#the ship is pretty much. a good super villain and an unhinged weird guy that found him. im obsessed with the whole cast in this story

[yael-art-den]

Drawing Héctor: aw yisss

Drawing Iago: How the FUCK do you draw skinny people

[iamdeltas]

1, 9, 29, 4?

1. Top 3 Doctors?Hmm... I think my top 3 Doctors would be 10, 13, and 12. Which, yeah, I know, how basic of me to have 10 as my favorite. But it is what it is. I mean, my second favorite Disney revival movie is Frozen so. I’m basic as hell.9. NOTP?Hmm. I mean, I don’t do shipping in general but I don’t know what ships I’d actively call a NOTP? There are definitely ships I don’t like, but IDK if they’re NOTP level. I guess a NOTP might be Donna x Ten in a romantic way? I really really like them as a platonic relationship. The Doctor x Amy or Rory is right out, obviously. (I mean, I could ignore the fact that they’re canonically his parents-in-law but why would I? It’s hilarious!) In general I don’t really love companion x Doctor romantic relationships? I just feel like the power balance doesn’t work, the Doctor is literally thousands of years old, it’s weird. Though there are fics I’ve read that do have Doctor x companion romantic pairings, so again, no idea if they are quite NOTP level. 

29. Thoughts on the current Doctor?Oh gosh. Where do I begin? I adore her so much! In s11, I did still like her, and it was fun reading into the little hints we got past her cheery persona, but I was never certain if I was reading too much into it. And then s12 came along and validated basically everything I read into, and deepened my love for her. 

I once saw a description of Trish Walker from Jessica Jones as something along the lines of, a very nice looking house but if you go inside, you’ll see a whole bunch of feral and rabid cats fighting each other. Or maybe I’m misremembering what the description was. But that general vibe is how I’d describe 13 in s11, and then in s12, the cats start tearing down the house and you get to see all the ferality that was locked inside. So that’s been fun to watch.

I think one thing I really like is the fact that she puts up a nice cheerful persona in what seems to be an attempt to live up to the promise they made to themself as 12, to always be kind and try to be nice. It is very much a front and not how she Truly Is, but what I find fascinating is that this isn’t malicious on her behalf. This isn’t a Bitch In Sheep’s Clothing situation, she’s not secretly evil. She’s just secretly more complicated than the image she tried to project of herself to the fam in s11. I get the feeling she wants to be that happy, dorky, gregarious space tour guide that she attempted to be in s11 and nothing more, but she isn’t that. Not that the dorky childishness is completely fake or anything, it’s just not the full story. She wanted to ignore all her unresolved past traumas so that she can pretend she’s just the fam’s friendly neighborhood alien, she doesn’t want to be the angry and traumatized eldritch and ancient being that she actually is. Also, the Doctor is always, at their core, an asshole, but she wanted to try to not be that, for once, and so hid all her asshole-ishness away from the fam, which is a decision that probably screwed the fam over for how to deal with her this season. Because while part of the danger of being the Doctor’s companions is the adventures, part of it is also the mercurial nature of alien taking you on these adventures. The alien is wonderful and kind, but they’re also very fae-like and so are dangerous and, well, a dick. Every companion has had to know how to stand up for themselves whenever the Doctor is being an asshole to them, and they know that’s what they’re getting into when they start travelling with the Doctor. I mean, think about it. 9 was initially quite icy to Rose, 10 was a dick to Martha, 10 also literally burned the Racnoss in front of Donna, 11 ditched Amy for 15 years (on accident, but still) and yelled at her and threatened to take her back home immediately because of a decision she made on her first trip with him that she doesn’t even remember, and 11 was a creep to Clara. But the fam was exposed to what’s basically a fake persona by 13. She hid away all of her jerkishness and tried to go out of her way to be as nice as possible. So when s12 comes around, and 13 is hit with a big Trauma Conga Line, and is not able to hold onto her performative personality, the fam are unexpectedly hit with the spiky asshole-ish sides of her personality and they’re not prepared for dealing with it at all! Which is part of why I kind of forgive them for being more passive than most companions when it comes to dealing with the Doctor being a jerk.

Anyway. Kinda veered off-topic there slightly. But yeah, I love that, even though her performative niceness is, well, performative, and she was sort of trying to trick the fam into thinking she’s nicer and sweeter than she actually is, I really dig that it’s not from a malicious place, it’s just from a very misguided attempt at trying to fulfill the promise she made to herself. It’s not something I’ve seen before in a character, because, like I said, most characters who aren’t actually as nice/sweet as they appear are generally Actually Evil, or Secretly A Bitch. Which isn’t the case with 13 at all. She’s an angry traumatized mess, but she’s not straightforwardly Evil.

Which brings me to my next point, I love how much of an angry traumatized mess she is! And I love how much s12 is showing that side of her! She’s trying her best, but her best involves possibly the worst coping mechanisms I’ve ever seen, she is such a disaster! And this is such a relief to see because I was so worried last season that the writers would cop out because she’s a Girl Doctor so clearly she has to be Emotionally Healthy Now. And I saw so many people surmising similarly, because of that and also because of the fact that 12 had so much Character Development, that she’d be the Doctor Who Is Completely Healed. Which I hated the notion of. I recall seeing a fic that had her be the one to bring her older selves together to force them to talk about their issues, which is absolutely hilarious to think about now, considering literally everything about her this season. (Though tbh, it still wouldn’t be out of character for her to do that, purely because she’s a little... lacking in self-awareness.) I also recall seeing a fic last season having 13 meet Clara and one of the things she mentioned was that as a man it was harder for her to talk about her emotions or whatever but she’s finding it much better to talk about them now, which, a) blegh, gender essentialist, much? and b) *starts laughing outrageously because I’m thinking about how goddamn emotionally constipated she actually is*. 

I dig how much fun she has when dealing with a villain that is on her level. One of the fun things about how she takes joy in everything is the fact that this translates to maniacal glee when confronting villains. She has a thrill of the hunt that I don’t think other NuWho Doctors have had, and the smiles she gives to bad guys are deliciously creepy. She’s also just so feral. She made some pretty unhinged smiles when confronting the Master, which was so fun to watch. And of course, her crazed smiles when absorbing the Cyberium were *chef’s kiss.* They felt similar to the expressions 11 had in Nightmare in Silver, and that was because he was being possessed! 13 was simply acting that unhinged and arrogant solely because of her own pure ego!

I also super cannot wait to see what goes down in the finale because I get the feeling that she is absolutely going to lose it. There’s no way she’s gonna start developing better coping mechanisms within one episode, and it’s gotta get worse before it gets better, so I look forward to seeing her at her absolute worst.

Phew, wow did I go on for a while there! Sorry for the ramble! I just love 13 a lot.

4.  Favorite Dalek story?It’s gotta be “Dalek.” That’s the gold standard for me. I love how well it established what a threat a single Dalek can be, which I think later Dalek episodes failed to do as good a job with partially because they used huge armies of Daleks. With a single Dalek, you end up leaving what an army of Daleks can do to the imagination. And also, this was just a great Nine episode. It showed such a vicious and unhinged side of the Doctor, which is always fun to see. Nine is normally icy on the outside, but he’s usually pretty chill most of the time, so seeing such an angry hateful side to him was absolutely fascinating, character-wise. 

[turqrambles]

I watched all 26 episodes of an obscure Australian cartoon in one week and I’m not okay - My journey with Wicked! (2001) PART 2 - The Actual Review

Hello again! I just checked my watch and I noticed that it was time to talk about the cartoon with the apple-headed guy some more!

When I last talked about this delightful piece of obscure media, I went over the origin story of how the show was created, introduced the cast of characters, and then talked about the main draw of the cartoon that makes it unique of other cartoons of its quality.

And then, at the end of the blog post, I mentioned that I think that the cartoon is merely “Okay” rather than anything Amazing. It has a great idea but ultimately, it really is just an alright show.

So now, after introducing this beautiful cartoon and explaining to everyone just what the hell is going on, it’s time to break this whole thing down.

The Good, The Bad, and The Apple-Flavored

Wicked! is a weird show to grade. The animation itself fluctuates in quality and there’s some very obvious cut corners from how frequently animation is recycled in some of the episodes, scenes can have weird editing or continuity errors, and sometimes they’ll even recycle sound bytes like insults that Dawn and Rory shout at each other or Gramps reminding everyone about Normandy. I feel like I heard The Appleman mention that something was “100% real nightmare” like five times while watching this whole thing in quick succession.

Information for this cartoon is practically nonexistent, but my theory is that this happened because the animation was all produced in a single in-house Australian studio rather than shipping bits of it overseas to get tightened up. Again, I could be wrong, and if anyone has any better information, please send me an ask, but a lot of the techniques that Wicked! use reminded me of Filmation, which also famously kept everything in one studio.

Just be warned, similar to when someone watches He-Man and go “oh hey, I recognize that talking animation from the second episode”, there are shots that get reused often to save time. Get used to that one scene where Appleman is laughing and running across the steel walkway suspending over the refinery vats, it’s used a ton.

That being said, when they give them the budget to add a little polish to the show, they do a pretty good job!

Don’t be fooled by my talk of He-Man - this show actually looks pretty great. Most of the time the animation is pretty fluid and the decision to constantly use shadows to wrap around the characters really works in its favor and gives it an extra layer of moodiness.

It just reuses animation on top of that.

I think that, in many ways, Wicked! is carried more by the strength of its ideas over its actual execution. Even if this show gets super goofy at times (this is a show where the Appleman literally infects the Internet by taking a piper and dropping glowing green goo on a CD-ROM), there is a definite horror undertone to the show that gets carried through its entire season.

Dare I say it, the show actually gets a little scary at times. That scene where the kids discover that their pets are nothing but empty skins with all the organs and bones sucked out in the first episode actually sets the mood really well and feels extremely faithful to the original books.

Plus the concept of The Appleman being able to tinker around with a living virus and create something that can mutate literally anything is a fun as hell idea, even if it doesn’t make sense most of the time and seems like a weird mutation (hah) of the conflict from the books. It’s just fun that this guy can create literally anything out of thin air as a weapon just so long as he goes to his lab and makes something that allows him to do so.

The Pros

*The Appleman. Yeah, there’s a very good reason why the only thing people remember about this show is The Appleman. He’s just a fun character and a fun villain. His design does takes a bit to get used to on account of how uncanny he can be, and there are times when they draw him off-model and make him look just horrendous, but once you see how far they go with the apple-theming, you kinda start to vibe with the apple headed monster.

Sure, he’s basically your run-of-the-mill cartoon villain but with a bonus tragic backstory, but his vocal performance by Bill Conn really sells the whole package. You can tell that he’s greatly unhinged and that he’s not exactly playing with a full deck. It’s only until the last episode that they flat-out say that he’s being controlled by the same virus that he’s been using to infect other creatures, but I’m pretty sure your average cartoon-watching kid is able to guess that just from the small hints that they drop.

Also all of his vehicles are apple-colored and I love a villain that takes the time to make sure he has a proper theme.

(The “starting out with an island with apple trees on Animal Crossing: New Horizons” moodboard)

*The Family. I liked that, since this show is about terrorizing one particular dysfunctional Australian family, all five family members of this show get enough character development that the mom and dad feel like they’re more than “the mom and dad character”. Save for that one episode where Gramps was constantly bragging about how back in his day, he didn’t need electricity, he was a fun, lovable grandpa, and I like that the kids get someone to talk to about mutant frogs and such.

They’re definitely dysfunctional and, as I mentioned in the previous post, Rory and Dawn constantly insulting each other in every single episode can be grating at times, but I like that their level of dysfunction is not because of the mom and the dad having an emotionally abusive relationship. If anything, the mom and the dad have the most stable relationship in the whole show! Eileen and Jack love each other and I hate that I’m at a point where I see this husband and wife genuinely enjoying each other’s company and I go “Yes, this is something refreshing”.

Also, gotta give the show points for having the family be two single parents from past relationships finding each other and getting married and for having Eileen be totally cool with her new in-law Gramps. 

*The Slobberers. Expanded from the first creatures from the books, I like that the apple-headed monster has giant worms for pets (again, gotta aggressively keep to the apple theming) and, while there’s a couple episodes where they’re just something to give The Appleman something to talk to, their designs are fun. Gives the animators an excuse to draw slime.

In a later episode, he mentions that he considers them his only friends and boy...that’s rough, buddy. 

*There’s an episode where characters travel into the Internet and fight a buff video game avatar of The Appleman in a late 90′s dungeon crawler computer game. I looooove late 90′s Internet imagery in cartoons, what can I say. You even see the dial-up pop window and a clunky late 90′s webcam!

*This is a show where a divorced man keeps bugging his own son and ex-wife while sometimes trying to kill his ex-wife’s new husband - all while keeping to a strict apple and virus theme - and honestly, this is a pro on its own. The Appleman is such a petty bitch at times and I love it.

*The Appleman is allergic to medicine. Minor touch, but I like that, since he’s a virus-themed bad guy, they apply “Revive Kills Zombie” logic on this guy and he literally can’t take painkillers because it’ll only cause him more pain and agony. This comes up in an episode where he’s screaming in pain and wishes he could make the pain go away but just can’t.

*The Title Cards. This is one of those shows that freezes on eye-catching artwork for each episode title before they continue with the rest of the episode and they’re really nice.

*The Accents. Forgot to mention this anywhere else, but since this is an Australian produced cartoon that aired primarily in Australia, everyone is rocking a very noticeable Australian accent and say things like “Oi, you two! Come and get a wriggle on!”. It’s fantastic.

They were definitely at the level where, if this show ever did make it to the states, they would’ve dubbed it to sound more American. And probably flip the animation so that the characters are driving on the opposite side of the road.  

The Cons

*The Reused animation and sound clips. This is unfortunately the show’s biggest strike against it. Once your brain picks out which scenes get reused and which voice clips get reused, you’ll notice that some of the episodes have a noticeably smaller polish than others. The episode “Decayed” in particular felt like 50% footage from previous episodes and boy, did it stick out like a sour thumb because of it.

That being said, I didn’t mind too much (watching a lot of B-list anime and Filmation shows will do that to you) and I feel like you would’ve noticed this a lot less if you weren’t blazing through all 26 episodes in a short period of time like I was. But it is definitely a bummer that they had to cut corners like this because again, when they don’t cut corners, this show looks utterly fantastic.

I guess the lesson here is that the animators of this show didn’t get paid enough, but really, you can say that about literally every animated project in existence.

*Weird continuity inconsistencies. This goes into a weird nitpicking “you probably only noticed this because you’re an adult with too much free time/boy I sure hope someone got fired for THAT blunder!” territory, but sometimes this cartoon does a thing where something minor is established and then the cartoon subtly retcons it.

Mostly I’m using this space to complain about how Dawn explicitly mentions that they don’t own a cat, but then in the “character shrinks to the size of an ant” episode, they have a pet cat! They have a pet cat that lasts a grand total of one episode and no one says anything!

What happened to the cat, Rory? What happened to the cat?!

(my theory is, like his father, it ran away from this family)

*Some episodes use stock cartoon plots. There is an episode where the main characters shrink to the size of an ant. There is a camping episode. There is a school dance episode. There is a Halloween episode. There is an episode focused on teeth. There is an episode that talks about the dangers of too much fast food.

Like the reused animation issue, depending on the episode, you end up not minding too much about this on account of how utterly bonkers The Appleman is when he’s concocting his evil schemes. The “characters teleport into the Internet” episode ended up being one of my favorites, as did the school dance episode.

But at the same time, two of my least favorite episodes are the stock episode plot episodes, so it’s definitely a mixed bag.

*They use real photographs in background shots and it bugs me. Come on, guys. Just have the blank wall or scribble in some posters. Anything will look better than this cartoon character standing right next to a still image from Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, especially when you clearly had the time to draw that cartoon skull on the door.

*The three plot-heavy episodes unfortunately have weaker animation. This just seems like weird planning on their parts, but Episode 1, Episode 4, and Episode 26 are all episodes that deal with backstory of The Appleman and this wacky dysfunctional family and, for some reason, they didn’t bring their A game in regards to actually animating these episodes.

I feel like if you’re dealing with heavy backstory, you need to make the episode look good, because that’s going to be the stuff that the audience remembers. You need to have the flashback of The Appleman’s horrific transformation while he was working at the old refinery look amazing, but instead it just....doesn’t.

(picture unfortunately related)

Just to make a note, the episodes with the most fluid animation are the following: The one with the mutant plants, the one with the mutant sheep, the Halloween episode, the episode with the dinosaur bones, and the episode where The Appleman learns how to make clones. None of these episodes are important to the overarching plot. 

*One of the episodes is unfortunately popular because it depicts animation that caters to the inflation fetish. Just...noting this for posterity. It makes google image searches of this cartoon a bit awkward. I’m not going to elaborate much further.

*There’s a minor transphobic joke in one of the episodes. In the episode “Decayed”, The Appleman dresses up like a nurse, tries to adopt a more feminine voice, and puts on makeup and fake eyelashes. Thankfully, this only happens for like three seconds and is never mentioned again.

The rest of the show otherwise passes the “can this still fly in 2020″ test. I’m just making a note here because it is pretty shitty. 

Closing Thoughts

Wicked! is not the best show in the world, and I struggle to call it “great”, but it is a solid and enjoyable one and honestly, the things that it has going for it are unique enough that I recommend giving it a shot despite its shortcomings.

If anything, my main takeaway from watching this whole show is that this show does not deserve to be as obscure as it is. At the very least, the concepts and characters introduced here are strong ones - the villain is a bitter divorced man transformed by a hate-feeding virus after all - and I feel that, in a more fair world, this show got the small but dedicated fanbase it so woefully needs. It doesn’t deserve a huge following of fans, but I say it definitely deserves a Fanfiction.net tag with 200 fanfics total and a lot more fanart than what it does.

While I’m not sure I could recommend it as one of the great obscure cartoons that everyone missed, I think it’s definitely worth checking out for anyone looking for a fun time. It’s definitely a hidden gem, even if the hidden gem has a few imperfections. If anything, this show is a definite wild ride and I think it’s time for everyone to give this cartoon a shot.

Anyway I got to see The Appleman playing Second Life and moving the muscle slider all the way to the right, so I obviously had a blast.

Next time, I talk about the actual episodes!