’s “Parties are for losers” series: First of all, I’ll admit I’m a sucker for the Strugatsky brothers and СТАЛКЕР, so it’s no surprise I’m in love with Ferry’s interpretation of the story; I see a little bit of LP in KT’s story, but also in Yura’s and, surprisingly, in Olga’s. 

PAFL’s setting is different, yet similar, to the Soviet sci-fi original: it deals with some disenchantment, it’s far from idealistic, it’s rough, but it’s also full of wonder and adventure: there’s big risks, but there’s also a good deal of things that make things, if not better, a little bit less miserable for the characters -and sometimes that something that keeps them going is other’s presence. PAFL is, for me, the inspiration for adventures that aren’t always glamourous, simple, or happy, taken by characters that are far from perfect, that have the odds against them, that carry a whole lot of baggage and, yet, prevail.

And, finally, a last inspiration for Launchpad, my lovable idiot son, comes from probably the place one would expect the least: God of War (2018).

I’m also a sucker for God of War, sue me.  

I know it may seem bizare, but the message of the game just clicks with LP -and before you start wondering how in hell Kratos could possibly inspire Launchpad just let me tell you: he doesn’t. Because it’s not about Kratos I’m refering to when I talk about that story! I’m actually thinking of Mimir!

I love him so much.

Mimir’s role on the game is multifacetic: he brings exposition and ocasional comedic relief, sure, but I see him as the heart of the interactions between Kratos and Atreus (Kratos’ son, for those who may not know). Kratos is emotionally repressed and keeps to himself a lot while Atreus is a bundle of joy, energy, curiosity and someone that doesn’t think ‘because I say so’ is a valid answer to things; Kratos and Atreus clash during the first part of the game even when they love one another in their very particular ways.

In comes Mimir.

Mimir(’s head) joins the party and takes upon himself to act as a bridge between emotional distant father and young naive fearless son and...things start working for the three of them! Kratos starts understanding Atreus! Atreus slowly understands his father’s worries and needs! They begin the story as (almost) complete strangers but by the end they have an actual bond thanks to Mimir’s constant pushing and interventions: Mimir is soft with Atreus but bold with Kratos, the man knows when to joke and throw some riské comments for the chaos of it, but he’s also the first to offer words of comfort and understanding. 

The man becomes part of the family even when he isn’t related to them by blood, even going so far as to give a ‘no, take me instead!’ when presented with the opportunity by a pair of enemies, even when his whole story tells us that he thinks of the idea of dealing with those people (won’t say who, because spoilers) as worse than death -the man hates the mere idea of going back but doesn’t hesitate a second to offer himself as a sacrifice for his new family.

And, damn, that’s what I base my interpretation of Launchpad on. He’s not a part of the family per-se but he constantly acts as a bridge between the youngest and more idealistic parts of it and the jaded, older, tired one; He’s happy to be comedic relief but will also sit and give anyone a pep talk when absolutely necessary -he knows his limitations but keeps trying and offering his best for those he cares about. He tries to be the heart.

I’m emotional about a disembodied head, don’t touch me. Play God of War (2018), it’s fucking amazing.

And now, a wishlist!: 

I’m...actually up for everything and anything, really. I’d love some adventures, but I also love the more mundane interactions, I love the heavier topics but also the silly moments. 

I guess, as I said before, the one thing I’d really love is for someone to push Launchpad to be honest about his feelings. Also a plot about him either considering to or actually flying again -those, however, will happen in due time and I have no rush to make ‘em.

Why do you RP?

Short explanation?: I love writing and reading.

Longer explanation?: I love writing and reading, I love complex characterizations, I love exploring new ideas and seeing how little plot bunnies become full fledged plots and/or character explorations or bring some character development, I love how that creates a domino effect with the rest of the cast. I love to see things happen: I love watching from afar as other’s characters learn lessons, create and conect-

-also, I write and read all day, everyday: that’s my job. I do script revisionism and organizational comunication. During work hours I have to check the flow of words, tones, and overall intentions; I have to do my best to make sure someone’s idea fits the box, but RPing gives me the opportunity to take the box and toss it out of the window. RPing gives me the chance to write freely, to write silly, to be imperfect and not worry about going from A to B or dealing with a checklist or tones, intentions or other’s ideas. 

It’s just freeing. And that’s why I do (and love) it.

[nyc-uws]

The First Movie Kiss

The public fascination was so intense that fans soon started demanding live reenactments.

The kiss between May Irwin and John Rice only lasted about two seconds, but it created an international sensation. It was the first time anyone had filmed a kiss, let alone shown it to the public, and moviegoers couldn’t get enough. Audiences crowded vaudeville theaters and music halls to see the two actors embrace on film “in a way that [brought] down the house every time,” according to a Thomas Edison, Inc. catalog.

The filmmakers behind The Kiss hadn’t put much thought into their cinematic display of affection. It was little more than a publicity stunt, which borrowed from a preexisting scene in Irwin and Rice’s successful musical comedy on Broadway. But this short film marked a thrilling shift in what movies could do, and what audiences could expect from the fledgling new medium.

The Kiss arrived in 1896, when movies were still a captivating new concept. Auguste and Louis Lumiere had just begun showing off their cinematograph—a hand-crank camera that included a projector—in demonstrations around Paris, three years after Thomas Edison had invited spectators to peer into the peephole of his kinetoscope and watch the flickering film inside. The technology was developing every day, and so were the stories. As creative pioneers like Georges Melies entered the scene, moviegoers could expect to see a lot more than simple figures in motion. New shorts debuted promising scenes of shaving, sneezing, and speeding trains. One thing that was conspicuously lacking, however, was romance.

Edison fixed that problem soon enough. The inventor had been making films out of the “Black Maria”—his production studio in West Orange, New Jersey, so named after the slang term for a police wagon—since 1893, but in 1896, he shot something a little different. That spring, he brought the two stars of The Widow Jones out to his studio to film the kiss from act one of their hit show. In the play and subsequent short film, May Irwin and John Rice begin their love scene with their cheeks pressed closely together, as they whisper out of the sides of their mouths. The comedy continues until the couple finally breaks the silly pose, smiles, and then shares a chaste peck on the lips. Edison’s short ran roughly 20 seconds, and would premiere later that year.

As UC Berkeley film professor Linda Williams writes, The Kiss immediately became “the most popular of the many shorts being shown” when it debuted. Audiences found it fresh and funny, and the media breathlessly fed into the hype. In a New York World article titled “Anatomy of a Kiss,” the newspaper reported, “For the first time in the history of the world it is possible to see what a kiss looks like… In the forty-two feet of kiss recorded by the kinetoscope every phase is shown with startling distinctness… The real kiss is a revelation. The idea of the kinetoscopic kiss has unlimited possibilities.”

Some accounts were a little cheekier. In the Los Angeles Herald, a writer mused, “I believe that a forty-two foot kiss is the record for sweetness long drawn out. I once knew a man who kissed a girl in three yards on the same day—but that’s only nine feet.” The public fascination was so intense that fans soon started demanding live reenactments. When Rice took the stage with his actress wife Sally Cohen that summer, fans yelled from the gallery, “Where’s the ‘Widow Jones’ kiss?” Cohen declined to participate in an imitation, but a young lady ran down the aisle offering to take her place.

The craze even spread to other countries. In 1897, The Kiss ended up in the hands of Araki Kazuichi, a “dealer in Western electrical sundries,” by film scholar Peter B. High’s account. With the use of his Vitascope, he screened the print for Japanese audiences in Osaka, where it was a blockbuster, not least of all because the kiss played in a loop. The show was nearly cut short, however, when the police showed up to catch the latest showing. The police held the power to halt any performance deemed “offensive to public morals,” but luckily for Kazuichi, his narrator Ueda Hoteikan was quick on his feet. As High writes, Hoteikan rose to introduce the film and informed the audience that “just as it was customary for old friends to greet each other with a pat on the back, Westerners typically saluted each other with a kiss.” The movie they were about to watch was thus “documentary footage” of a strange foreign culture, not a slightly titillating piece of fiction. The police remained in their seats, and the show went on.

Sweet, sensational, and slightly scandalous, The Kiss was a cinematic milestone that left audiences clamoring for more. Early filmmakers met the demand with a wave of similarly-themed shorts like The Kiss in the Tunnel and Something Good—Negro Kiss, which both premiered before the turn of the century. As the medium grew into itself, movie kisses would grow more sophisticated with crisper picture and sound, but perhaps none would remain quite as revolutionary as the playful little moment between May Irwin and John Rice.

Resources

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Of Kisses and Ellipses: The Long Adolescence of American Movies

By: Linda Williams Critical Inquiry, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 288-340 The University of Chicago Press

The Dawn of Cinema in Japan

By: Peter B. High Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 19, No. 1, Historians and Movies: The State of the Art: Part 2 (Jan., 1984), pp. 23-57 Sage Publications, Ltd.

https://daily.jstor.org/the-first-movie-kiss/

The Kiss (1896)

“An osculatory performance by May Irwin and John Rice”….

Scene from the New York stage comedy, The Widow Jones, in which Irwin and Rice starred. According to Edison film historian C. Musser, the actors staged their kiss for the camera at the request of the New York world newspaper, and the resulting film was the most popular Edison Vitascope film in 1896. The first ever kiss to be caught on film.

<iframe width="900" height="506" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Y04RsUALyA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[theorynexus]

68 will be my second post, this morning. I wonder if it will start section 8 of the Meat Epilogue.

Oh darn it. I forgot to make a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy/Meaning of Life reference on Meat 42. At least we’re back to a 43, and things might therefore be luckier. Maybe.    (I am very silly when it comes to superstitions regarding numbers, sometimes, even though I don’t really believe them.)

MY TIMING SENSES WERE TINGLING!!!

Hmm. Well, strategy meetings and investigations are important.  (Also:  I am again reminded of the dreadful likelihood that Terezi went with Dirk, which continues to be a disturbing thought.)

Hmm.  For some reason, I have the impression that he does indeed have a vague idea where he’s going, but he may not actually know where/how to find it, yet. That seems pretty likely.  Thus, Roxy would be partially correct. (On that note: Interesting that Jake didn’t actually come with. I thought for sure he’d have snuck aboard at the last moment, or something, as a stow-away.)

Eh, I’d say it goes a little beyond “prove a point,” but it’s also probably incomprehensible to you, right now.  I guess we’ll all have to be patient before we can more thoroughly sort through his insanity in that regard. As for Jane...   I don’t know. It might be more trouble than it’s worth to contact her.  The fact that Dirk has her as a seemingly important part of his plans suggest that it could essentially be springing a trap on yourself. I wonder how she’ll react to finding out that Dirk’s been mind controlling people and that that probably invalidates the actual results of her election, in the sense that it dramatically undermined the democratic process. (That is a really complicated issue that is somewhat entangled with real life politics, though, so I don’t want to get into a deep and proper discussion of what determines electoral legitimacy on a philosophical or political level here.)

It is a very interesting choice on Alt!Calliope’s call to focus on incestuous questions and Dave being awkward, rather than to follow tat important call.

Dirk is so twisted at this point that I’d almost not put it past him, but at the same time, why, Dave, do you have to assume that the motivations are sexual in nature?   (I mean, honestly, it could be the fact that Dirk was trying to force him to have sex with Karkat that gave him the impression that Dirk was [and he is, but maybe not to that extent] way too carnally-minded and motivated.)   Honestly, Dirk’s head is way too concerned with philosophical matters, and if anything he’s probably going to make a clone of himself to have sex with or something stupid like that, if he REALLY has to engage in some sort of tension-releasing copulation that isn’t masturbatory in the way that having sex with someone you’ve brainwashed and twisted into being your personal object of amusement is.   Therefore, I juuust can’t quite see Dirk having sex with Rose/her new robot body.  (Gosh, I hate that I feel compelled to address this.)

I honestly quite agree with Karkat, and now understand a little bit more about why our focus strayed where it did--- though it would have been nice to receive some sort of narration to indicate that.  And yes, it’s sad that Kanaya’s being put on hold, I guess. A little bit.  (Not really. I understand politicians in places of power can get quite busy, and it may not even be Jane’s decision to have her on hold... though if it is, I can most certainly affirm that that is quite rude.)

I mean... to be fair, Karkat, it’s rooted in biology.  Humans not having a Mother Grub means that the don’t have a natural means to reduce the genetic load that would be caused by related populations interbreeding and therefore dangerously duplicating genes.  Thus, it is not actually arbitrary, which I am sure you would know if you had spent a bit more time acting like the “geneticist” your troll handle suggests you happen to be (yes, I know it means to refer to his ectobiological frog wrangling/recombination; even so, the point stands).

I take it that Karkat’s dejection about the election has kept him a bit preoccupied and out of the loop, lately.

This is horrible (Karkat’s part, I mean).    Roxy’s new new outfit sounds like something I would be very interested in seeing fan art of.   A pink-looking slightly more effeminate Dave look sounds aesthetically striking (and I’m not even a fan of pink). But yeah, good on her for not giving up in frustration for people confusing them, I guess.   ***shrug***

And we return to this awkward and slightly funny subject. Considering it was not resolved last time, I guess that’s reasonable.   (Some day, maybe I’ll write a post analyzing Roxy’s trans-iness and/or how they/he seems to have been affected by those around he/them in his/their path to figuring it all out.  This sort of issue is always a bit difficult to properly tackle without raising some people’s hackles, so to speak, though, so I am not sure if I’ll end up doing it.  Regardless, it’ll have to be quite some time in the future, should I do so, after I’m at least done reading both sides of the epilogues. I’m sure Roxy’s interactions with John will have some important light to shed on the matter.)   It’s sortof nice that Dave and Roxy can joke about this without it becoming too uncomfortable (apparently) for either of them.

...   Is revealing this something they’ve discussed before now?  I mean, doing this in front of friends and family could be sortof... bad for things between them, if Karkat’s still trying to figure out how he feels about it and whether he wants to press on vs throttle back?  I mean, just calling each other boyfriends is not something either of them were comfortable with, and just because Dave is now doesn’t mean Karkat necessarily will be.   I dunno.  I feel conflicted on the matter, despite the fact that it is on the border of being cute.

Yeah, see, this is what I meant:  Awwwwkwaaard.

Yeah, it definitely did serve as a good distraction, at the very least. ~~~ Jane either not knowing or not being willing to tell (we’ll have to wait for a perspective shift to her to be certain) is no surprise.

Gah. FINALLY.  If Roxy weren’t such a Void-y ball of fun, everyone would have known this for some time, by now.  (Also: This is another reason why I am quite certain that Dirk was responsible for at least the way that John died. He didn’t want him to be a threat to him.  [I wonder, though: will Candy John potentially pose that problem, in the future, given the fact that he will likely be able to traverse the two different timelines, should he become aware of them?   Heck, this could be the reason why one had to die in the first place. Or one reason.])

This is what you get when you    A S S   U   M E. Also, Terezi would really be useful due to her Seer powers in particular.

Well. That is a useful compromise. Good on you for finally figuring something out to bridge the gap between your morals and Dirk’s amorality.  (Also, that presents interesting potential conflict in the future, insofar as there might be a point where Calliope has to decide whether to allow them to take Jade with or not.)

Has little Timmy fallen down a well?   O: <

This is funny because it’s like that one time where Jade was sleeping and Dave couldn’t get in touch with her. That time his weird fursona came up. Tightest butt in the jungle, or some stupid nonsense like that.

Dave is smarter than Dirk would give him credit for, calling him the dumbest of the Stralondes, by the way.

Not only do they need one of his ships, but it is quite reasonable to assume that they might be able to entice him to follow with them to where Dirk is going.  This is a potentially dangerous gambit, like bringing Gamzee along anywhere, but I think it could pay off in the end.  I think that, as I suggested earlier, Jake’s probably going to be the one to end up killing Dirk, in spite of all the underestimation that and horrific invective that had been directed his way.   In all honesty, this would really seem to be the direction that Jake’s been being pushed in all along, considering all the failed opportunities to interject him into a place of importance in the story.  

Considering his level of devotion and love for Dirk, now, he very strongly reminds me of that one old clown story that AH wrote... the one where the clown was never able to pull himself away from the service of his abusive, evil master. I bring that up specifically to suggest that Jake WILL succeed, however.  I believe that, counter to the example that I just cited, and contrary to all of the deterministic forces that Homestuck has seen in play, the power of Hope will be what is necessary to do the impossible.  A Page has a long, pain-filled story arc, but when it finally blossoms into the great behemoth that its seed of potential suggested it was from the very beginning, amazing things can happen. A Page of Hope is perhaps one of the most potent Classpect-endowed figures that Paradox Space could conjure up.  I have come now to see that this turn on Dirk’s part was probably planned from the beginning, as was the fact that Dirk’s abandonment of him was likely meant to be the catalyst for the eventual realization of Jake’s full potential. Obviously, this will not likely happen in the near future, much to our short-term misfortune. Dirk, if you ever see this, know your folly:  Jake English is just the force you would need to break free of the shackles of the reality you live in---   if only you believed in the him that believes in you.   Instead, your Rage will consume you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love this dramatic comedy.

Honestly... this is great. From a writing stand-point, this is excellent. The decision to have Dirk drag Terezi along brings more significant stakes to things and drama for the future, especially with the fact that we DO know that he can be brought back to life, now, despite Dirk’s statement to the contrary. Despite all of my pathos earlier, the way this story (the story of Homestuck) is ending is actually getting me excited and washing away the scars that came from the darkest hour of the path previous.     I really like the mechanic of Dirk having reality warping powers and Alt!Calliope being able to counter them, but only in close proximity. With the speed of his ship being a factor, especially, this sets up for some really interesting potential action in the further development of the story, as well.                    That Hussie was able to so masterfully navigate these emotional waters and string me along to this point was brilliant too.    In sum:  WOW, GUYS, I’M PUMPED!!! ... But... while this would actually serve as an excellent, fully complete and enticing epilogue in and of itself, the fact remains... there is yet more. Not only in the Postscript, but in Candy.      This throws many spanners into the works, and I honestly don’t know how to feel about all that!     If this weren’t Andrew Hussie we were talking about, I would be incredibly afraid that what is to come would throw everything off and make the eventual follow-up in Homestuck^2 (which I know he’s at least directing, though he’s not quite as involved in the story as he was in Homestuck, apparently?!) potentially quite messy and of a much lesser quality than I might expect. Given this IS Andrew Hussie we are talking about, however, I actually am quite confident that eventually, it will work out splendidly, and raise his literary accomplishments to even greater heights. Though... I am filled with a bit of trepidation. That “eventually” will be so far in the future. ***laughs awkwardly*** ... Buuuuutttt there’s still more left, even on this page, so I had better get to that. ...

It is very interesting that she’s been enveloped in that blanket of space so thickly and constantly that she’s come to find it comforting. That said:  How is it possible for her to withdraw and still let narration continue, supposedly without source or accountability, as she states?   Is this meant to suggest that the passive forces of Paradox Space will naturally fill in the gap if there is no one manning the ship, so to speak?   This feels a bit unlikely, considering the lack of content for years of the characters’ lives, and Dirk’s suggestion that “God had abandoned them,” or however the heck he put it. This is all veerrry curious, indeed.  (I do like her commentary on narration. A lot.) ~~~ Woooooo!!!~    It’s really nice to finish this at--   Dangit, time, why do you have to keep ticking into the future?!       Well, even though it’s not 3:14, anymore, it’s still very nice to finish the Meat Epilogue on 02/02/2020.   :’)

[fly-pow-bye]

ThunderCats Roar! - “Exodus (Parts 1 & 2)”

Co-Executive Producer: Victor Courtright

Supervising Producer: Nate Cash

Producer: Marly Halpern-Graser

Story by: Joan Ford

Teleplay by: Victor Courtright

Directed by: George Kaprielian

Well, here it is, whether one likes it or not.

ThunderCats Roar seems to have all the hallmarks of a bad reboot: a silly art style that's just aping OK KO, a completely different and comedic tone for a show that tried to do something serious the last time, and the teaser for this show, which is one of the most disliked videos on YouTube, is just the reboot's showrunner talking about how cool it is.

This show turned out to be a really like it or hate it affair from what I can tell. The people that hate it are really vocal about it, too. What camp do I go in? Let's find out.

The new series begins with some narration. narrator talks about what a lovely planet Thundara is. Even people who aren't familiar with the original is thinking "it's going to explode, it's going to explode, it's going to explode," and sure enough, it does. The narrator doesn't seem to be phased by this at all, saying "everything explodes someday!" That seems insensitive.

We then zoom to the ThunderCats, and I am glad to say that they are wearing the same costumes we know they wear. Thank you.

We get to see all of the characters introduced via trading cards, complete with those animated holographic pictures. Maybe this was meant to be a joke on how merchandised the original was, but it seems more like a way to introduce all of the characters in a way that's cheap to animate. It's not that the rest of the episode fails to do this.

If one freeze frames, they can see they gave all the ThunderCats various RPG stats, and a specific skill. For example, Cheetara has a 20 in dexterity and has skills with "fancy footwork, sick burns, and evasion", and Snarf has 20 in everything and has skills in "all". Wait, what?

The narrator, who described all the ThunderCards via showing his trading card collection, reveals himself to be Jaga. I guess that explains the "everything explodes someday" quip; the original Jaga woke up the kid to see the fireworks show. He's already far more jokey than the original, something that will be common with everyone in this show.

We see one major change this show did to the backstory: Jaga was on the planet when it exploded. I would argue that him not dying while he was getting the ThunderCats to Third Earth does take quite a bit of his emotional weight, and we can't have emotional weight in this silly show. Also taking the weight is this line, describing how he could possibly be looming over the Earth and be so blue.

Jaga: So now I'm a ghost! Hee hee hee! (flies away in a ridiculous fashion)

I feel I should be somewhat insulted by this. I mean, the original Jaga protected the original ThunderCats until his very end. On the other hand, that is Larry Kenney, Lion-O's voice in the original, voicing him. That's cool.

But enough about that, here's the Mutants from Plun-Darr! We can tell these guys are going to be total maroons just by the background of this scene. At least they had the intellect to attach an "e" Post-It note after that poorly made sign. We mostly get to see Slithe, and he's just as much of an 80's villain as he was in the original.

I've seen this show be compared to those abridged series that used to be big in the 2010s. They must not be lying, because all of this happens in the first minute. To do this, they heavily simplify the backstory. No other ships getting blasted, no Jaga dying on screen, no necessary clothing scenes, and no suspension capsules.

One blink, and the ThunderCats already on Third Earth, and the ThunderCats each have their own personalities show in how they react to being stuck on a planet. Panthro's the first to come out, talking about how awesome it is that he can tinker with the scraps on the blasted ship. WilyKit and WilyKat act like this is some sort of amusement park ride, asking if they can do that crash again. Cheetara is the first person to not be happy about this predicament, but only because there's nobody around to see how cool she is. Tygra gets smashed right after saying that they're all the coolest ThunderCat, and he says, "well, at least we're still alive."

Yes, aside from Cheetara, they all seem oddly happy to land in what seems to be a desert. We get maybe three seconds where they get to be sad that the planet they used to live on just exploded, but we don't have time for that. This is a comedy, we can't have "not comedy"!

Oh, and Snarf is there, too! Let's listen to his first line in the show!

Snarf: (animal sounds)

And here's another one!

Snarf: (animal sounds)

Roar Snarf wins. Then again, I only watched one episode of ThunderCats so far, but I can imagine this is an improvement. Maybe PPG 2016 has given me a hatred of animals that talk just because, or maybe I just haven't seen the strength of the original Snarf. Maybe it is a little bit of Column A, and a little bit of Column B.

Oh yeah, there was one other ThunderCat, and the most important one of them all.

Much like the original, Lion-O is the rightful heir of the ThunderCats, and wielder of the Sword of Omens. Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to use the sword, which was a plot point in the original. In the original, it was pod-induced amnesia, in this show, it's because this is a silly show, and our protagonist is the biggest maroon of them all. The very first thing he does is use the Sword of Omens to help him get out of the ship, because he couldn't find a way out of it. No, not with the "sight beyond sight" feature on his sword, which isn't even mentioned in this episode, but by cutting a hole in the ship.

Speaking of maroons, Slithe manages to catch up to the ThunderCats, and plans to attack them. Since Jaga was stuck on the home planet, he couldn't be bothered to tell him how to use the sword, but maybe we'll get to see him use it! I mean, how hard is it to use a sword?

Well, he does, but not in the way anyone would want him to. Admittedly, this is probably the best way to use a sword against a flying ship anyway. It only takes out one of the blasters, so Panthro ends up using the remaining exhaust on the ship to blow them away.

At least Lion-O is happy about it, and even Panthro seems to give him praise.

Tygra: He just threw a sword at a spaceship!

Panthro: And did it not totally work?

Cheetara and Tygra: Good point.

I'm pretty sure Panthro's idea to light them with rocket exhaust did the job a lot more, but you do you, Panthro. Lion-O goes out to adventure, because he wants to be the cool leader and this episode really needs some sort of moral for him to learn. Not because he's a little kid that was aged by a suspension capsule, everyone's just like that in this show.

The rest of the ThunderCats go back to working on scraps, when Panthro lifts up a steel bar to reveal a Berbil.

Who are the Berbils? Builders, definitely. Much like the ThunderCats, they still seem to be happy about it. That seems to be the theme of this episode: everyone just seemingly takes all of these problems with a smile, not taking any time to mope about, well, anything. At least they have a good reason for it: building and repairing is exactly what they were built for, as shown by having two scenes of them running in a burning town and seeing the town fully repaired in the span of a minute.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be bright in other ways, as they then talk to them about this guy named Mumm-Ra, a person so evil that even speaking his name will cause that speaker to get struck by lightning. We get a very much extended scene that lasts longer than the backstory of them getting electrocuted because they can't stop saying his name. They really use this running gag a lot in this scene and throughout this episode; It's almost as if there's some huge payoff in the end. Honestly, I'm not used to those.

Lion-O and Snarf do their best to find where those Mutants flew off to in the series' first montage. He finds a frog, a giant turtle, and unfortunately for him, none of them can talk. He then finds this lizard guy and asks where the Mutants are, only to find out that lizard guy was one of the mutants he was looking for, and their ship is fully repaired outside of losing that one blaster.

After a comedic chase scene that has almost no backgrounds at all, he gets chased to a wall, and Lion-O can't seem to leader his way out of this situation. All Lion-O has is this sword he has no idea how to use, and some dragon cat thing that can't even talk this time...

...who is also a robot with a laser beam? Yup, one of the biggest twists of the series is that they changed Snarf from a Snarf that complains about everything to a robotic Snarf with various weapons at his disposal that can only make cutesy animal sounds. Maybe someday he will ta...maybe I shouldn't tempt fate.

Don't worry, he still has batteries, which appear to be his one weakness and a good excuse to not have him defeat everything so easily. Fairy godparents have Da Rules, Robo-Snarf has what appears to be Lion-O's reluctance to charge him. However, this scene seems to imply that he didn't even know he was a robot until now. We didn't, but why wouldn't he know? It's not like they have the amnesia excuse here.

...Mumm-Ra The Ever Living, who really, really doesn't like loiterers on his front lawn. Don't worry, he will look slightly better in future scenes. This show definitely has a loose style that seems to work against it. Don't worry, the Mutants outright shout "we're still alive!" That reminds me of that Futurama episode where they parodied 80's cartoons, and President Nixon had to sanitize it for the young viewers. Maybe I should think about that a little more.

Commercial Break!

Oh good, shouting text humor, or murmuring text humor as it is here. It only appears here. It feels like a placeholder, and that might actually be the case.

He tries to find his giant blue savior who likes to laugh while thunder surrounds him, yes, they do that joke, and he goes into that savior's awesome pyramid lair. Or, as he puts it, the AWESOOOOOME pyramid lair. They sure seem to love that word; it’s like this show’s fistbump gag.

Unfortunately for Lion-O, his savior turns out to be a really rotten person. Almost literally, as right before Lion-O barged in, he was busy making a pollution monster. He tries to show off his Sword of Omens, complete with the Eye of Thundera in its only time it is pointed out in the episode, and Mumm-Ra counters by showing off his Doom Staff. One of its many abilities is its ability to shock people whenever they say his name correctly, which is that running gag from before. Again, the payoff is coming, I'm sure of it.

Lion-O also totally lets him know about his own awesome home base that would make a great shot for a credits sequence. Okay, they didn't really break the fourth wall that badly in this show.

Panthro: Well, this construction is going about as well as it possibly could.

(Mumm-Ra makes the home base's head explode)

Wah, wah, waaah. But don't worry, the Berbils will be on that. Lion-O, upset over his poor, poor base, decides that he's going to give him a royal spanking.

Needless to say, we never find out what he meant by that, as he gets tied up by a chain that can transform into a much easier to animate ribbon.

Mumm-Ra ends up cannonballing into his teleporting pool right to the home base, and the rest of the ThunderCats try to stop him. Unfortunately, they are at the mercy of his feet. No, seriously.

Mumm-Ra: Oh, how eager you are to get a taste of DE-FEET!

Never thought we'd already get to see Mumm-Ra's feet in about as much detail as this show's art style allows. I do not know to know if anyone wanted that. I sure didn’t.

Cheetara: Ahh, that pun!

See, pointing out the joke makes it funny. I would say this joke was really easy to miss; it took me about three times to figure out what she was even saying.

We get our first fight scene that lasts more than a few seconds. It's as wacky as the art style allows. It actually does the same job those trading cards were trying to do, except we actually get to see them in action. The show's wacky art style actually works well with the style of animation they use here. No slideshow beatdowns, everything is very much animated. I will say that it looks a little better in motion than it does in stills, though if one does not like this art style, I can't imagine the animation would convert them.

Lion-O shows up, hoping he's not too late, only to find out that yes, he's too late. At their lowest moment already, can anything stop Mumm-Ra? I won't give it away here, as I've already revealed one of the biggest twists of the series so far, so I'll just say that we do get a payoff to that one running gag. While it was expected, I was kind of hoping that it would happen.

We're not done with the fighting, and honestly, it's better the second time. The running gag even shows up here in a way that I honestly didn't expect. Also unexpected: the sword transformation scene, one of the most iconic parts of the original, is parodied here in a way that shows that Lion-O still doesn't really know how to use that blasted sword. However, they still manage to win anyway, with Mumm-Ra devolving into his Rookie form and running away to try to gain his powers back.

In the end, we get the "sorry I was such a jerk" scene from Lion-O, and he gets to say the catchphrase. That is, "ThunderCats, hoooo!" I did wonder why they decided to call this show "ThunderCats Roar" when that isn't the catchphrase, but maybe Cartoon Network didn't need a show with the word "ho" in the title, and calling it "ThunderCats Hooo!" would make people think it was "ThunderCats Who?" That title probably wouldn't help with a problem I haven't even mentioned yet: how is this going to appeal to kids that aren't familiar with the original? I guess some silly jokes can distract from that.

How does it stack up?

All in all, this is not a bad episode to start this brand new series. It introduces all of the characters, it has some pretty decent humor, and, most importantly, it knows what its doing. That is something I cannot say for a certain other reboot involving superheroes. The show really is pretty occupied with how silly it is, and it does seem to fast forward through parts that are necessary.

So yeah, I don't hate it, but I didn't exactly love it, either. It's just a silly 80's cartoon parody. I don't really know what to expect out of this show, so I'll put this episode right in the middle and see what happens. Who knows, maybe this episode will be a highlight! I hope not.

Next, cookies.

← n/a 🐈 The Legend of Boggy Ben →

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of thought : DIE #2

Hey everyone ! So many works I need to be SOTing right now. I decided to prioritize this, because well, new comic, needs all the attention. Plus, everytime an issue gets sold out, we get a new cover from Stephanie Hans. I live for them now. Anyway, spoilers of course, enjoy my thoughts and opinion under the cut.

HINDSIGHT IS D20/D20

 When I was a kid, I had this French comic in which they had a page that asked : “what happens after a movie ends ?” and there were a series of vignettes that answered that question in a proper humorous fashion. For example, one of these vignettes showed the last scene of a movie where a car of the heroic lovers drove in the middle of the road into the sunset onto their bright future. The next panel showed the two lovers in court, and the judge saying : “bright future or not, you crossed the lane line and I’m revoking your licence”.

 When I was seven, as most things do when you’re seven, it blew my mind. Nevertheless, this silly comic highlighted the universal, unbreakable truth of all stories : when it’s over, it’s over. There’s no more. And even today, as fanfiction has become its own genre, as no comedy is complete without a fourth wall break, when you close a book, when you turn off the TV, nothing can happen anymore. There is what the story implies will or might happen next, but sooner or later, you reach the point where you exhaust whatever the story contains of foreseeing. Each story writes its own last will ; but whatever happens after that, the story is dead : it still exist, but it won’t move forward, it won’t go back, it won’t do anything at all because it has stopped being able to do anything with itself. The only way for more to happen is for the author to write more. But that inevitably means writing a different story.

And that’s why, as sad as I could have been to leave a story I loved behind, for me there was always a sort of relief that came with reaching the end of a story : the relief that came from complete stillness. Because there’s no more, there’s no more pain, there’s no more stress, there’s no more excitement even, there’s no more reason to be alarmed at all. No reason be involved at all. Only when we reach the end of a story, can we be free from it. Outside of the contraption of the story, the characters’ actions don’t exist. THEY don’t exist. And you definitely know where I’m going with this.

 The genius of DIE is not to take us to an elaborate gritty deconstructive fantasy RPG world. The genius of DIE is to take us back to it. Back to the story that’s already ended. Yes, I know I said in my last SOT that I didn’t think the characters were over their first visit in DIE by any means. The story of Ash and the gang is not over (by the way, I’m just going to call him Ash and use he/him pronouns until we get more on this issue, if needed I’ll edit accordingly). But functionally, narratively, the story of DIE the world, DIE the tabletop campaign, is over. The heroes arrived, the heroes did some shit, the heroes left. The story welcomed them and then the story ended. More than that, the story ended and nothing came to replace it. Sol’s speech is not the only thing that happens when thoughts curl up. The entire DIE world the gang is now in is nothing but a giant curl up. A new story did not emerge from the same setup. Sol just dug up the corpse of the old one and smeared make-up all over it.

The return of the heroes in a fantasy world they once knew is not a ground-breaking idea in fantasy by any means – I mean, Narnia did it. But in the usual take on this plot, the trigger element to the world the heroes return to is their leaving the world, not their being there in the first place – or in Sol’s case, staying. The second Narnia book showed us a world in shambles because the heroes saved it then left it, not because the heroes saved themselves and one of them was left behind. And maybe what I’m about to say will be disproved by future issues, but I’m not under the impression that the characters were particularly anything to the world of DIE, least of all heroes. They seem to mostly have been there. Some parts they barely set foot in, and the way they talk about the supposed “big bad” of the first game, the main reason they came after him seems to have been that they prevented them from going home. As a setup, the world of DIE seems to have been a bit underexploited. But come to think of it, was it really that great a setup ? Ash’s narration goes back and forth on the issue. Sol’s imagined world is either described as brilliant or the exact kind of pretentious overwritten stuff you’d expect from that particular breed of teenager (Elves but written by William Gibson is complicated… But is it, Ash ? Is it really ?)

 But all of that maybe-not-that-great world, all that hammered fantasy stuff, are rendered new and interesting in context. I’m not the first one to point out that this setting allows characters to offer perpetual commentary on their younger selves. My shots at teenage pretentiousness are fucking text. If nothing else, this is a genius move to deflect any and all criticism of the comic’s take on the RPG genre : if it’s overdone, if it’s overwritten, you’re not smart for pointing that out, that characters are way ahead of you. But more interestingly, this moves every single “big idea” of the “transported in a fantasy world” plot further up the road. The main example is the reality vs fantasy ethical debate. Think how many pages in how many books were dedicated to exploring the ethical ramifications of being in a fantasy world without knowing if what you did was “real” or not. Do you have to be ethical when you play a game ? Would Kant play Grand Theft Auto ? This is a massive debate. In DIE, it’s addressed in issue #2 on one page. But it would be a mistake to think DIE is selling this question short, or “getting it out of the way” : like often with Gillen, the form is the point. The underhandedness of this debate among the characters is what makes it interesting. Because it’s a debate they had before. This is something they decided on. They set rules. They built an ethics system. They also saw the limits of it. Because no matter how lawful good they decided to play that thing, there’s always one player to just do what they want, or there’s always not even that same player doing some stupid wordbinding spell because that’s just a throwaway romance secondary plot, and who hasn’t fucked with one of those before. All the time it would have taken the comic to establish the characters coming to terms with this debate, disagreeing, coming to a solution, is time that can be used to see this solution unfold in glorious consequences. And you know what ? I’m willing to bet that the characters weren’t even that bad the first time around. But they were there, and that’s really all consequences need. Another thing to think about ? Maybe the reason the characters came to having this debate was that at some point, they didn’t think they would ever go home. Maybe the world they moulded the first time around, was the world they thought they would spend their lives in. You’re welcome.

 So does that mean DIE is going to leapfrog every single of these important questions to simply present us with the consequences of the characters’ choices ? Probably not. But every single decision and facet of this new story is going to come with its own asterisk : this isn’t the first time around. Everything is loaded. Nothing is ever innocent. This is the Monty Hall problem halfway through : one door has been opened, will you change your choice ? And for us, who didn’t get to see which doors our heroes picked in the first place, that’s going to be a hell of a ride.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUE

 The idea of this section was for me to get a bit more personal about my thoughts, without feeling like I needed to make a big point. So let’s get personal : I do not like Ash. By which I don’t mean I think he’s badly written, I mean I don’t like him as a person. As in, we would not be friends. I already had that feeling when issue #1 came out, but I tried to be generous because we’d seen so little of everyone, but now we’re two issues in, let me confirm : I do not like Ash. I do not like his fake self-flagellation hiding some very real condescension, I do not like his teenage angst with a twenty years old aging flavour, I do not like that he’s introspective in the least interesting way possible, and for someone who boasts that he learned to “tell stories”, good god is he an annoying narrator. Yes part of it is intentional. And no, I do not particularly like any of the other characters either. And you have to take into account protagonist bias, meaning that the character you spend the more time with is the one you have the biggest chance to like, but also the biggest chance to hate instead of simply dislike. But hey, I never claimed to be the perfect reader. And for now, Ash is annoying the shit out of me. To me, he feels as if you’d taken Laura from Wicdiv, kept her just as laborious and self-hating, but removed all the parts that actually made her likeable. Which leads me to ask the question : can I be honest about the quality of an issue if I’m that bothered by who’s telling it ? The answer, as always, is that I can be honest with myself : I’m probably not as high on this issue as many people are. And the principal reason for that is definitely the main character and narration. Don’t get me wrong, this issue is a thrill : the scene with Sol is chilling – I think he might be my favourite character, actually – the combat scene is narratively masterful, the ending is a bit of cheap shot (I’m fairly certain I’ve seen this eyes plotpoint in several other stories) but god damn if it isn’t effective. Oh, and let’s take a moment to praise the art, Lord knows Stephanie Hans needs me, whose stick figures make the Monkey Christ lady look like Michelangelo, to praise her. But jokes aside, I want to give credit to how Hans resisted the appeal of painting the classic huge detailed fantasy world first chance she got. Instead, her vision of DIE is one of a weirdly deserted, bright yet gloom world, which fits the mood perfectly. To borrow from the issue, her use of colour looks like fantasy feels, without feeling the need to overbear on the raw emotions of this issue with more detailed pencils (Ash’s digression about Maria is also probably incidentally the most I’ve ever liked his narration). Best panels for me are of course the ones where you can see the sides of the DIE. Probably because it manages to feel so small and so huge at the same time. I’m a sucker for intimate fantasy.

So, this issue, minus Ash, is nothing I don’t love. But on the other hand, this issue doesn’t really exist without Ash. Try as I may, I cannot deny that part of the appeal of the issue comes from his narration and his personality. Yeah, he’s a whiny controlling drama queen, but I put up with an entire issue of Woden monologuing and this was one of the best things I’ve ever read, so you know what, I can put up with a little bullshit. I don’t think Ash has to be a good person, or even someone I like, for DIE to be good. I guess at this point my problem with him is that I don’t find him interestingly unlikeable, as was the case with Woden. Maybe it’s because unlike Woden, there are several people in my life who remind me a lot of Ash, and since they’re not necessarily assholes, they’re not people I have an excuse to outright avoid and thus with whom I’m much more familiar with. So who knows, maybe I’ll make peace with Ash. Comic’s still young. Meanwhile, my opinion on issue #2 is pretty much the same as for issue #1 : this is remarkable work, brilliant in some aspects, almost irritating in how proficient it is at doing its own thing, and maybe just a touch overconfident in its ability to walk the line between profound and navel-gazing. But when DIE keeps it simple, when it just wants to touch you instead of punching you in the gut, then it’s fucking unstoppable. If you’re not on the DIE train yet – well first, I admire and fear the way you powered through this post, but also, jump in, like now. You won’t regret it.

[mercerislandbooks]

Pride Month Picks

If you don’t already know, June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, which means it’s time to celebrate and support our community. Businesses across the Puget Sound area are flying rainbow flags, and Island Books is not missing out! To mark the month, we are going to giveaway two awesome rainbow Lokai bracelets (read to the bottom for more details).

It is also an excuse to call attention to queer books, an overarching category for any book that features a LGBTQ+ main character, focuses on queer issues, or is written by a queer author. This is one of my favorite genres because literature about queer people normalizes their existence, in the same way it does with racial or religious minorities.

I have to admit that I told Lillian, our children’s buyer, last summer that I had one rule when I read queer books: No one can die.

This may sound like a silly requirement, but until recently, I felt like all of the books about LGBTQ+ characters were depressing. While trying to portray real world examples of these characters’ situations, the books I saw also squashed hope for a better future. The only queer book I knew about in high school was Blue is the Warmest Color, and it is not the happiest. It seems that queerness in literature equaled heartbreak, and that wasn’t the world I wanted to exist in. (I probably should have gone to a bookstore and asked a salesperson, but I was introverted fifteen year old who wasn’t quite confident enough in her own identity.)

I pulled as many books as I could think of from the teen section that featured queer characters!

I have been so excited over the past year or so to rediscover queer literature, especially for young adults. One of my favorite books of the past year has been Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan, an adorable book about two best friends mourning the closure of the town theme park, and consequently their childhood. Through their hijinks to save the park, the girls realize that the most important thing they have is their relationship and that they’ve fallen in love. And it’s so sweet! Over the past almost-decade since my rejection of queer books, authors have made a point to write books that show positive role models for queer relationships, highlighting complexity, intersectionality, and humor in fantastic ways.

Consequently, there are now stories about queer characters in almost every genre now, from picture books to literary adult fiction. As there are too many books to showcase in this blog post alone, I’ll start with some of favorite summer reads, which all happen to feature gay relationships.

Camille Perri’s When Katie Met Cassidy is a spin on romantic comedy. Katie is a Kentucky born blond-haired blue-eyed sweetheart working at a law firm in New York City. Raised with traditional family values, she is put into a tailspin when she can’t stop thinking about Cassidy, an androgynously masculine woman working for an opposing firm. On the other side, Cassidy is dealing with her own personal crisis, passing thirty and feeling like she is aging out of her party lifestyle. To top off her woes, Cassidy can’t stop thinking about Katie, the straight girl who is not so straight, either. I loved this hilarious romance because gracefully deals with identity politics and the complications of being true to one’s instincts. Camille Perri focuses on queer communities and the power of female relationships.

Two books I loved featuring kitten paws.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is one of my must-reads this summer. It has received a huge amount of hype; I read the book in the day and the hype is accurate. The book poses the question, What if the hypothetical First Son of America and the hypothetical Prince of Wales hated each other? What if they had to spend PR time together for political peace and then fell in love? What if?? While the plot may sound silly, I adore the book because Casey McQuiston does a fantastic job of balancing the levity of first love with real-world consequences of such a political “scandal.” As a bonus, I enjoyed how vivid and realistic the characters are.

On the literary side, there are so many beautifully written books about queer experiences that I cannot even begin to cover them all. I will talk about two, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong and Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, translated by Molly Ringwald. All books about queer people deal with ideas of self-identity, especially when the characters are discovering their sexualities. These two books both follow men in their experiences with first love and heartbreak. In On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the main character Little Dog writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his childhood and experiences growing up the child of a Vietnamese immigrant. The poetry of Ocean Vuong’s previous work bleeds seamlessly into this sometimes stream-of-consciousness narrative. One of my favorite things about the novel is how Little Dog’s sexual identity is not the main focus of his story but simply an aspect. The intersectionalism of Vuong’s work is definitely one of its many strengths. I definitely broke my rule about death with this one, but the sadness is integral to the story line.

Lie With Me is heartbreaking. There is no way for me to get around it, but the simplicity and restrained manner of the French translation is addicting. The book starts with the narrator seeing a teenager in a hotel lobby that looks identical to his first love. This vision sends him into a spiral of memories, jumping back and forth in time and space. Because of its a reminiscence, the AIDS epidemic tints his youth in grief. The reader also learns that the title has a double-meaning, referring to both the intimacy of the teenagers and the social perjury they have to commit. I loved the uncomplicated language and the fundamental and overwhelming emotions that fill the story. Clearly, there is a reason it sold over 120,000 copies in France.

Though there are many more queer books that I could have reviewed, these are some of my favorites of the year so far. Each of them delved deeper into the emotional milieu of queer identification than expected or spoke to me in a personal way.

We have two bracelets up for grabs! Photo courtesy of Lokai.com

Please come into the store if you would like to get more recommendations or just simply chat! We would all be delighted to help you. If you would like to win one of these super fun Lokai bracelets, post a picture on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram of your favorite queer read and tag us! We will be taking submissions until the 20th of June.

Happy Pride!

— Kelleen

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 78: Log Date 7 15 2

"She still has a lot to learn about our planet.”

Cooldown episodes tend to be underrated, as they’re right next to big bombastic moments that merit such cooldowns. House Guest is bad for its own reasons, but episodes like Full Disclosure and Kindergarten Kid do an excellent job of just taking a moment to breathe and process. The Cluster Arc isn’t over quite yet, but the emotional high point certainly is, and I’m thrilled that it’s followed by Log Date 7 15 2.

This is a simple episode full of humor and heart, in a way that’s honestly difficult to write about, because the temptation is always “oh man it was so funny when ____ happened” in such comedy-centric outings. But this is still Steven Universe, so there’s still something deeper even in a wacky pseudo-clipshow like this. 

If we’re going to move forward with Peridot’s development, it’s nice to take one last look at how much she’s grown, which this episode does brilliantly. And if we’re honest about making Peridot a true member of the team, it’s necessary to address her fusionphobia.

This is Garnet’s Peridot Episode, and the culmination of her Season 2/3 arc (she’s the only Gem who gets to finish in Season 2!), in which she learns better ways to understand and to be understood. In Keeping It Together, she encounters the heinous perversion of fusion that creates the Cluster Gems, and in the Week of Sardonyx, she faces betrayal from her oldest living friend. In the former incident she nearly comes apart, and in the latter she does come apart, but after absorbing these events and sharing a more positive story of fusion with Steven in The Answer, she’s able to deal with Peridot’s toxic attitude with grace.

It’s an unusual arc, because despite resilience being a good thing, Garnet isn’t wrong to react the way she does in Keeping It Together and the Week of Sardonyx. She’s completely entitled to her pain, and to her expression of that pain. It takes a ton of strength to deal with a bigot with patience, but I very much doubt the crew’s message here is that having negative reactions to bigotry makes you weak. Not everyone can deal with the Peridots of the world the way Garnet does here, and frankly, if you’re the one being wronged because you are who who you are, it’s not your job to educate bullies on how to not be terrible.

Garnet’s ability to do this benefits from Log Date 7 15 2 airing at the end of her arc. We know from past episodes that her patience has limits: she gets fed up with Peridot in When It Rains and Too Far and It Could’ve Been Great, so this isn’t some unrealistic paragon of grace we’re talking about. You don’t have to like somebody to be patient with them, and showing that Garnet has never liked Peridot makes their newfound bond much more meaningful.

Moreover, we have a concrete reason for Garnet to change her approach to Peridot. This is the episode where Peridot inadvertently shares with Garnet what she already shared with Amethyst at the end of Too Far: that she wants to understand. There’s a different between a bigot determined to hate and a bigot who seeks to learn, and while the latter is no ray of sunshine, it’s certainly a better starting point for the conversation.

The scene where Garnet makes this discovery is remarkably subtle considering how broad its humor is. Peridot’s methodology to see whether humans can fly is childish and clumsy, but think about her point of view. Yes, it’s silly to think that an animal with a very different body than a winged insect could fly, but her only exposure to humans until now has been Steven, who has superhuman strength thanks to his Gem heritage. Otherwise, every other humanoid she’s ever met has been a full Gem, and peridots themselves are especially sturdy. So even if Greg is unlikely to fly, Peridot has no reason to think pushing him a relatively short distance might hurt him.

Garnet’s natural response is anger, but she takes Peridot’s “Well how was I supposed to know that?” to heart. From there, this could’ve been an episode where Garnet teaches Peridot the ways of Earth, but thankfully we eschew the preachiness this would involve and instead get a ridiculous comedy episode where Garnet pops in on Peridot’s antics with quiet affirmation.

Garnet’s suggestion to fuse works terrifically as the episode’s climax, ending with the episode’s strongest plot point: Garnet referring to herself as Percy and Pierre. It gives her seemingly random appearances in other clips meaning beyond comic relief, because it shows that she’s been paying close attention to Peridot and used her interests to better communicate. Garnet appreciates that Peridot is trying to understand her, and expresses this by making an effort to understand Peridot.

I really can’t emphasize enough how funny I find this episode, but I love how well the comedy is used to flesh out the characters. Peridot’s erratic emotional state at the beginning of the episode (culminating in Shelby Rabara’s jolly “No!”) is hilarious, but it does wonders to show how she feels about her harrowing rejection of Yellow Diamond. Florido’n’Zuke, as always, make the most of Peridot’s inner raccoon to give us great physical comedy, but it constantly reminds us how awkward and antsy our little gremlin still is. Her very first “Wow, thanks!” is a punchline, but it only takes two episodes for it to become a heartwarming acceptance of love.

Even the episode’s unusual format serves the comedy and the characters simultaneously. The zipping around in time allows for quick jokes that build on each other to create callback humor, but the conceit of Peridot’s recorder gives us the rare episode with a narrator (linking this episode with Steven Bomb opener The Answer). Care was clearly taken to make sure her commentary doesn’t tell at the expense of showing: we can see, for instance, that Peridot is bashful around Amethyst and patronizing to Pearl before her jokey narration confirms her analyses of them.

Log Date 7 15 2 is, above all else, a relief. Like Peace and Love on the Planet Earth, it’s refreshing to see sustained levity in a season full of stress, but unlike Peace and Love on the Planet Earth, this is an entire episode of that without another shoe dropping. Yes, we’re about to hit more drama as the third season begins, but this episode will hold us over nicely on the comedy front until the legendary Hit the Diamond knocks it out of the park.

Future Vision!

Where is Peridot gonna put the star? On her chest, as a badge of honor. And it’s awesome.

Garnet and Peridot’s positioning during their present-day conversation has some serious Mindful Education vibes.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

Okay wait how are Pearl and Amethyst and Opal all around at the same time? Is this a different opal, or are you telling me that the Floridoverse isn’t grounded in strict logic?

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

I really love this episode, and it’s pretty high up in terms of rewatch, but it’s not quite enough to crack the Top Fifteen. Still, it definitely would make the cut were it not for the glut of amazing episodes.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

When It Rains

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

No Thanks!

     5. Horror Club      4. Fusion Cuisine      3. House Guest      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[camuslittlesister]

Two fanfics in a row, sorry 🙈 but it’s April’s Fools day and I’m salty at the Utapri event (although Setsugetsuka 🖤) and SLBP not giving me Maeda Sr in the old men stories, so I went back to finishing a parody of a parody that will be very familiar to fans of Fruits Basket that I wrote as a silly exercise in comedy writing one time I was bored.

At least it won’t end up a joke turning on me in a year’s time like the one I made last year when I pretended to have a cat named Ieyasu because I hated the man until the man was Nightshade’s Ieyasu and the clown I am became the Lady Tokugawa on Discord for about a month 🤡

It’s Cinderella-ish (Utapri, SFW)

“What are you doing dilly-dallying out here? The play is going to start without us if we don’t get in” Reiji pointed the camera at Otoya and Cecil, who were discussing the play. The calm atmosphere was not reflected backstage, of course, as anyone who has ever been on the stage will testify. Syo was running around in a frenzy, dragging clothes racks along with him, trying to get everyone in the correct costume. At least Cinderella was easy, the two dresses were pure black. “That’s the fairy godmother’s gown!” he snatched the item from Camus’s hands, thinking to himself about how on earth he could have mistaken the gown clearly made for Ai. It was all light blue and dainty, like Ai himself. He shoved a rich burgundy day dress fit for a queen at him: “Here. Make it quick” Camus glared at him. Time for him run according to his whim, not anyone else’s. He’d be ready when he’d be ready.

Natsuki was spacing out, already in his costume, but his focus was sharpened when Masato appeared in his gown, a blush on his face: “You’re so cute” he clapped his hands in delight, and Masato ran off to hide before Natsuki could grab him.

“Curtain up in 5” came a shout from the stage attendant. Ranmaru peeled another banana, defiantly. He wasn’t going to rush to be ready either, especially not if a certain annoying nobleman was taking his sweet time doing his hair.

Soon, the lights went off in the auditorium, and Ren stepped onto the stage, a flirty smile briefly gracing his lips before a serious expression took over and he spoke his first line: “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl who was known as Cinderella. Cinderella lived with her step-mother and step-sister, who tormented her because...reasons. Despite their cruelty, she remained kind, and lived a life of virtue and humility.”

The spotlight moved away from the narrator, as Camus stepped on the stage with Masato (still blushing) in tow. “The palace ball is tonight” the sense of urgency was palpable from his annoyed tone, although it was hard to say where his personality ended and his acting began.

“Are you talking to me?” asked Ranmaru, sat on the floor drinking black coffee like it was his job to do so. Masato attempted to pacify the situation, as it was his character’s role, but sparks could be seen flying between the two young men if one looked hard enough. Ren had to bring the action back to the story after the audience was left astounded by the step-sister sitting down with Cinderella, starting to make tea like in a traditional tea ceremony while Camus lost his patience. The audience was confused, except for Reiji, who appeared to be enjoying the whole thing and was struggling to keep the camera straight as he laughed.

Ai descended on the stage with some technical difficulties, and proceeded to tell Cinderella about how many minutes she had left before the ball, and how long she would take to make the dresses at her usual unprofessional speed. Thankfully, the Fairy Godmother was there to save the situation by making beautiful dresses appear by magic, but Ranmaru's acting was beyond the remit of staged miracles. He did not want to be there, and he made no secret of it. The only consolation he had was that the meat for the ball's refreshments was real.

He was enjoying the buffet when Tokiya appeared in all his princely glory, with Natsuki in tow. Everyone’s jaw dropped as he greeted the ball with his honeyed voice...well, except Ranmaru’s, which was full of meat anyway.

Eventually, Prince Tokiya managed to have a dance with a reluctant Ranmaru, while the crowd thought to themselves that he really would have made a better couple with the sweet step-sister. Alas, the clock struck midnight, and Ranmaru ran off, but not before grabbing some meat and losing one shoe while Natsuki waxed lyrical about how clearly fate wanted Tokiya to find him using that totally not standard size black Converse. Syo had not managed to convince Ranmaru to wear the stage glass slippers no matter how hard he tried. It was a shock to anyone that he had managed to see the cast on stage without a fully blown nervous breakdown!

Prince Tokiya wasted no time touring his kingdom to find his belle, although you need some suspension of disbelief to accept the shoe never fit on Masato, whom the audience still thought was the better fit and, finally, the curtain closed as the Prince and Cinderella were wed and Camus’ cried in despair at Masato’s loss (Masato himself was so, so happy, and busy running away from Natsuki anyway). The end.

Disappointed we didn’t get to see the Prince kiss the bride? We couldn’t really show that, this is Saotome Academy, not a high school in a BL doujinshi 😉

[deltaengineering]

Spring Anime 2018: Lightning round

I didn’t get around to full writeups this season, but here’s the condensed version. It’s a weak season (the weakest in years) with very few surprises anyway.

3D Kanojo Real Girl

What: Otaku loser lucks into girlfriend.

+ Loser is actually a loser, and how

+ Heart seems to be in the right place

- Writing is clunky

- - some of the most amateurish production values this side of Clione no Akari and I don’t think this is made by one guy

Verdict: no

Akkun to Kanojo

What: Short. A guy is rude to his naively cute girlfriend and then stalks her.

- - Creepy, unfunny and dumb

Verdict: naw

Amanchu! Advance

What: Sequel. Ostentatious anime characters enjoy chilling on the beach.

+ Actually chill most of the time

+ looks and sounds good

+ somehow even more gay than before

- - @_@

- - 8D

Verdict: I watched the first season and enjoyed it more than not, so I might as well.

Alice or Alice

What: Short. Siscon 4koma comedy with a lot of fanservice.

- - Creepier, unfunnier and dumber

Verdict: hell naw

Butlers: Chitose Momotose Monogatari

What: Best I can say is that it’s an otome instaharem of shounen fightmen invading Marimite.

+ makes so little sense it’s sometimes funny

- makes so little sense it’s mostly just baffling

- little chance to become legit

Verdict: nope

Caligula

What: What indeed. Virtual idols overwrite reality, a Persona clone ensues.

+ Denpa stuff is actually disorientating and creepy

+ Makes somehow even less sense than Butlers and in a more funny way to boot.

- Still a bunch of nonsense that will probably not pay off in the long run

- - Protagonist spends the first episode being a Sagrada Reset-class blahmancer.

Verdict: 3 ep rule since it’s still a better Persona than the actual Persona and the dude has little time to do stoner philosophy once shit hits the fan

Comic Girls

What: Hidamari Sketch without the charm, a basic comedic Kiraralike where the joke is that the girls embody manga genres.

+ High production values, pleasant to look at

- Typical Kiraralike cast with little personality besides the blindingly obvious

- - Full of jokes that get old before the setup even starts

Verdict: Not worth it

Cutie Honey Universe

What: Ancient proto-mahou shoujo series by Go Nagai gets its fourth or so anime adaptation.

+ Some choice sakuga cuts

+ Generous helpings of Go Nagai sleaze at its finest

- Design is a weird mishmash of current and 70s

- Does not even attempt to explain anything about the show

Verdict: Mainly aimed at existing fans, of which I am not one. If it turns out to be a classic I’ll hear about it

Devils Line

What: Some Tokyo Ghoul-ish thing about the vampyr police. 

+ Probably not half a dumbass fighting shounen

+ nothing too offensive

- nothing particularly interesting either

- looks are completely bland

Verdict: I have already forgotten everything about this

Dorei-ku The Animation

What: Magical devices gives people mind control powers. Everyone’s an asshole.

+ Some actually good character writing

- Trying to be Kakegurui and failing, just too tame for its outrageous conceit

Verdict: Has potential but doesn’t appear to take advantage of it

Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory

What: Sequel to FMP and it’s still FMP.

+ More serious than basic FMP

- FMP is inherently too silly to attempt seriousness

Verdict: Fumoffu is the only acceptable FMP

Fumikiri Jikan

What: Short about couples(?) at a railroad crossing

+ Reminds me of Tsuredure Children

+ Seems a bit more clever than the usual comedy short

Verdict: At 3m/week, why not

Gegege no Kitarou

What: Truly prehistoric spoopy manga for children about kids who fight youkai.

+ Actually a little spooky

+ Nekomusume

+ Unapologetically for children, but with oldschool charm

+ Does a good job of modernizing the subject matter

Verdict: Pretty good, I’m in

Golden Kamuy

What: Taciturn Ainu girl and tough guy hang around in frozen 1900s Hokkaido to nab some gold.

+ at least sounds like it could have potential

- Does a good job of making its unique setting seem not particularly interesting

- not as bad looking as incensed manga fans allege, but certainly not a feast for the eyes

- okay, that CG bear tho

- - I’m not feeling much character chemistry, which is an absolute killer for this specific setup

Verdict: Probably not

Gurazeni

What: Mediocre baseball pro plans his retirement money

+ not actually about baseball much

- - actually about baseball finances, which is even less interesting

Verdict: Weird but not in a good way

Hinamatsuri

What: Dadfeels show about a yakuza middle manager that gets a girl with superpowers dropped on his head.

+ Nitta being a yakuza thug makes for good comedy

+ Seems way less wish-fulfilmenty than most shows of this type

- Yeah speaking of which, could lose itself in Maidragon-style sameyness

Verdict: I’m feeling it for now

Hisone to Masotan

What: Air Force clerk becomes dragon pilot/emergency food supply. Yeah, the Japanese Air Force secretly has a dragon squad masquerading as F-15s.

++ Psychedelically unhinged dragon vore bonanza

++ Looks really great

+ Secretly a mecha show, but without mecha baggage; Kawamori is involved and it shows.

+ Mari Okada writing means strong characters

- Mari Okada writing means high chance of eventually going into the weeds

Verdict: Either way this is going to be a ride

Isekai Izakaya - Koto Aitheria no Izakaya Nobu

What: Another anime about a Japanese restaurant that connects to a fantasy world.

- Less interested in worldbuilding than Shokudou, and yes I actually enjoyed that aspect

- 100% about Japanese barfood instead

- Weak to nonexistant characters

- - styled like Japanese daytime television, hope you enjoy text plastered all over the screen

Verdict: Isekai Shokudou S2 where

Juushinki Pandora

What: Postapocalyptic robot vs. space monsters fights for the Chinese market.

- Just a bunch of anime characters doing anime things

- - truly hideous

Verdict: I’d rather watch MuvLuv and I’m not watching MuvLuv either

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi

What: Bland girl gets transported to youkai world where she gets macked on by the boss and opens a restaurant.

- Barebones otome harem setup, though shockingly not based on a Vita game

- another fucking cooking show

- - Nothing’s romantic like possessive creepy assholes

Verdict: Nope.

Last Period - Owarinaki Rasen no Monogatari

What: Mobile RPG adaptation that advertises the game to you while making jokes how terrible gacha and grind is. Hey, Konosuba was popular right?

+ Certainly ballsy

- not really funny besides that

- - I already know mobile RPGs suck, but thanks for the heads up

Verdict: Fuck off and take your smug with you

Legend of the Galactic Heroes - Die Neue These

What: Spess men playing spess chess in spess.

+ Credible and respectable

+ Makes LoGH ultrafans mad because it’s not ugly enough

- space war seems like a video game, both visually and tonally

- if it adapts the whole thing, it will take forever

Verdict: Promising, but there’s always the old one which is at least complete. No reason to watch this particular version right now.

Lupin III Part V

What: Lupin is in ur cloud, stealin ur bitcoins.

++ Classic Lupin feel

++ Ruthless modernization of the bells and whistles keeps it from feeling overly familiar like Part 4

- Comes across as desperate occasionally

- Action is extra unexciting for some reason

- Looks nowhere near as good as Part 4

Verdict: It’s entertaining, so why not

Mahou Shoujo Ore

What: Comedy about a bad wannabe idol that works as a buff male mahou shoujo for the yakuza.

+ Core idea is amusing

- - spends most of the time on anything but the core idea, such as hilariously pointing out how it is indeed a cartoon

Verdict: I’ve tried and not picked up much better mahou shoujo parodies

Mahou Shoujo Site

What: Girl is bullied all day at school and beaten up all night at home, becomes a magical school shooter

+ Certainly effective at setting a, um, “particular” mood

- - relentlessly mean and nasty

- - simply no fun at all, with little reason to believe that that’s going to pay off

Verdict: Not looking for a bad time right now.

Megalo Box

What: Classic underdog sports story about a boxing jobber looking for the big break, now with more cyborgs.

++ looks amazing

++ cinematic-level direction and storyboarding

+ doesn’t reinvent the wheel as far as story goes, but it’s classic for a reason

- Overreliance on dog metaphors is already getting out of hand

Verdict: Would be stupid not to watch this

Nil Admirari no Tenbin - Teito Genwaku Kitan

What: Actual PS Vita otome harem about a bland girl with the power to see evil books, which impresses a bunch of handsome combat librarians.

- takes itself far too seriously

- not a looker

- I can’t remember a single character

- - pacing is criminally turgid

Verdict: I know better otome harems.

Omae wa Mada Gunma wo Shiranai

What: 4koma short about how Gunma is weird and Gunma people are even weirder.

+ It’s like a bizarre perversion of a tourism anime

- 4koma jokes

Verdict: Mmmmmmmaybe?

Persona 5 the Animation

What: High school kid finds himself in a weird woke fever dream. It’s P5, you know what it be.

+ Kawakami

- P5 is too known and too long to make a good anime

- serious issues don’t work with the residual Persona silliness

- Not very well made

Verdict: I’d rather watch a LP (or Caligula)

Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori

What: Chill boys run a chill cafe

+ very chill indeed, totally works as iyashikei

+ characters are all likeable, even brings the moe in an ikemen show

+ Suwabe! With glasses!

- Iyashikei always has potential to drift into boring sludge

Verdict: I’ll take that chance

Saredo Tsumibito wa Ryuu to Odoru

What: JRPG dudes fight monsters and argue about payment

+ Opening narration is so stupid it made me laugh

+ No seriously, “we changed the Planck constant and now there’s fucking dragons everywhere”

+ a few decent buddy cop moments

- - Rest of the show is just as stupid, but the laughter went away

Verdict: Durr hurr

Souten no Ken Re-Genesis

What: CG men with no neck make frowny faces at each other

- story is vague and hard to follow while at the same time just being an excuse for poses and fights

- - looks like an absolute butt

Verdict: stay far away

Steins Gate 0

What: Sequel. Okabe is sad that Chris is dead.

+ Epic twists will be coming... eventually.

+ Punished Okabe is a better character than he ever was before

- - Rest of the cast is still a bunch of hateable wankers, and even Okabe will be going back to his catchphrase eventually

- - nothing happens in the first two episodes besides establishing that Chris is a Tamagotchi now

Verdict: Possibly a hatewatch but seems to be too dull for even that.

Sword Art Online Alternative - Gun Gale Online

What: Catgirl with pink P90 totally puts serious operators in the PWN ZONE.

+ Main character’s IRL identity seems funny

+ evades most of the memetic SAO failings

- adds a lot of failings of its own

- egregious gun- & tacticool wank

- - boring as shit

Verdict: yeah, guess

Tachibanakan To Lie Angle

What: Unimaginative fanservice 4koma short, but this time it’s yuri so that makes it okay.

- - no, it doesn’t

Verdict: *snore*

Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai

What: Regular Anime Dude™ chances upon a weeaboo princess from Europe and her weeaboo bodyguard.

+ Looks real nice, Doga Kobo delivers

+ anime original, so there’s a chance of it ever going anywhere

- Just about the least interesting setup ever

- - comic relief guy friend is tremendously annoying

Verdict: Nozaki-kun was better.

Uchuu Senkan Tiramisu

What: Short. Some sort of mecha parody.

+ Gundamian masterpiece names like “Vulgar Hummer” and “Pubic Hair”

- not actually funny beyond that

- - at all

Verdict: Seems totally pointless, but what do I know about anime comedy

Uma Musume - Pretty Derby

What: School sports show about horse girls that are also idols

+ Premium production by PA Works

+ Lively and colorful

- awful, overwrought gacha game character designs

- characters are as generic as they come

- the setup is just Kancolle again, but without the “escort” pun

- something this wacky shouldn’t be so predictable and boring

Verdict: 3 ep rule, but 3 eps have passed and it didn’t grab me. So no.

Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii

What: Adult otaku meet at work, fail powerlevel stealth check, fall in love.

+ Well written characters once you look past their gimmick

+ Much more respectable than most shows with this exact idea

+ Doesn’t lean on references

- Will have to put in some hard work to make it last

Verdict: I don’t want to like it, but I do. At least so far.

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 8/11/21

Sean is our hero as he shoulders the burden of this column solo.

D-Frag!, Vol. 15 | By Tomoya Haruno | Seven Seas – This manga is here for romance and jokes, but the jokes are so prevalent that the romance tends to fall by the wayside. Technically there are a bunch of girls who have fallen for Kazuma, but honestly, in reality he and Takao seem to have the only relationship with actual sexual chemistry. This is especially helped by a wacky sequence where Kazuma has to dress up as a girl to avoid Takao’s protective father, and ends up being quite a believable one. Takao has now finally left Kazuma’s house (minus one bra, which becomes another running gag), but the others are still there, despite the meteor preventing them from moving back home being taken care of by the power of EEL. Deeply silly. – Sean Gaffney

The Dangers in My Heart, Vol. 1 | By Norio Sakurai | Seven Seas – This bizarre little comedy was not quite what I was expecting. Our “hero,” Kyotaro, is a wannabe edgelord who keeps narrating inside his head and dreams of killing his classmates… except no, he doesn’t, as he’s far too much of a wuss to do anything. He has a repressed crush on Anna, the “best girl” in class, who is not only popular but also turns out to be a model on the side. That said, as he and the reader slowly realize, Anna is… strange. Stranger than she likes to let on, really. What ensues are a series of short chapters where he tries to stop the other horny teens in his class from sexually harassing the girls, while also watching Anna break her stereotype. Not sure if recommended? It was OK. – Sean Gaffney

Horimiya, Vol. 15 | By Hero and Daisuke Hagiwara | Yen Press – We’re nearing the end of the manga at last, after the misstep that was the anime (not a disaster, but not as well-received as hoped). The anime helped highlight the manga’s main flaw, which is that it absolutely will not let Hori’s temper and tendency to hit Miyamura go away, and it continues to walk a fine line between “it’s funny in a Looney Tunes way” and “this is abusive behavior and I, the author know it,” with a side of “they know they’re into S&M so it’s OK.” It feels weird, frankly. Yuki and Tooru are still the secondary not-quite-a-couple, but frustratingly, that’s all they seem to be. And of course there’s the focus on endless minor characters I can’t remember. This is still a mess, but it’s almost over. – Sean Gaffney

Love at Fourteen, Vol. 10 | By Fuka Mizutani | Yen Press – Do you love age-gap romance? Or romance that looks like age-gap romance? Then this is the manga for you… at least when it’s not focusing on its main couple, who continue to be the main reason to keep reading it. We’re not walking back the moving away yet, and it’s really hitting them both hard, to the point where they do a “day trip” to talk about how far away it will be. There is talk of them having sex (which they are quick to point out is legal between two fourteen-year-olds in Japan), but neither one has knowledge beyond rudimentary, so they back off to research it. Frankly, it’s too soon. As for the others, well, they are what they are. I do like the sad lesbian helping out her next-gen equivalent, though. – Sean Gaffney

Ran the Peerless Beauty, Vol. 9 | By Ammitsu | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Resolving the cliffhanger from the last volume turns out to go exactly the way every reader thought it would. Ran is taken away by her dad and there’s a bit of “you can’t see him again” going on. It’s all mainly because her dad is sad that his little girl is growing up. Akira manages to win the dad over by basically being his usual self, and in the end Ran agrees not to have any sex before marriage, because … well, because they’re so pure, really. That said, we’re only a volume away from the finale, so it’s time for one last little wrinkle from Ran’s past to show up and stress everyone out. If you miss Kimi ni Todoke and wish you could read more of it only with even more innocent leads, this is the manga for you. – Sean Gaffney

We’re New at This, Vol. 8 | By Ren Kawahara | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Turns out that Ikuma being a salaryman is not that big a shift from Ikuma being a contract worker, though it does mean he has to go out with his boss and get drunk more often (a staple of Japanese corporate culture, and I’ve never liked it). Fortunately, while he and Sumika still sometimes have trouble communicating their needs and desires, they still communicate better than 90% of the other married couples in manga. That said, things end with a fight here, as Ikuma’s womanizing friend has finally met a nice girl, and Ikuma and Sumika differ on whether this is a good thing or not. Their fight will probably spill into book nine, though given the cliffhanger I’m guessing Ikuma is correct here. Sweet fun. – Sean Gaffney

The Whole of Humanity Has Gone Yuri Except for Me | By Hiroki Haruse | Yen Press – This two-volume series is out here in one omnibus, and that seems to be the correct decision, because I doubt this premise could sustain a long series. A high school girl wakes up one day to find everyone in the world is now a woman, and always has been. She’s in a parallel world… and she’s straight! Or is she? If that premise makes you go “heck yeah!,” you’ll be fine with this SF series, as she and her seemingly aloof, secretly disaster lesbian schoolmate try to figure out what happened and if she can return to her own world. If you saw the premise and sighed, it’s not going to magically be any different than what you’d expect. – Sean Gaffney

By: Sean Gaffney

[a-year-of-musicals]

Day 98/365 - Monty Python’s Spamalot

By John Du Prez and Eric Idle

A historian narrates a brief overview of medieval England. In a miscommunication between the actors and the narrator, the actors sing an introductory song about Finland (Fisch Schlapping Song). The Historian returns, irritated, and tells the frolicking Finns that he was talking about England, not Finland. The scene immediately changes to a dreary, dark village with penitent monks in hooded robes chanting Latin and hitting themselves with books. King Arthur travels the land with his servant Patsy, who follows him around banging two coconut shells together to make the sound of a horse's hooves as Arthur "rides" before him, trying to recruit Knights of the Round Table to join him in Canelot. He encounters a pair of sentries who are more interested in debating whether two swallows could successfully carry a coconut than in listening to the king.

Sir Robin, a collector of plague victims, and Lancelot, a large, handsome and incredibly violent man, meet as Lancelot attempts to dispose of the sickly Not Dead Fred. Although a plague victim, the man insists that he is not dead yet and he can dance and sing. He completes a dance number, but is soon hit over the head with a shovel and killed by an impatient Lancelot. (He Is Not Dead Yet). They agree to become Knights of the Round Table together, Lancelot for the fighting, and Robin for the singing and the dancing.

Arthur attempts to convince a peasant named Dennis Galahad that he, Arthur, is king of England because the Lady of the Lake gave him Excalibur, the sword given only to the man fit to rule England. However, Dennis and his mother, Mrs Galahad, are political radicals and deny that any king who has not been elected by the people has any legitimate right to rule over them. To settle the issue, Arthur has the Lady Of The Lake and her Laker Girls appear to turn Dennis into a knight (Come With Me). Cheered on by the girls (Laker Girls Cheer), the Lady Of The Lake turns Dennis into Sir Galahad and together, they sing a generic Broadway love song (The Song That Goes Like This), complete with chandelier. They are joined by Sir Robin and Sir Lancelot, and together with Sir Belvedere and "the aptly named" Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Show - a knight resembling Don Quixote - who promptly apologises and leaves, they make up the Knights of the Round Table (All For One).

The five knights gather in Camelot, a deliberately anachronistic place resembling Las Vegas’s Camelot-inspired Excalibur resort, complete with showgirls, oversized dice and the Lady of the Lake headlining the Castle in full Cher get-up (Knights Of The Round Table/The Song That Goes Like This Reprise). In the midst of their revelry, they are contacted by God who tells them to locate the Holy Grail. Urged on by the Lady Of The Lake (Find Your Grail), the Knights set off. They travel throughout the land until they reach a castle, only to be viciously taunted by lewd French soldiers. They attempt to retaliate by sending them a large wooden rabbit in the style of the Trojan Horse; however, they realise after the fact that it was not as simple as leaving the rabbit and walking away – they should have hidden inside it. Defeated, they leave in a hurry when the French begin taunting them again, sending cancan dancers after them and throwing barnyard animals including cows at them (Run Away!). Arthur and his followers manage to run into the safety of the wings before the French catapult the Trojan Rabbit at them.

Sir Robin and his minstrels follow King Arthur and Patsy into a "dark and very expensive forest" - Arthur later says they're in a "Dark and extremely expensive forest - where they are separated. King Arthur meets the terrifying but silly Knights who say Ni, who demand a shrubbery. King Arthur despairs of finding one, but Patsy cheers him up (Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life) and they find a shrubbery shortly after.

Sir Robin, after wandering the forest for some time with his minstrels (Brave Sir Robin), encounters The Black Knight, who scares him off, but King Arthur, who happens on the scene, more or less defeats him by cutting off both his arms and legs, impaling his still-alive torso on a door, and leaving to give the Knights their shrubbery. The Knights accept it, but next demand that King Arthur put on a musical and bring it to Broadway implying that it need only be Broadway-style, "but not an Andrew Lloyd Webber". The mere mention of his name causes everyone to cover their ears and scream in pain. Sir Robin, who has found Arthur by this point, insists that it would be impossible for them to accomplish this next task, since you need Jews for a successful Broadway West End musical (You Won't Succeed On Broadway), and proves his point in a wild production number filled with Fiddle On The Roof parodies, including a bottle dance with Grails instead of bottles. King Arthur and Patsy promptly set off in search of Jews.

While the Lady Of The Lake laments her lack of stage time (Whatever Happened To My Part?), Sir Lancelot receives a letter from what he assumes is a young damsel in distress. He is very surprised to find that the "damsel" is actually an effeminate young man named Prince Herbert (Where Are You?/Here Are You) whose overbearing, music-hating father, the King of Swamp Castle, is forcing him into an arranged marriage. As Herbert is asking Lancelot to help him escape, the King of Swamp Castle cuts the rope that he is using to climb out of the window, and Herbert falls to his apparent death. Lancelot is a bit puzzled at the king's actions, but it is revealed that Herbert was saved at the last minute by Lancelot's sidekick, Concorde. The King asks his son how he was saved, exactly, to which Herbert replies happily with a song. But the king charges at his son with a spear, preparing to kill him. Lancelot steps in to save him, then gives a tearful, heartfelt speech about sensitivity to the king on Herbert's behalf, and Lancelot is outed as a homosexual in the process, an announcement celebrated in a wild disco number (His Name is Lancelot).

King Arthur begins to give up hope of ever putting on the Broadway musical and laments that he is alone, even though Patsy has been with him the entire time (I'm All Alone). The Lady Of The Lake appears and tells Arthur that he and the Knights have been in a Broadway musical all along. Patsy also reveals he is half Jewish, but didn't want to say anything to Arthur because "that's not really the sort of thing you say to a heavily armed Christian." All that's left is for King Arthur to find the Grail and marry someone. After picking up on some not-too-subtle hints, Arthur decides to marry the Lady Of The Lake after he finds the Grail (Twice in Every Show).

Reunited with his Knights, Arthur meets Tim the Enchanter who warns them of the danger of a killer rabbit. When the rabbit bites a knight's head off, Arthur uses the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch against it, knocking down a nearby hill and revealing that the "evil rabbit" was actually a puppet controlled by a surprised puppeteer. A large stone block showing a combination of letters and numbers is also revealed. The letters are based on the seat numbering system used by each theatre.

After pondering the final clue, Arthur admits that they're "a bit stumped with the clue thing" and asks God to "give them a hand". A large hand points to the audience and Arthur realises that the letters and numbers refer to a seat number in the audience. The grail is "found" with some sleight of hand under the seat and the person sitting in the seat is rewarded with a small trophy and a polaroid photo. (The Holy Grail). Arthur marries the Lady of the Lake, who reveals that her name is Guinevere; Lancelot marries Herbert who finally has a chance to sing; and Sir Robin decides to pursue a career in musical theatre. Herbert's father attempts to interrupt the finale and stop all of the "bloody singing", but is hit over the head with a shovel by Lancelot, a nod to "He is Not Yet Dead". (Act 2 Finale/Always Look on the Bright Side of Life).

Wow, what a comedy! I was in stitches just listening so I can’t imagine what a hoot it would be to see this live. Absolutely love the fact that they use this popular myth/legend and just elaborate to make jokes.

Fantastic.

Favourite Songs: Laker Girls Cheer, The Song That Goes Like This (my joint fave), Find Your Grail, Run Away!, Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, You Won’t Succeed On Broadway (my other joint fave), His Name Is Lancelot and I’m All Alone.

Favourite Character: Sir Robin, the Not-Quit-So-Brave-as-Sir-Lancelot

His geekiness surrounding musical theatre and his big number about them not knowing any Jews just did it for me!