#this is a sitcom plot at this point op | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ghostess-with-the-mostess · 6 months ago

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Okay so I DO agree you're absolutely correct that Miraculous is an uneven mesh of different ideas that aren't thought through in the SLIGHTEST and make character relations wonky as hell, but can I also make a few small (ha) corrections to your explanation here? As well as bolster your points/bring up ways to actually do these plotlines well.

What you're describing isn't the magical girl genre, at least not in its entirety - what you're describing is the sentai/superhero team subgenre that was started by the likes of Sailor Moon and further expanded by Pretty Cure.

You're also correct in that drawing irresponsibly from this subgenre is (part of) what's causing all these problems, because the sentai/superhero stuff is what Miraculous Ladybug is consciously drawing on - but the conclusion from the writers of Miraculous (and your essay) that it's 'because magical girls and romcoms don't mix' is not only incorrect but it ignores the actual history of magical girls, both pre- and post-Sailor Moon.

MAGICAL GIRLS AS ROMANCE, AS SITCOM

"Miraculous is trying to be both a Magical Girl Show and a romantic comedy, but those are not genres that mesh."

First is the fact that the original magical girl template was FOUNDED on romance and sitcom tropes.

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Most sources are going to tell you that the origin point for Magical Girls was the sitcom Bewitched, which if you're not familiar, is about a witch falling in love with a mortal man and vowing to be a normal housewife for his sake - but her family, who doesn't approve the marriage, constantly interferes to break them up through their magic, thus hijinks ensue.

Not EXACTLY described as a romcom, but I'd argue it DOES count as at least romcom-adjacent seeing as the focal point is the relation between Samantha and Darrin, even if a big part of the conflict between their relationship comes from outside the two's interactions.

It was popular in Japan, and was where two of the three grandmas of all magical girls gets its main inspiration from - one series being Sally the Witch, which is about a witch girl who finds herself in the mortal realm and decides to stay when she makes some friends, but with the caveat she has to hide her magic powers - hijinks ensue.

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Now, with this one we do see some of that initial inspiration that would also bleed into Miraculous Ladybug well down the line - namely the whole 'keep your identity a secret' thing being a hard rule, rather than something the characters do for the sake of keeping their loved ones safe like in superhero works.

(Albeit, Miraculous does it incredibly poorly, as it IS the superhero safety thing, but wants it to be the magical hard rule because... drama.)

But this is the starting point of the original magical girl, founded on these sitcom tropes, whether or not they also include romance.

But they CAN be romance focused.

Two good examples of this type of sitcom magical girl with a romance focus (and hilariously, a more 'spooky' focus) exist both east and west.

In the West, (though most people might not really consider it) we have Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

(I just like making people aware that this actually existed)

Predating both Sally, as well as Bewitched by two whole years, Sabrina has had multiple permutations (the original comic, the ABC sitcom, four cartoons, the more recent show, and however many versions of her appear across the Archie-verse) but they generally follow a similar plot to Sally - girl who has to keep her witchy side secret from the normal people around her.

But compared to Sally and her friends, Sabrina doesn't really have consistent friend characters, sometimes not even within the same continuity/series.

But who is the most prominent human character? It's (at least usually) her love interest, Harvey Kinkle.

Interestingly, in a way that does bolster OP's essay, is while Harvey often gets to be the main human secret-keeper (when he's allowed to be, and for as long as it lasts), the one instance where its a female friend instead of him (the first DIC animated series) is also the first where he isn't really focused on as a love interest due to being a show for much younger kids (as far as my memory can go, it's been a while since I watched any Sabrina so forgive me.)

On the eastern side, is my beloved Tokimeki Tonight.

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God I love Tokimeki Tonight

Tokimeki Tonight revolves around Ranze Eto, a half-werewolf, half-vampire girl who finally gets her parents to allow her to go to public school, where she falls in love with a boy named Shun Makabe - but not only do her parents not want her dating a human boy, she also has a bitter rival in the form of the rich mob boss' daughter Yoko Kamiya. In trying to maneuver through this, she makes use of her power to turn into anything she bites (and turning back when sneezing), and with this, hijinks ensue.

Out of all the titles I'll bring up as examples this one is more magical girl-adjacent, particularly the manga which is much more shojo romance than classical magical girl (the anime, which only adapts a small portion of the manga, veers much closer to the genre) But it does have the hallmarks of those older series - girl with magical power, and the conflict of interest (having that same 'family nonapproval' thing as Bewitched) which she comes to blows with.

In the manga, she does have a couple of friends, but in the anime, we don't really see any friends of hers, at least not beyond any bit roles - the focus is on Ranze and Shun, and Yoko, her yakuza father and Ranze's own family/magic society who tries to get in between them.

No matter what, though, there is one through line between all of these series - a girl with magic powers, in conflict with her social life. Friends or romance, what is important here isn't the girl's relationships, but what the girl is going through.

There leads into my second point, and my main point of contention with OP's argument. Magical girl series aren't SPECIFICALLY all about 'women and their friendships'.

MAGICAL GIRLS - EXPLORATION OF SELF

It entirely depends on the series (and the sentai/hero subgenre often uses it because its a universally common trope to team-based kids programming) but the ONLY real requirement to a series being generally considered a magical girl series is that its about A) a girl, who B) has some sort of magic/power, that C) causes her conflict, either in daily life and/or through an antagonist they have to face.

Sally the Witch may have friends, but they are a means to an end so that Sally can get into hijinks that involve her hiding her magic from the normal, non-magical people in her life.

Sabrina and Ranze have love interests, but they often exist more as plot devices that drive along that same wacky conflict of keeping things a secret.

Not to mention: in those Showa-era days, there really wasn't a lot of 'magical girls fighting evil' like the whole genre has been wrapped up in. Rather, many of these stories would serve as vehicles for girls to be able to fantasize about all the sorts of fun things they could do, once they get older.

Lets get into that second grandma.

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Himitsu no Akko-chan, which predates Sally the Witch in manga form but didn't get adapted until after Sally's own adaptation, is about an elementary schoolgirl named Atsuko Kagami (nicknamed "Akko") whose mirror becomes enhanced by spirits thanks to the respect she'd given it upon it breaking, thus becoming a magical tool that allows her to transform into anyone and anything, and even allowing her to copy abilities of others.

This isn't the only magical girl series that has this type of setup - You have other early examples like the (more mundane) Marvelous Melmo, where a girl gets magic pills from her dead mother that allow her to age up and de-age at will, or Magical Princess Minky Momo, in which a Princess of a magic land is sent to help revive the hopes and dreams of mankind, usually via transforming into an older version of herself, with a costume and skills that suit the task on hand.

There's also the five Pierrot magical girls series, most notable of which is Creamy Mami, where a girl gets temporary powers from aliens that let her transform into an older version of herself that becomes an idol singer. Three out of the four other series that succeeded it (Persia, Magical Star Emi, and Fancy Lala) also transform into older/adult alter-egos.

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Now, this style of magical girl is pretty well (mostly, the above is the ad for a new Pierrot series) dead in favor of the Sentai-style or just team-based magical girl groups, but it IS another important branch of the magical girl trope - and none of these really focus on 'friendship' first and foremost.

Sure, these characters often have friends, families, love interests - but they are not the focus of any of these series. The focus is on the magical girl herself, as she learns lessons and experiences the cool possible things that the future holds for her as she grows from a little girl to a teen, and later, adult. Modern team shows do this as well, of course, but its through the circle of friends that she can confide in rather than the fantasy of the future.

But why did that shift occur, from slice-of-life-fantasy self-expression to beating up bad guys and friendship?

One (smaller) element is that it was thought that girls couldn't really handle/be interested in action series or genuinely evil threats.

This was quashed by the eventual success of Majokko Meg, which appealed to both boys and girls and had these elements, including the first dark magical girl, Non.

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If you've watched Sugar Sugar Rune, this is the show it cribbed its notes from.

Majokko Meg itself was the followup (in terms of the staff who worked on it) to Cutie Honey, which was not aimed at girls, being a sexy action comedy that skews way, WAY closer to being a classic Sentai like Kamen Rider, just happening to star a female hero (you know, for the sexy). It does still serve as a precursor alongside Meg to action-oriented magical girls before Sailor Moon existed, and thus does play a role into the gradual change the genre's most popular form would experience once SM did release.

But obviously that's not all it, right?

And for that we need to take a quick detour in the world of Idols.

MAGICAL GIRLS AND IDOLS: THE PAST AND FUTURE

In Zombie Land Saga, one of the girls, Junko, has difficulties embracing the modern idol culture. She's a fantastic singer and a great presence, but she's not a great dancer, and, more importantly - she struggles to work in a unit, as idols of the Showa-era were generally solo acts.

Magical girls and Idols are VERY inextricably linked, especially in the 80's - one of the most popular avenues to promote actresses in anime and live-action shows during that time was to have them release an idol album and do performances - Creamy Mami being one example of many, whose voice and singer would go on to produce over two dozen albums in the wake of Creamy Mami's popularity.

That's not the only way in which magical girls resemble idols - both in their most typical forms are market-and-merchandise-driven media that exists to advertise 'the idealized girl' albeit in different forms, and sometimes (though not always) to different market groups.

In the 80's, both the ideal magical girl and idol were usually a single girl as the promotion, untouchable yet relatable. By the 2000's, what was popular was instead a collection of different girls, often distinguished by certain characteristics that made them stand out, yet also act cohesive in the group, allowing them to gain a larger following than one might be able to alone.

Also, they dance!

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The multiple girls is especially important for magical girls, as unlike (most) Idol units, Magical Girl shows have a story to tell - and by the new millennium, having a more intricate story and world in place was becoming more important compared to the more story-light and sitcommy series made in the Showa Era. One of the easiest ways to do that is, of course, have more fleshed out (or at least different) characters that can actually bounce off each other.

Because, like. Girls, they have different personalities and interests, right? As much as I love Showa-era magical girls, many of them had quite similar 'average girl' personalities that made them comparably less distinct from each other. It's just good sense to cater to as wide a range as possible via more relatable archetypes split into multiple girls, rather than shoving every archetype into one bland girl.

(I'm no expert on Idol culture, especially in the 80's, but I don't believe the variance in personalities was much greater in that industry either - if an idol lover can correct me in another paragraph-spanning post, please do)

But that's not the whole picture, either.

Wait, I keep using words like 'Market', don't I?

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(look, I'm getting to one of my two points in making this, please allow me my very short rant to set my bullshit up)

I'm not saying anything new when I bring up that Magical Girls (and Idols) are intended to be money-machines - most animation made since the days of President Reagan have been made for the sake of making millions of moneys off of the kids (and kids at heart) that want to buy the toys, the merch, the dvds, the albums (if they bother with the last two), etc.etc.etc. And with more characters? That means you can make more merch, more dolls of the characters, each of their magical tools, blind bags that people can keep drawing on until they get the one actual girl they like, the works.

(But as long as people are properly passionate and have the time they need they can make good work, blah blah blah, if I get into the obvious here I will unquestionably go on a massive detour its 1am I've been thinking about and writing this for seven hours - just remember that point about passion and time for later when I attempt to wrap this around)

But with that, lets get to....

MAGICAL GIRLS AND FRIENDSHIP

So, this part is less about me explaining it, as OP explains it very well above. What I have here is just to explain the two series that founded this perception of magical girls being 'about friendship'

Sailor Moon and Futari wa Pretty Cure.

ESPECIALLY the first Sailor Moon anime.

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The original manga for Sailor Moon is long, albeit not even close to the longest out there, at a solid 18 volumes (later compiled into 12).

(Its also been eons since I read the manga and even longer since I watched the anime, I've fact checked this with a friend but forgive any errors I've made)

The manga does cover female friendships, of course - compared to many magical girls before this which were written by men, this was notable as a series written by a woman, both for the friendship element as well as its much darker story on top of that.

The anime, meanwhile, has 200 episodes which granted the anime a lot of juicy filler, including opportunities to further flesh out the other scouts, their daily lives, and their friendships with each other.

It also had Kunihiko Ikuhara as its second series director.

Now, the rumor mill has it that he HATED Mamoru with a fiery passion and quit because he wanted to break up the leading pair - this is more an exaggeration, at best. He's been on record saying that, really, he's just not fussy on the 'perfect prince' archetype that he felt Mamoru embodied (and is something he would explore in his beloved Revolutionary Girl Utena) and he moreso quit after SuperS because he disliked not having the creative freedom he wanted in his projects.

Even so, I would at least make the argument that his interest in the girls over Mamoru meant he kept the focus on the friendships between its female cast in the seasons he worked on, where a lesser director and/or writer might've taken that focus away and diluted it with something less important or unrelated (COUGH COUGH COUGH)

I didn't bring it up specifically above in my explanation about solo vs team, but this series probably WAS the one that blew everyone's minds and made them realize 'hey, more magical girls... means more depth, AND more merch to sell!' (depending on the individual's inclination of course)

This is taken up to eleven by the next big magical girl franchise to take off, Futari wa Pretty Cure, by putting all that friendship power into the single friendship between two girls. With this one, we get a bland satellite love interest (and a doomed villain love interest), but both of which are still overshadowed by the bond between Honoka and Nagisa - and from which the pattern of magical girl friendship would be perfected into a science.

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this is what I grew up on, you now must face it with your own two eyes and ears. Fresh was the airing season when I got into this series GET ON MY LEVEL NONCANADIAN/NONBRITISH SCRUBS

Again, I don't have to tell you how big Sailor Moon was, and how it was then followed up by Pretty Cure, Tokyo Mew Mew, Shugo Chara, Cardcaptor Sakura, and many, many others. So, of course, that's the series that defines 'magical girl' to MANY in the west.

I wanted to get into this topic because HONESTLY, AS A HIPSTER SHOWA-ERA ANIME LIKER it pisses me off to see people frame genres in these hyper-specific ways, likening them to hard rules when its better to look at these things like interconnecting threads that you'll snip pieces off and knit into a cool sweater - sure, the knots might be wobbly, the colours might be mismatched - some might think its the ugliest sweater ever made, others might love the colour clash - but its an effort of love built from one's own gathered ability and frame of reference, and it's really cool to unravel that sweater and see where it used to connect.

But that's only one point I wanted to make with this incoherent nightmare, I've still got more to say!

And that is...

ARE THERE MODERN TAKES ON OLD MAGICAL GIRL ARCHETYPES?

Obviously, of course there are - I just noted above that Pierrot's making a new magical girl series, and we'll see if they go for a classic solo girl or try to make a team.

Sugar Sugar Rune takes the classic 'girl from the magic world on a quest' archetype, where two friends must collect the hearts (or, more accurately, the emotional power) of human boys as a competition to see who becomes the new Queen, while evil lurks in the shadows threatening the world and their friendship.

Arina Tanemura is very fond the the classic magical girl as well - One of her earlier works, Full Moon o Sagashite, takes the magical idol/age-up and gives it a heavy does of tragedy, in that the girl is terminally Ill and is given this power by shinigami to find the boy she fell in love with before her time is up, and only gets more sad from there. There's also Idol Dreams, a josei manga which subverts the 'older form' magical idol girl by instead being about a woman pushing into her 30's that finds herself able to turn back into a teenager via experimental science, which as per the genre, she uses to enter the idol industry.

There's probably others I don't know as much about, but many of those would be pretty niche (or are just beyond my scope, who knows)

But there is one more series that I think does the 'sitcom-solo-magical-girl' thing, not great, but as a decent start.

Its called Miraculous Ladybug: season 1.

Okay, so I said I agree with OP, and the above essay does bring up Origins, which is a season 1 episode - I can't deny that we were seeing the cracks form as early as that. But a lot of those cracks are things we only really got a look at in hindsight.

Season 1, as it stands on its own, is a 6.5-7/10 decent start to a kid's cartoon that embodies the classic magical girl ~but with a twist~ alright.

Miraculous Ladybug, as stated in the opening, is about an ordinary girl named Marinette. She has a crush on young model Adrien Agreste, but has to hide the fact that she's his own biggest crush, the superhero Ladybug. The twist is - Adrien himself is also her sidekick, Cat Noir, who also must hide his identity from her, his father, end everyone else in his life. Hijinks, of course, ensue.

Its a neat little gimmick, turning the often normal/satellite love interest into arguably a more in-line typical magical girl than even its actual female lead, giving us two parallel protagonists that also serve as love interests to each other. It also has a diverse and fun, but one-note cast of characters that serve as decent satellite civilian friends for the cast, as well as fodder for the villain to use his abilities on.

If Ladybug had stayed a single season show, it might've been seen as a rocky but decent start to a possible franchise, with wasted potential in having not continued so that it could blossom into something great from its starting point, albeit perhaps with the less-considered risk of getting stale with its romcom setup.

But that's not what happened.

DESPITE EVERYTHING, LADYBUG IS A GODDAMN CONFUSED MESS

Like, what else do you need me to say that OP or dozens of other ML fans and critics haven't said? This show started what could've been a fun, modernized, general audiences take on the classic magical girl + superhero ~with a twist~ but bloats itself trying to line itself up to be more like other modern magical girl shows without considering its setup, gives its female protagonist self-reflection/lessons that range from weak to even sometimes terrible, putting what should've been civilian characters further ahead while sidelining one of its protagonists to the point that he doesn't get involved the THE FINAL BATTLE THAT REVOLVES AROUND HIS OWN BACKSTORY, failing to actually address this issue while acting like it was building to something meaningful about it all along (season 4), pretending to have character arcs for characters before taking it back and making them worse (Chloe) and thoughtlessly destroying the logic of its story so hard for the sake of drama that it turned its entire cast into Ron the Death Eaters in the countless fanfics and essays written of it.

But again - it doesn't work not because 'magical girls and romcoms don't mix' its because of the writers, who appear to be writing each season in EXTREMELY not enough time actually needed to smooth out the kinks. They are over-eagerly putting in all this glut because 'that's what a magical girl series should do' or 'this could be super hype!' to which companies looking to make more merch aren't going to complain about (yeah sure have 19 possible minimum heroes/villains think of all the toys and merch! environmental variants! fusions! power swaps! so many possibilities! The hype will keep them in!)

This comes at the cost of actual cohesion, and thus multiple threads that are just kind of being jumbled up into a ball that vaguely has the shape of a sweater.

Hbomberguy, when talking about RWBY, said that it 'threatens to be good' which is something I'd say aptly fits Miraculous Ladybug as well - there's a lot of good, or at least fun, ideas, but its so bogged down by that perceived 'idea of what magical girls should be' or 'what a good romcom should be' and hell, that whole 'each episode will have a bomb on par with Chat Blanc' bull that it just leaves something that becomes more fun when placed into the hands of fans that care about doing something fun with these characters, or this world.

I do think, now that the Gabriel arc is over and they're pushing the whole 'everyone is a permament hero!' thing, that the series DOES have the opportunity to swap to the ensemble cast idea presented at the end of OP's essay - Adrien and Marinette are together, leaving only their identities being revealed (and maybe, doing something with the fact that Marinette is now constantly lying to Adrien about his dad) on the table, so it might be neat to use this to further expand on their relations to the rest of the cast... not that I could see them feasibly doing something to that scale, with 18 heroes to work with, but its a lofty thought.

I have like a lot more to add but holy christ its now 3 am (at the time I finished this) and I should sleep

Pick One: Magical Girl Show or Rom-com. You cannot be both.

Early in season four we get the episode Gang of Secrets. An episode that ends with Marinette outing her secret identity to Alya. A touching moment that sparked outrage across the fandom because it meant that Marinette had made the choice to reveal her identity to her best friend while keeping her hero partner in the dark.

This choice spat in the face of the exceptions that many fans had for the series. Thousands of pre-season-four fanfics feature moments where Ladybug and Chat Noir promise each other that they'll be the first to know each other's identities. After the Alya reveal, scores of fanfics were written to salt on Marinette's choice to tell the "wrong" person.

Most of these fics feature a betrayed Chat Noir quitting or otherwise punishing Ladybug for breaking their promise to be each other's first, thereby destroying his faith in their partnership. But that promise was never made on screen. It only existed in the realms of fanfic and, when Chat Noir finally found out in canon, his reaction was largely neutral. He never once blamed Ladybug for her choice or pushed for a reveal or even asked for the right to tell one of his friends.

So what happened here? Why did the fans have such wildly unrealistic expectations of canon? Were their expectations even unrealistic or did canon betray them? The answer to that is not as straight forward as you might think because it all comes back to one of Miraculous' many, many, many writing problems: Miraculous is trying to be both a Magical Girl Show and a romantic comedy, but those are not genres that mesh. You can only be one (or you can be a third thing that we'll get to at the end as it's the easiest way to fix this mess, but I want to mostly focus on where the anger is coming from and why the writing is to blame.)

To discuss this mismatch, we're going to do something that breaks my heart and talk about some of Origins flaws. While I love that episode and unironically refer to it as the best writing the show ever gave us, it's not perfect and its flaws are all focused around trying to set up both genres. Do note that I'm going to use a lot of gender binary language here as magical girl shows have a strong focus on gender segregation and rarely if ever acknowledge gender diversity.

Let's Talk Magical Girls

Magical girl shows are shows that center on young women and their friendships. While male love interests are often present in these shows, the boys tend to take a backseat and function primarily as arm candy while the girls save the day and carry the narrative.

A great example of this is the show Winx Club. This show features a large cast of teenage girls who save the magical universe from various threats with their magical powers. Each girl has a love interest, but the boys are usually off doing their own thing and only occasionally show up for a date or to give the girls a ride on their cool bikes or magical spaceship. I don't even think that we see the guys fight or, if we do, it's a rare thing. They are not there to save the day. They are there to be shipping fodder.

Like most magical girl shows, Winx Club starts with the main character making friends with one of the girls who will eventually become part of her magical girl squad. This brings us back to Miraculous.

Did you ever find it weird that Origins implies that Marinette has no friends? She doesn't even have a backbone until new girl Alya shows up to become Marinette's First Real Friend:

Marinette: I so wish I can handle Chloé the way you do. Alya: You mean the way Majestia does it. She says all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. (pointing at Chloé) Well, that girl over there is evil, and we are the good people. We can't let her get away with it.

This is a bizarre opening because Miraculous is not about Marinette making friends or learning to stand up for herself. If you skipped Origins and just watched the rest of the show, then you'd have no clue that Marinette wasn't close with her classmates before this year. You also wouldn't know that Alya was new in town and you definitely wouldn't know that Marinette had never stood up to Chloé before this year. So why is this here? Why waste screen time setting up elements that aren't actually important to canon?

Miraculous did it for the same reason that Winx Club did it: magical girl shows traditionally start with the main character making friends with at least one of her eventual female teammates because Magical Girl shows are all about the girls and their relationships. The boys are just arm candy.

But Miraculous isn't a magical girl show. The writers have explicitly stated that it's a rom-com and romantic comedies aren't about female friendship. They might have female friendships in them, but that's not where the focus is. The focus of a rom-com is on the romance and Origins is very clearly all about the romance.

Origins as a Rom-com

Origins has a lot on its plate. It has to establish the villain's motivation for the first time, show us how the heroes got their miraculous, show us how the heroes first met on both sides of the mask, show us how they met their respective best friends, and show us how the heroes dealt with their first akuma. It would be perfectly understandable if this 40 minute two-parter didn't do anything with the romance. They have a full show to give us that!

In spite of this, Origins has some incredibly touching moments for both Ladynoir and Adrienette because romance is the heart of Miraculous. It is the main focus of the show. The driving motivation for both of our leads and the majority of the show's episodes. To tell the story of how their journey started without at least one of them falling in love would feel wrong. That's why we see both of them fall in love!

First we get Chat Noir giving his heart to his bold and brilliant lady, then we get Marinette's heart being stolen by the shy sweet boy who never once thought to blame her for her snap judgement of his character. We even get a touching moment where Chat Noir inspires his lady to accept her role and be Ladybug, leading her to boldly face their enemy and call him out:

Roger: I have a new plan, unlike you! Move aside and let the pros do their thing. You've already failed once! Ladybug: …He's right, you know. If I'd captured Stoneheart's akuma the first time around, none of this would have happened! I knew I wasn't the right one for this job… Cat Noir: No. He's wrong, because without you, she'd no longer be here. (they look at Chloe) And because without us, they won't make it, and we'll prove that to 'em. Trust me on this. Okay? Ladybug: Okay.

I love this moment, but it does lose a little of its power when you remember that we had an Alya-driven variation of this exact same thing five minutes prior:

Alya: HELP!! (Marinette suddenly gets filled with courage. She gets the case out of Alya's bag and puts on the Miraculous. Then, Tikki appears, happy to see Marinette again.) Tikki:(raising her arms) Mmmm! Marinette: I think I need Ladybug! Tikki: I knew you'd come around! Marinette: Well, I'm still not sure I'm up for this, but Alya's in danger. I can't sit back and do nothing.

This scene initially confused me because - if Miraculous is a rom-com - then why would you make Alya the reason that Marinette became Ladybug? Why wouldn't you have Chat Noir be the one in danger so that Marinette chose to fight because of her love interest and then encourage that bond with the later scene of him encouraging her? Why split the focus like this? Why give Alya so much attention?

In case you haven't figured it out, it's because Origins is trying to establish two different genres of show. Two genres that will continue to fight for the rest of the series (or at least the first five seasons).

Magical Girls Vs Rom-com

Why is Alya the one to shake off the nightmare dust and inspire the others during the season five finale? Why is Alya the one that Marinette trusts with all of her plans while Chat Noir is kept in the dark? Why does Alya and Marinette's friendship get so much more focus than Adrien and Nino's? Why was Alya the only temp hero who got upgraded to full time hero?

It's because Alya is Marinette's second in command in a magical girl show and magical girl shows focus on female friendships while the boys are just there to be cute and support the girls.

Why do most of Marinette's talks with Alya focus on Adrien? Why is Chat Noir the only other full time holder of a Miraculous for the first three seasons and then again for the final season? Why do Marinette's friends become more and more obsessed with Adrienentte as the show goes on? Why is the love square's identity reveal given so much more narrative weight than any other identity reveal?

It's because Miraculous is a rom-com and the love square is our end game couple, so of course the story focuses on their relationship above all else!

Are you starting to see the problem?

Circling back to our original question: no, it was not unreasonable for the fans to expect that the Alya reveal would have massive negative consequences for Ladynoir. That is what should happen in a rom-com and Miraculous is mainly written like a rom-com. But the writers are also trying to write a magical girl show and, in a magical girl show, Alya and Marinette's friendship should be the most important relationship in the show, so it makes perfect sense that the show treats the Alya reveal as perfectly fine because the Alya reveal was written from the magical girl show perspective.

When it comes to Miraculous, if you ever feel like a writing choice makes no sense for genre A, re-frame it as a thing from genre B and it suddenly makes perfect sense which is fascinatingly terrible writing! It's no wonder there are people who hate the Alya reveal and people who will defend it with their life. It all depends on which genre elements you've picked up on and clung to. Neither side is right, they've both been set up to have perfectly valid expectations. Whether those expectations are valid for a given episode is entirely up to the mercurial whims of the writers!

How Do We Fix This Mess

At this point, I don't think that we can, the show is too far gone, but if someone gave me the power to change one element of Miraculous, that element would be this: scrap both the magical girl stuff and the rom-com stuff and turn Miraculous into a team show where the friendships transcend gender.

At this point, I've written over a quarter of a million words of fanfic focused on these characters (the brain rot is real) and one thing I've discovered is that it is damn near impossible to keep Adrien and Alya from becoming friends. They're both new to their school while Marinette and Nino have gone to the same school for at least a few years. Alya and Adrien are both obsessed with Ladybug plus Adrien is a natural hype man who loves to support his friends and Alya loves to talk about her blog. Alya is dating Adrien's best friend. On top of that, Alya, Adrien, Nino, and Marinette are all in the same class, meaning that they pretty much have to be spending time together five days a week unless French school don't give kids a chance to socialize or do group projects. If so, then judging them for the first issue, but super jealous of the latter.

Given all of that, why in the world is does it feel like Alya is Marinette's close friend while Adrien is just some guy who goes to Alya's school? Along similar lines, while canon Marinette barely talks to Nino, I've found that Marinette and Nino tend to get along smashingly, especially if you embrace the fact that they have to have known each other for at least a few years.

If you embrace this wider friendship dynamic and scrap the girl squad, replacing it with Alya, Adrien, Marinette, and Nino, then the fight for narrative importance quickly goes away. It's no longer a question of is this episode trying to be a magical girl show or a rom-com? Instead, the question is: which element of the friend group is getting focused on today? The romance or the friendship?

A lot of hero shows do this and do it well. I think that one of the most well known examples is Teen Titans. That show has five main characters and the focus is usually on their friendships, but there is a very clear running romantic tension between the characters Robin and Starfire with several episodes giving a good deal of focus to their romance. I'd say that this element really starts in the show's the 19th episode - Date with Destiny - and it all culminates in the movie that capstones the series: Trouble in Tokyo. The character Beast Boy also gets a romance arc and, while it's more short lived, it's further evidence that you can have strong romances and strong friendships in the same show and even the same episode. You just have to own the fact that boys and girls can be friends with each other, a very logical thing to embrace when your show has decided to have a diverse cast of heroes instead of imposing arbitrary gender limitations on its magical powers.

I couldn't figure out a way to work this into the main essay, but it's relevant so I wanted to quickly point it out and give you more to think about re Origins. Have you ever found it weird how Origins gives both Adrien AND Marinette the "I've never had friends before" backstory and yet wider canon acts like Marinette has this strong amazing friend group while Adrien doesn't seem to care about making friends and instead focuses all his energy on romance? Why give both the protagonist and the supposed deuteragonist this kind of origin if it's not going to be a major element of the show? It makes so much more sense to only give one of them this backstory and then focus that person's character arc on learning about friendship.

#Please enjoy my nightmare brain thoughts and magical girl summationary this took me like ten hours not including sleeping on it #I may not have a (public) ML fanfic but know I think about magical girls and old anime an unhealthy amount #and ML too #this probably sucks but I so rarely feel the need to speak up so I hope i managed to like #achieve some vague cohesion #I'm in my brain too much lol so I won't be surprised if people say it makes no sense #or goes too off the rails #miraculous ladybug spoilers #also mild unrelated tangent THE BOYS IN WINX CLUB DO HAVE IMPORTANCE IN THE EARLIER SEASONS #HELL FINDING OUT SKY WAS LYING TO HER STARTS BLOOMS LOW POINT THAT LEADS TO THE TRIX STEALING HER POWERS #THUS LEADING TO THE SEASON 1 FINALE #ONE OF THE BOYS LIKE SACRIFICED HIS OWN LIFE IN SEASON 4 DAMMIT AND IT WAS BULLSHIT #ALSO THIS ENDED UP BEING OVER 4000 WORDDDSS #Youtube

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kyzveryown · 2 years ago

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Opinion — That 90's Show I know this is blog primarily for my opinions and thoughts on games, anime, and manga but since I never use my personal account, I figured I post this here. That 70's Show is my favorite sitcom of all time. So, I was skeptical when a sequel/continuation was announced but even more so by the fact that Netflix was involved. Now, having watched the entire season, my overall opinion is that it was mediocre. Not bad. Not great. Just average.

The old cast cameos along with Red and Kitty were the highlights of the episodes. The new kids however are a different story. When the scenes are focused on Red and Kitty, the show feels very reminiscent of That 70's Show. When the kids are the focus, it feels like you're watching a cheesy 2000's Teen Nick/Disney Channel show. I understand that the new cast is young, and ten episodes isn't enough for them to settle into the roles and develop some chemistry, but their comedy and line delivery is horrible. The first few episodes were rough. It gets slightly better later though.

Now, onto the characters themselves. Despite my criticism of the acting, the characters themselves are mostly fine. Leia is basically Eric but a girl. There are two Kelsos for some reason. Jay is Kelso #1 but slightly less of an idiot. Nate is Kelso #2 but chubby and insecure. Gwen is like a dollar bin Hyde (not a bad thing though) and Nikki is a mixture of Donna and Hyde if that makes sense. And then there's Ozzie. I don't like him. He's annoying and feels out of place. The writers could've done a hell of a lot better with him.

I don't have any issues with the others aside from Jay whose only personality trait is that he's a Kelso, and Nikki having hardly any screen time without Nate. Nate, Gwen, and Nikki (whenever she's not with Nate) are somewhat enjoyable. Of the three, Nikki and Gwen are probably the closest to the That 70's Show characters. They both have the personality, aura, and humor of the original. If it wasn't for the mediocre jokes and line delivery, then they'd be good. With time and hopefully better writing they'd likely improve. Same with Nate.

Plot wise, each episode had an okay-ish story with low points. Given this is only the first season (assuming they'll be more) that's to be expected. The Leia-Jay-Nate love triangle was rushed. Again, there's only ten episodes so it is what is. Aside from that, I'm not a fan of the OP theme though I attribute that more to nostalgia. Like I said earlier, the show is definitely mediocre but it's worth the watch if you’re curious.

#thoughts #opinion #that 90's show #that 70's show #critique

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popculturebuffet · 3 years ago

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Prep and Landing Retrospective: Original Special and Operation: Secret Santa (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Ho ho ho all you happy people! Christmas continues on this blog and while I wait to do christmas with my dad, i’ts time for another stocking full of good cheer. This time it’s another commission from friend of the blog kev and for a short and sweet look at a short and sweet franchise: Prep and Landing

Prep and Landing has a clever premise I utterly adore: it follows the titular group, a special ops group of elves whose job it is to prep things so santa can land safetly and without being seen. They have ornaments made of knockout dust, grappling candy canes and a little gingerbread man that tells them what creatures are stirring, and set up a special landing strip so santa knows which house to hit. It’s a wonderful twist on Santa and this premise rightfully got expanded on in a total of four works: a half hour special setting things up, a 7 minute special clearly made to fill in the gaps when Charlie Brown Christmas or something else that went over half an hour was aired, an 8 page comic story about them prepping earth’s mightiest mansion for earth’s mightieist christmas, and finally one final short. At the time of this writing there seem to be no plans to bring the franchise back, which is weird given both Disney+ is ravenous desire for content and love of bringing back old animated properties instead of expanding current ones or you know.. giving shows spinoffs HINT HINT, and the fact this is a solid premise. It could easily be rebooted or revived as a full film or a series to release around novemeber and december.

SO i’ll be taking a two part look at the franchise: one of the shorter works paired with one of the specials. So come under the missle-cut with me as we unwrap these shorts and see if they stuck the landing the first time around or ran into some turbulence.

Prep and Landing: The original special follows Wayne, an elf who outlines the job in a beautiful opening sequence... before it’s shown he’s been doing this for hundreds of years and has burnt out. Going through the motions, even if the motions change slightly as society changes, hundreds and hundreds of times, going through partner, after partner, after parnter and watching them either move on to better jobs or get their own partners.. it’d get tiring. You have to realize Wayne isn’t someone like thor, dealing with senses shattering threats like mangogs, frost giants and sibling rivalry. He’s just a guy doing his job, has done for centuries and simply wants to move on. I’d also just like to mention Wayne is played by David Foley, canadian wunderkind from the sitcom news radio. He’s not a PERFECT fit for a jaded washout honestly, i’d of gone with brad garret or sometone a bit more grumbly, but he still does his best and I still like seeing him pop up.

So naturally the next christmas he parades around, celebrates having head of nice list intellegence in the bag and totally won’t find out he didn’t get the job oh wait no never mind he didn’t and he’s bummed the fuck out.

Yeah this is easily the thing that holds the special back. This old chesnut. Part of it is that i’ve seen this so many fucking times. Now seeing something a LOT dosen’t really bother me. Enemies to lovers, a grumpy person coupled with an energetic one, a hero learning the life of adventureing isn’t as easy as it looks or sound and having to come to terms with that and what they really want, ski trips, evil clones, parallels between the hero and villian, journeys into a characters mind.. i’ve seen all these a lot, some more than others. But I likes em. But some tropes just wear on you after seeing them oh so many times. Will They Or Won’t They can eat my entire ass at this point. And so can this trope: it CAN work, but it’s been used so many fucking times, in sitcoms, animation and i’m sure even all the way back to the glory days of radio, that you NEED to tweak it or it just annoys me. Soul for instance used a similar plot: our hero wants this big job playing jazz, and has built it up as his reason for living.

The other reason we’ll get to as Wayne grumpily heads out with his new partner, overenthuastic rookie Lanny to do the job. He proptly decides fuck it, leaves all the work to Lanny and sits on his ass and eats cookies, as would I if I got passed over for a promotion with no explination. Lanny minorly screws up, cutting up part of a tree, but mostly does okay and it’s Wayne who ends up caught by Timmy, the young boy living at the house. Lanny covers for him quickly.. but we then get to the part that really sinks the special slightly: the way Wayne’s burnout is treated. While him doing nothing and goofing off is objectively not great, and some of the jokes during this part are funny like him using a santa cookie as an outlet for his anger at the big man himself, taunting him by not turning on christmas specials for long and then biting his head off, the problem is Lanny and Magee kinda overblow his actions. He slacked off once in hundreds of years and got caught. He’s a bit of a dick sure, and he needs to learn a lesson.. but being mad because he dosen’t ENJOY the job after doing it hundreds of years is just as douchey. Lanny I give a pass to, he dosen’t realize how burnt out Wayne is and still gets why the jobs important (getting presents to deserving kids and making their christmas for them), but Magee (santa’s mission control woman and wayne’s superior) knows wayne. Apparently she dated him breifly according to suplimentals. Their old friends.. and she acts like he’s bein gthe biggest fucker in the world.. when she TOLD HIM HE DIDN’T GET THE JOB TO HIS FACE. Lanny dosen’t have any context for why Wayne’s acting this way, I get him being outraged and I get her being pissed, he is slacking off. But she shoudl damn well know WHY he’s being an ass and actually talk to him instead of essentially shouting SNAP OUT OF IT ASSHOLE. I mean he should snap out of it asshole but his problems run deepr.

Wayne does snap out of it though when he realizes that due to not being done already and a heavy snowstorm, they may have to cancel and realizing why he did this job in the first place, Wayne rallies, convincing Santa to turn around (something he does because of course he does he’s santa. He’s the purest soul around next to jesus and superman), and getting help from a giddy Lanny, happy his hero is actually everything he thought he was. They can’t get the landing strips out, but Wayne improvises, using some decorations Lanny spotted earlier, an excellent chekovs gun, and the skis they have on their boots, because of course, to make an impromptu lander. Santa gets there in time, christmas is saved, and our hero learned a lesson.

Santa himself.. is throughly likeable. While he SHOULD have told Wayne about getting passed over unlike the others, he takes Wayne’s breakdown in stride, pointing out everyone dips into being naughy once in a while, even offering him the promotion which he of course turns down to work with lanny. But still it shows that while Santa REALLY needs to learn how to email his employees, he’s a good hearted man: he didn’t gave wayne the promotion right away not to be a dick, but because he wanted to remind him why he did his orignial job, as well as train a worthy successor.

But still understandable. It’s also REALLY hard to get mad at santa honestly. I wanted to but unless the version of him is REALLY a huge dick, it’s hard to get mad at the guy. Again he’s as nice as superman, jesus and superjesus, an alternate superman whose also jesus.

Final Thoughts on P and L: This special is not bad but a I pointed out it has issues: the plot of a jaded elf learning his job matters isn’t bad, the execution is just spoiled eggnog. Tastes bad, gives you indjestiion, and ruins something great. The rest of the short is fine with clever bits of world buildnig, from fun holiday puns to things I didn’t really get to mention in the review proper: the reindeer who are pumped up loveable bros wearing skin masks that look like lucha masks and are a delight, and the coal elves, elves whose job is to deliver coal to naughty kids. The world here is REALLY expertly built and clever, down to the door to santa’s office having a smaller door built in for the elves since he towers over them, it just needed a better plot to go with it. Still it’s not a terrible one, and it’s enjoyable enough.. I just feel there are far better holiday specials that deal with this sort of christmas burnout way better.. one of whom we’ll see in a few weeks.

And honestly i’m only one christmas in and i’ve already covered way worse, wether it was the post apocalyptic sitcom Whoops!, or the star vs christmas episode where Tom got yelled at and called a bad boyfriend for respecting what his girlfriend actually wanted while Marco got treated heroically for being a selfish dick trying to impress his best friends girlfriend. And that’s not even GETTING into things i’ll probably cover at some point like that time Hank Hill was booed for not wanting a woman to die in his house, the time EVERYONE in Jenny Wakeman’s life except her stalker assumed the worst of her or this monstrosity

Not the best but FAR from the worst

Operation: Secret Santa

Now THIS is more like it. Since this one’s easy enough to wedge inbetween other holiday content, being only about 7 minutes, i’ve saw this one pop up far more often before I cut the cord. And it’s really the franchise given i’ts proper due: it’s a simple short plot but a great one.

This time around the boys are giving a top secret mission by the big woman herslef, Mrs. Claus, played by betty fucking white everybody!

The woman’s career should speak for itself.. but it also shoudln’t have to: vetran of both the Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls, Betty hasn’t ever stopped working much like her friend and former coworker the late great ed asner. She did have a big career revivial around this time, getting yet another sitcom in Hot in Cleavland and a big roll in the Proposal, that she got to host SNL. Bout damn time.

So she’s naturally a good fit as Mrs. Claus who wants the boys to steal a box from Santa’s office. Wayne of course takes this in stride, clearly knowing Santa’s marriage is stable and thus whatever she’s asking, it’s legit. So this time around it’s Lanny whose the liablity as his sheer terror of santa exiling them over this makes him freeze up. The rest of it is simply a fun caper as our heroes have to manuver around santa during the ten minute nap he takes (as he’s so busy the rest of the time around the holidays, he never leaves the office), around three, and even visit his personal workshop/man cave. No really Mrs. Claus flat out admits it’s the stuff she simply dosen’t want in her house (she left them recordings to walk them through it), as well as where he works on his pet projects like mechanical reindeer or robot santa.. though that one... didn’t turn out so well.

Our heroes naturally pull it off and the final stretch of it is extra aweosme as wayne uses a snowflake ninja star to hit santa’s old fashioned clock’s minute hand, turning it back JUST long enough for them to book it.

What was in the box was even MORE heartwarming: as it turns out it was a tiny wheel.. and Mrs. Claus has, after what had to be decades of work, managed to find the rest: a small wooden duck that was the first thing santa ever built.

As you can tell Operatin; Secret Santa is a step up: with the premise now etched in stone, they can simply have fun with it while not trying to slap a fairly cliche plot on top. The result is an ultra fun ultra short romp that I need to start rewatching now I can every season now Disney+ exists.

So that’ sit for the first part. I’ll have part 2 in a couple of weeks, as next week , after a vegetable based interlude, we’ll be doing some DUCKS. So look forward to that and happy holidays.

If you enjoyed this review consider joining my patreon HERE> it helps keep this blog as my job and allows me to do more stuff. 5 bucks a month nets you your own GUARANTEED review of whatever half hour thing you want a month.

#christmas #santa #prep and landing #disney #lanny #wayne #dave foely #betty white #holiday

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meandmyechoes · 3 years ago

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Anime round-up!

Since I’m back on holiday mode, I burnt through anime at an incredible speed. I finish one each day haha. I followed much less anime the October season than the last, only Mieruko-chan was on the menu and I picked up the Taisho romcom out of boredom. They are alright.

They are pretty similar but I like Summer’s Kuromaid better. The characters and setting are more interesting with a fantasy element and slight mystery. The flirtations are funnier over there with necessary touching and reflective moments. The Taisho romcom did make use of the titular time period and like it advertised, gives a more ‘pure’ story. Things are very rose-tinted. It was a bit, traditional fairy tale, old-fashioned day drama even - but in a heartwarming enough kill-time way.

Mieruko on the other hand, hits the passing mark but I have to knock a few points off for the excess sexy fanservice. It wasn’t like that in the original manga. You expect maybe some suggestive shots of Hana like the horror girl trope, but it distracts and i wasn’t sure i could continue three episodes in. Luckily the plot starts to pick up as it simultaneously hits your tear spot witht the famed Granny tale and Miko’s father. The scary elements are quite good though, so is the comedy. The monsters are ugly, relying on Miko’s indecision instead of jumpscare. Yulia’s misconception of Miko’s power was particularly funny. It’s off to a slow start, and perhaps not very climatic ending curtesy of the little and ongoing source material. Luckily it did not go off-track like another manga-adptation last season, Shadow House. I look forward to the rest of the story but not sure I do in anime form. Looks likely it’d get a S2. Checked out the manga in under an afternoon.

A shoutout to Uramichi Oniisan. Dark comedy about adulthood and capitalism is my jam. So, the first thing I binged is Vampire Dies in No Time. It was almost a PPT but i lauged out loud so much. Kind of pointless kind of loud, but it was a nice four hours spent.

I really looked forward to the music x battle theme of takt. op destiny before its release. After I finished it, I don’t, I don’t really know what to say. It doesn’t really make use of music itself all that much despite its speeches about how crucial it is. Regardless for its effective atmosphere and emphasis on the appreciation of music, unlimited to classical, the pacing was the biggest problem. I thought it would be all epic battles but it was a road trip but then the world’s ending??? Well, I saw the pretty people on the poster and started watching, but I clicked on the second episode and was all ??? over my head and was like ‘so it’s maho shoujo + pokemon’ but the road trip wouldn’t end and i’m like ‘is this going to stay a character-based sitcom what a waste of worldbuilidng we saw little of’ and episode 11 hits me like a truck and i’m. not quite sure how the boss’s plan world but i guess his motiviation is okay-conveyed geh. The moment I learned it was a prequel to the mobile game its mess makes a lot more sense. But I am concerned about how good a job it does for promoting the game when it’s not really about the same characters. You could even say the emotional core from the anime is not going to get their happy ending. I’m kind of used to these goodbyes so I’m ok, I just feel like, the whole thing is a bit wasted potential. So say if it’s an original anime it’d be even more disappointing. The characters and designs are charming though, so if you come for Madhouse and MAPPA’s visuals, you definitely get your money’s worth. Still worth a watch I’d say, the first nine episodes are pretty good, but better spoil yourself first. That op is a banger though. The exact mix of sensory overload and soothing.

I am not a fan of isekai but since I watched Katarina in April I’m more open to it. Realist Hero fits my expectation that it presents a simplified but plausible manual for rebuilidng a medieaval magic kingdom’s economy. The worldbuilding is surprisingly solid with interspecies/international tension and real-life conflicts like natural disasters. It wasn’t heavy on the comedy like it does with building a harlem but stay focused on the drama of revolutionizing the goverment structure. I can pretend I learnt something. Will be following this season ‘cause I have nothing better to do haha. There’s one with similar permise where the prince is trying to increase the kingdom’s value so to sell it and retire at 25. That one is more sitcom and dumb luck so let’s see.

Started Komi-san Can’t Communicate today. Love it so far. Clever use of the manga panelling and on-screen text effects. The dialogues aren’t bare. Funny and a varied and distinct cast. Look forward to finishing it.

For this season, my money’s on Sono Bisuku Dōru wa Koi wo Suru. Yeah, I don’t know why i’m making myself watch romcoms three seasons in a row. But this show is as close to made for me with a protagonisht who loves to sew and make his own dolls and an anime lover. The first episode is really pretty and smooth. I’d binge it if it’s all release haha.

Another one I had a delight in is Kuroitsu-san from the Monster Development Dpeartment. Yeah! Tokusatsu Saikou! And they featured real local heroes I couldn’t be more proud. I had a great time with Heaven Design this season last year and I only expect it to be even more up my alley with specific tropes and similar realist comedy like Uramichi Oniisan or Hataraku Saibou Black. But even more niche haha.

#anime #myechoes

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amrv-5 · 1 year ago

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My take (sorry for adding a ridiculously long essay onto your post OP, feel free to ignore) is that the answer is a complicated yes. More below the cut, ‘cause, god this is long I’m sorry.

So to ground that claim, I’ll start by saying that drift compatibility (in the first Pacific Rim, I have no interest in the weird retconning Uprising did with the concept of drift compatibility here) seems to be based mostly in the potential for two people to work in sync. We know that the potential of it can be gauged via sparring—Raleigh has that line “Remember, it’s about compatibility. It’s a dialogue, not a fight.”

To me, that explains Newt and Hermann’s drift compatibility later. We see over and over that those guys are intellectually/verbally sparring constantly, playing out old arguments, knowing precisely what the other is going to say before he says it. Even though they don’t always get along, and in fact lightly antagonize each other, they still understand each other. They can dialogue.

Which brings us to Hawkeye and BJ. Those guys can dialogue, too. Oh boy can they dialogue. Check out their first few scenes in Welcome to Korea. In the span of a few minutes the guys have already fallen into a few schemes together — passing Radar off as a corporal-captain using BJ’s bars, joking in code at each other, stealing a general’s jeep together. They fall into a rhythm of dialogue and action immediately. By the end of the episode it’s clear BJ’s completely aligned with Hawk (muddy, drunk, already mocking Frank, etc.).

I’ll concede that you can pass off a lot of that as plot pressure: WtK really needs us to get on board with BJ Hunnicutt, and get on board fast. Two of, like, five or six primary cast members are missing at this point, so Hawk (and the audience) have to see BJ and Hawkeye as compatible, or we might bail on the season entirely.

But that sort of immediate sense of connection stays on through the season. BJ and Hawkeye build a bar memorial to Henry in the next episode. By “The Late Captain Pierce,” Daniel calls BJ, not Potter, the camp CO, for information about his son’s ‘death.’ BJ knows Hawk well enough by that point to silently sense when Hawkeye’s mood dips at the party. Not to mention their ridiculously constant wordplay. They pick up each other’s jokes, finish each other’s punchlines. Also a sitcom dialogue convention (nobody talks like that) but, like, come on. If drift potential is based on dialogue compatibility, these guys nearly never miss a beat with each other.

That’s my ‘yes’ justification. My ‘but it’s complicated’ followup is based on the fact that drifting also according to the first movie relies on openness — willingness to let somebody into your head. I think this might be tough for both Hawk and BJ to a point, in different ways.

We know Hawk canonically has trouble prioritizing people over work. He’s not always the best at being present in that way, especially in intimate relationships, and so I imagine it might be difficult for him to focus entirely on being in the here and now—plus he has a few lines about thinking too fast, having trouble slowing down, which might pose a problem in regards to the “chasing the rabbit” drift issue where a person latches onto a thought and follows it, dragging the other person into their own mind instead of focusing on a problem at hand. Hawk is a force of personality. It might be difficult to manage that at first.

And then BJ. I think—and I know this isn’t always the most popular interpretation of the character—but I think he has a lot of layers. He’s got some interesting quiet anger that comes out in bursts, and he becomes increasingly (visibly...) angry as the war wears on. Conflicts where he and Hawkeye are ‘out of sync’ (see Preventative Medicine) are also increasingly common. Hence why I think there may be some issues with BJ’s willingness to let people in as time wears on. He seems to be keeping a lot of stuff down. He isn’t always the best at being honest with himself and others (see GFA) which could interfere with a successful drift, too.

That said, I do think those potential conflicts are the exceptions to their usual dynamic, which tends to be just ridiculously in sync (Mako and Raleigh have their own issues, too, and they have a stronger neural handshake than most pilots we see in the first movie). For Hawkeye and BJ, being in sync is a fundamental part of their sitcom buddy dynamic. They have a language all their own by script design, and I don’t think it gets any more “dialogue compatible” than that.

Are Hawkeye and BJ drift compatible? Sound off

#god OP i am so fucking sorry #tagged in by remy and lisa on this and. well.#that's the thing I'm Sensitive About (drift compatible beejhawk)#anyway. this is insane.#so sorry op. again. begging your forgiveness

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twentiethcenturymoviesandtv · 4 years ago

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M*A*S*H: Genre and Themes

Considering the fact that M*A*S*H is a show set during the Korean War, about a mobile army surgical hospital a few miles from the front line, it seems impossible that it could be anything but a war show, albeit a dramedy centered on Armed Farces, much like the shows Hogan’s Heroes or McHale’s Navy.

And indeed, as it turns out, M*A*S*H is a war dramedy. No more, no less. This isn’t one of those times where I try to convince you otherwise.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a look anyway.

In many previous ‘genre’ articles, I’ve mentioned the basic fact that there are very few pieces of media, whether movies, shows, or books, that can be placed in only one category of genre. As I’ve pointed out, even the most apparently one-dimensional works of art contain aspects common to other genres, which makes sense. No show is created to fit in one single category, and the best examples fit into several. Although most shows are able to be categorized into one main genre, the fact is, a film or show tends to naturally carry more characteristics of one specific genre than others.

In the case of M*A*S*H, though, the melding point between the genres can be a little tricky to spot. In a show like this, picking out the ‘dominant’ genre is harder than one might think. It’s a sitcom that refused to stick to format (or a laugh track), a war show that lasted three times longer than the war it was about, and a drama that was more than capable of laughing through the tears and heartache inherent to the tragedy of the situation around them.

In other words, each individual genre of M*A*S*H ‘mashes’ together, to the point where they’re inseparable from one another.

So, naturally, we’re going to see how that works. Today, we’re going to be analyzing M*A*S*H in order to dissect its use of genre, be it comedy, war, or drama, and how these all fit together to create the most iconic war sitcom of all time.

Let’s take a look, starting with the opening credits.

The opening credits of a show can say a lot about it. The theme of a television show is there for a reason, and not just so that people have time to get their snacks and sit down before the story starts, and it’s not just to list the cast and crew. No, the opening credits for any show set the stage for the show, the ‘setup’, giving the audience members a taste of what’s to come. The music choice and the decision in what clips are used is instrumental in setting up the audience’s expectations, as done in sitcoms like Growing Pains, with shots of the main family over upbeat music, or Star Trek, with an instrumental exciting theme over the Enterprise soaring through space.

With that said, how does M*A*S*H open?

Well…not in a particularly funny way, I’ll say that much.

The music used for the opening credits for M*A*S*H is an instrumental variation of the theme used for the film: titled ‘Suicide is Painless’. While losing an edge of ‘grimness’ thanks to the lack of lyrics, the visuals accompanying it are anything but uplifting.

The sequence shown over the opening of each M*A*S*H episode is the same: helicopters arriving from the front with wounded. Hawkeye Pierce and (depending on the season) either Trapper McIntyre or B.J. Hunnicut approach the choppers, examining the patients, and delivering orders, taking them back down to the camp.

It’s not funny, it’s not uplifting…it’s war.

And that’s the point.

Each M*A*S*H episode opening is the demonstration of the central tone of the entire series: no matter what hijinks are going on in this episode, be they Radar learning to DJ or Klinger going for the pole-sitting record, in the end, they are in a war, and people are getting hurt, and killed, and that’s why these people are here: to stop it as best they can. The opening of each episode is the reminder of that: that these men are doctors, and for all of their insanity, in the end, they care about the patients. No jokes, no smiles, just business.

So, how does that reflect the show it belongs to?

To be honest, the opening can seem a bit incongruous with the show itself, at times. Especially in the early years.

M*A*S*H is often remembered as a war sitcom, which, in all fairness, it was. It was funny. Episodes like “Adam’s Ribs”, “Yankee Doodle Doctor”, and “Captain Tuttle” are just a few in a large selection of episodes focused around making the audience (and characters) laugh. Watching B.J. and Hawkeye play a game with no rules is really entertaining, and so is watching Henry Blake’s desk get flown off in a trade for medical supplies. But what’s important to remember is, M*A*S*H was no Hogan’s Heroes.

At the end of the day, the situation, as funny as it might have been, was not ‘okay’. There was no sense of overall ‘security’ like there was in other war sitcoms: in M*A*S*H, the war took center stage.

The best example of M*A*S*H’s use of genre may be in the early episode, “Yankee Doodle Doctor”. The episode itself is pretty simple: A documentary is being made about the 4077th, which, as the staff soon discovers, is essentially war propaganda. Hawkeye and Trapper destroy the footage in existence, in order to create their own ‘film’. The movie they make is a Marx Brothers pastiche, intentionally over-the-top humorous…until the end of the episode.

The final shot of the 4077th’s film is not a closing joke from the Groucho-esque Hawkeye Pierce. Rather, it is a monologue, delivered by Hawkeye from Post-Op:

“Three hours ago, this man was in a battle. Two hours ago, we operated on him. He’s got a 50-50 chance. We win some, we lose some. That’s what it’s all about. No promises. No guaranteed survival. No saints in surgical garb. Our willingness, our experience, our technique are not enough. Guns, and bombs, and anti-personnel mines have more power to take life than we have to preserve it. Not a very happy ending for a movie. But then, no war is a movie.”

He’s right. This isn’t a happy ending, and it’s not a funny one, either. And that is what M*A*S*H is all about.

M*A*S*H was a sitcom in that it was full of characters being funny, often accompanied by the laugh-track that was part of the package of a comedy show of the time. On the other hand, the show was also a war show, constantly tackling ideas like coping with death.

Both of these are huge parts of its identity as a show, but in the end, that’s not what M*A*S*H was really about. It was about the people.

M*A*S*H may have started out as a show about a bunch of off-the-wall doctors engaging in wacky hijinks and antics, but it ended as a family struggling together to hold onto sanity in the middle of a war. As with most television shows, the characters and individual plots for M*A*S*H are directly influencing the genre it’s placed in, and as a result, it’s a little hard to pin down.

Like I said, the show is centered around the personnel in a M*A*S*H unit, and their struggle to maintain control of their lives in an uncontrollable situation. And while these episodes aren’t always realistic, or even remotely plausible, the characters feel realistic and plausible, flexible enough to fit into multiple genres and scenarios without changing.

There are funny episodes, and tragic episodes, but honestly, most were bittersweet. Life, and war, are messy, and episodes like “Good-Bye, Radar”, “The Interview”, “Old Soldiers”, or even “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” were reminders of that. M*A*S*H couldn’t shy away from what it was, to do so would be dishonest.

To quote Hawkeye himself:

“If jokes seem sacrilegious in an operating room, I promise you they’re a necessary defense against what we get down here at this end of the draft board.”

In the end, that’s what the show was all about.

Characters were exaggerated, sure. Scenarios were somewhat removed from reality. But at the end of the day, M*A*S*H understood that life, and war, don’t have a genre. There is drama, and there is comedy, and the two are intermixed, underscored by the occasional laugh-track, used sparingly as the show went on.

It’s important to note that the drama in the show wasn’t always big drama. It wasn’t always steady streams of patients into the O.R., or Hawkeye’s mental breakdowns. Sometimes it was Radar’s mom trying dating again, or Margaret getting married. And just the same, the comedy on the show wasn’t always big-laugh moments like the Mulcahy sound-alike contest. Typically, the comedy in M*A*S*H was rooted in something else: interactions between characters.

The humor in M*A*S*H was less reliant on ‘wacky hijinks’ and more grounded in Radar’s sneaky side-insults, Frank Burns putting his foot in his mouth, B.J. and Hawkeye laughing at one another’s jokes, or Mulcahy’s willful ignorance of some of the camp’s activities. The audience laughs with these characters, rather than at them. The characters feel like developed people, with lives and goals, and as a result, the humor and the drama work well together, rather than feeling juxtaposed.

In other words, M*A*S*H was a war show, full of good dramatic stories, with funny, memorable characters.

Thirty years after the most-watched television finale in America, that’s what people remember about M*A*S*H. We may forget the specifics of “The Longjohn Flap”, but the audience remembers what happens to these people, and the experiences they had. Those characters, and the situation, still holds up, and even today, viewers can still relate to those characters and their experiences. The laughs, the tears, and all the spots in-between, still speak to an audience, nearly a hundred years after the war the show was about.

Join us next time as we take a look at the personnel of the 4077th, and figure out what made them one of the most memorable casts in television history. Thanks so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next article.

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esepoimipullula · 4 years ago

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For the ship bingo, may I get uhhh... pete/trudy (because I lov them), italian!grandpa beagle/grandma duck (op your mind 😩👌🏻) and scrooge/brigitta (out of curiosity) pwease?

Oooh, thank you!! Those are some very good choices because I actually do have quite a few things to say about them. XD

Pete/Trudy:

It’s not quite an OTP, not in the sense that I crave more of it and I’m always ready to talk about it, but I love it and think it’s a very good ship. I know it sounds silly because she was literally made for him... but they’re really made for each other. They’re literal partner in crimes, a well-oiled team and even a battle couple where one’s strengths and peculiarities complement the other’s, and at the same time, they’re just two cute, silly romantics who give each other lovey-dovey nicknames. It might just be my love for villainous couples who genuinely love and care for each other talking here, but I think that’s an adorable dynamic.

However, I am kind of picky about it. I remember reading some stories, years ago, where their domesticity was emphasized (which I did like) but the rest of their dynamic was... not that great. He thought she was a nag and she thought he was a boor, he didn’t care enough to remember dates and anniversaries and she was too demanding and uppity and had unreasonable expectations, he hated her cooking but couldn’t tell her that because she’d get angry and yell at him, there were jokes about her being fat or unladylike or both... sitcom married life, basically. I didn’t like that. I much prefer an expert thief Trudy who offers Pete some clever advice because they’re partners in work and in life and succeed or go down together, and a Pete who clearly loves her and likes being around her and cares about her opinions. Bonus points if they snark a bit at each other but like, mildly - not because they actually want to offend the other but because they’re generally snarky people. EXTRA bonus points if they use crime as a way to flirt or plot and execute crimes together like other people go on dates. I want them to have fun and make heart eyes at each other while robbing banks and whatnot. <3

My only exceptions are the Pete and Trudy in Wizards of Mickey and the ones in Cronache della Frontiera. Those are SO GOOD but it’s because of how lowkey or highkey fucked-up they are. And also because the Trudys in those universes are HOT. There, I said it. u.u

I’m not the biggest WoM fan (the first seasons were pretty cool and had some really interesting concepts, but the ones that followed... eh) but seeing Trudy as a rugged, fabulous evil witch pirate, so sure of herself and competent, was super fun... just like her bickering and flirting with arrogant dark wizard Pete!

When it comes to Cronache della Frontiera, where their relationship is Unhealthiness Central... oh, the shifting power dynamics! Badass established crime boss Trudy taking the inexpert, somewhat uncertain (and possibly younger?) newbie Pete in and being charmed by his cocky and determined attitude despite everything, finding out she does have a heart in the process, only for him to gradually become even darker than her and the driving force in their group! And the jealousy! The possessiveness! The love triangle that actually WORKS (at least for me, lol) because it’s not really a love triangle at all! The literal attempted murder! THAT is the problematic stuff I like to see, not some sexist trope about the old, fat (*eyeroll*) ball and chain!

Incidentally, WoM!Pete/Trudy and Cronache!Pete/Trudy are the reason I circled the “sexual” option. Thinking about Disney characters having sex might be weird, but those two couples? I’m 100% sure they FUCKED.

Italian!Grandpa Beagle/Grandma Duck:

AAAAAAAAAAAAH, I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!! ;_______;

It all started with this story where the Beagle Boys and their Grandpa were arrested after a botched attempted at robbing the Quacktown post office and Grandma Duck took pity on them and offered to let them work off their sentence on her farm in hopes that they’d learn to be good citizens, and the boys slowly started to like honest work and having a kindly old lady around but old Grazia stubbornly clung to their traditional thieving ways despite his life having improved, too, so there was always this simmering tension between them. Or maybe it was the story where Grandma Duck got it in her head that there was actually some good in Grandpa Beagle and he liked her company so he tried not to steal around her, and the Beagles were like “wtf is happening” and Scrooge was outraged and kept trying to warn Elvira off that risky “””friendship””” (seh), and in the end he did steal something and she caught him except maybe it wasn’t really him and maybe she was unsure about their relationship and self-sabotaging by looking for any excuse to call it off and he didn’t like being with someone who didn’t trust him and/or couldn’t accept him as he was so they basically had a messy break up. Or maybe the one where everyone in Duckburg was literally brainwashed by their new phones except for them and Scrooge because ahahah old people hate technology, and they joined up in this badass old people heroic team to save the city, and Grandma and Grandpa had this nice little “oh, you’re pretty good at this!” “well, you’re not bad yourself!” moment while they took down the villains.

... okay, so I don’t really remember which one of these came first, but still, thanks to all of them I am DELIGHTED at the idea of this romance. I mean, they’re both smart, headstrong, driven, generally sensible, sometimes petty, pretty damn badass old people who believe very strongly in their own values? Except those values are pretty much opposite because she’s all about honesty and hard work and doing the right thing even when it’s difficult, but he takes pride in being a thief and wants to get rich by stealing? But then, they both care a lot about family and tradition? Except her family is fundamentally good if quirky and he literally encourages his to be ruthless criminals, and the traditions they care about reflect that? They’re basically foils, and the contrast and the similarities between them are both so strong... and so entertaining!

And the soft old people romance! The possibilities for old-fashioned courting and quiet moments together just talking about their youth and the old days or about their families, the subtle but genuine compliments and expressions of affection, the rare but easy handholding and the heartfelt “I care about you”s...

I would DEFINITELY read fanfictions about them. But I think they would need to be either AUs (someone let them play a bickering couple in a parody or period story, PLEASE!) or, if set in regular Duckburg, either pre-relationship or mutual pining stuff. I’ve already seen them in a (sort of) romantic relationship in canon and it didn’t end well... and I honestly can’t see things ever ending any different. His nephews might come around and support them, especially if they liked her as a person and kind of came to see her as their grandma, too, like in that one story mentioned above, but I don’t think her family would. At least, not all of them, and especially NOT Scrooge, who’d do anything to keep them apart. Plus, unless he suddenly decided not to be a thief anymore or she decided to become a thief, too, - I can’t even tell WHICH option sounds more unlikely! - their differences would eventually drive them apart anyway.

And that’s... kind of another thing I like about this ship, weirdly enough? The “it’s not unrequieted but it still can’t happen, and not because of any external pressure but because of who they are as people” angst. And the “I can’t be be with you because of who you are but I wouldn’t love you if you were anyone else” bittersweet angst/fluff combo. As the bingo square says, “it’s complicated.”

Scrooge/Brigitta:

No offense to anyone who does like it... but I just don’t. I usually appreciate unrequieted ships for the angst, but here the obsessive aspect is a major turn-off for me. Especially in those stories where it’s portrayed as a positive thing, like an expression of True Love or a sign that Brigitta is a strong-willed person who just has to hold out a little longer or push a little harder before she finally gets the happy ending she deserves. Or in those stories where other characters suggest Scrooge is just playing hard to get. Or where he’s forced to endure a date with her as punishment for something. Or where he gets scolded for not agreeing to go out with her, rather than for treating her too rudely or taking advantage of her feelings to reach his goals. Just... let people not date people they don’t like that way, maybe?!

That’s not to say I don’t like Brigitta as a character. I do, I think she has potential, and I don’t like it when she gets the short end of the stick, either. Like when Scrooge uses her to get what he wants, or he treats her badly even if for once she’s not being the clingy, smothering person she usually is around him.

I do like those rare moments where they get along and he’s nice to her because he wants to and not because he’s prompted by either guilt or pressure. But that’s not really enough to make me ship them. Like, I could see them as friends? Or as mentor and pupil or equal business partners, since she’s a businesswoman in her own right? Bur never as romantic partners.

I’d say I wouldn’t read fic about them, but I actually did, once. It was a sad story about Scrooge dying and Brigitta trying to rebuild her life without him when he had been her goal and purpose for so long, and it had hints of Scrooge/Goldie, but technically, it still counts. And I actually wouldn’t mind reading more stuff like that... with Brigitta learning to let go and live her own life for herself.

#ask #evilblot #ask meme #ship meme #disney comics #disney ducks #duckverse #mouseverse #topolino #anti scrigitta #anti scrooge x brigitta #pete x trudy #peg leg pete x trudy #grandpa beagle x grandma duck

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fly-pow-bye · 5 years ago

Text

DuckTales 2017 - “Quack Pack!”

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Bob Snow

Written by: Bob Snow

Storyboard by: Vince Aparo, Kristen Gish

Directed by: Tanner Johnson

TGIHD. Thank God It’s Hump Day.

Our episode begins with Huey preparing his Uncle Donald for his big family photo opportunity, an opportunity he never seems to have due to various mishaps. He hired a professional photographer, and even had him practice his million dollar smile. Huey says that nothing is going to stop this day from being ruined, and then Dewey, the one-liner-spewing stand-out sibling, shows up. We know he's the stand-out because the laugh track cheers as soon as he comes in. Yes, a laugh track, just like this series always had.

Some other characters show up, mostly to reintroduce them to the audience. We have Louie, the schemer who is currently trying make his mother jump off the roof and get people to pay to see it. Said mother is Della, a former moon-dweller who is perfectly fine with because she used to be on the moon, and will seemingly bring that up with almost every line of dialogue she has. Finally, we have Scrooge, the relatively down-to-Earth, no pun intended, person who knows this is ridiculous, though he does ponder if he can make a lot of money from that dangerous stunt before saying "no".

Instead, they have to get the study ready for the photo, something Scrooge promised he would have done already. Though he tells Donald that he would never break a family promise, the sweat he's wiping off his brow is telling a different story. He, Della, and Louie slowly back away into the office, and nobody is the wiser. Oh Scrooge, I’m sure he has some money related reason for it.

As they back away into the office, we get two more stand-out characters: Mrs. Beakley, who constantly has to deny being a spy despite coming in through one of those wires on the roof, and Webby, who introduces her grandmother as a professional spy. She's the quirky one!

At this point, Huey starts to think that something is very off with everything around him, and asks his Uncle Donald if he feels the same way. Donald turns to Huey, and responds in the familiar way we all know and love.

Donald: (clears throat) Well, everything seems perfectly normal to me!

Ah, Donald, with his distinctive voice by Don Cheadle; perfectly normal, and yet suave enough to make the laugh track cheer. See, everything is normal, from the way Donald Duck talks, to the laugh track laughing at even Dewey's cheesy one-liners, to the 90's TGIF sitcom-like establishing shot this scene started with. Nothing wrong at all...except for everything.

Yeah, if this is the first episode of DuckTales 2017 somebody watched, they're going to be very lost. I mean, people are saying this is an adventure show where they go all around the world, using their wits to fight criminals, monsters, and aliens, but this is a sitcom with a laugh track! There are some ways people could figure it out already, namely that cartoons would never use laugh tracks unironically, but it's good that this originally aired right after a normal episode.

After a really short version of the usual theme song that consists solely of "DuckTales, woo-oo" and a commercial break, we get the theme song showing off the cast of characters. This includes Launchpad McQuack, who even has his own rock band, the Crash Happies. In we end, we get our title screen: Quack Pack. Yes, this is what the show's called now, taking the name from the infamous DuckTales spinoff where they decided to age up Huey Dewey and Louie to teenagers.

Outside of the title and a very similar pose for the title shot, it doesn't take anything from that show, just the 90's sitcoms it was trying to ape. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are still kids, and the plot for this episode is kind of pedestrian compared to the teenaged siblings turning into superheroes and battling a planet-sized Uncle D who just wants them to clean their rooms while his rage makes him destroy the galaxy. Even the theme song is just instrumental soft rock. It is possible they felt lines like "I feel like quacking, so I think I will, I'm gonna quack quack quack until I get my fill" are too cheesy even for a parody.

As our episode truly begins, we meet another soon-to-be-beloved character, and one that isn't one of the familiar ones: Knox Quackington, that photographer Huey hired. He's an artiste, as described by Huey and himself, and he has the accent for the kind of stereotype that term was made for. Unfortunately for him, he describes himself as someone who uncovers the world's secrets, and Webby knows that could only mean he's a spy. That quirky character ends up taking him to a dark room, where she beats him up. Oh, Webby!

While this is happening, Scrooge decides to try to ready up that study.

Unfortunately, the study is in even worse shape than he imagined. Scrooge didn't want to pay for actual repairmen to fix his problems, and the problems just got worse and worse. I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere. Louie responds that Scrooge's lack of responsibility legally makes him liable for his own lack of responsibility. He didn't really change much at all for this sitcom plot, huh.

Huey and Donald show up to see Scrooge's study in ruins, and Donald explains why he can't just go to a different room: this is the only room where the buttons glint in the way he wanted! Louie says, with sarcasm, that the button glint issue is so much more of an unsolvable problem than a broken room, and everyone just makes an "oh, Louie" pose as they pause for the laugh track. Huey is a bit more optimistic, as he happens to have a Junior Woodchuck Guidebook...

...a Guidebook that is completely blank. Donald speaking like a regular duck and the blank book makes him notice that the mysterious laughter that happens constantly doesn't seem to be coming from anyone in the room, and realizes something is very, very wrong. He runs out of the room as everyone else makes an "oh, Huey" pose as they pause for the laugh track.

This episode definitely gets the sitcom parody down to a T. They even have transitions where they're just dancing or flicking hearts from their smartphones. It reminds me of That 70's Show, and I don't watch enough sitcoms to know if there's an earlier example than that.

Distracting us from Huey slowly figuring out what's going on is Dewey doing what he does best: giving himself and Donald mohawks. Oh, that rascal, that's going to be a real problem for the photo op. Huey shows up only to see that they paused in place, because it's time for a commercial break. Of course, Huey is the only one aware enough to realize everything is getting darker. Plot important forth-wall jokes is this episodes forte.

After all the real commercials, because it would have been a missed opportunity if they didn't do a real commercial break there, we get a commercial for the fictional Pep, featuring a guy who's clearly played by the same actor as the photographer. If Disney XD didn't require "now back to the show" bumpers, this would have caught people a little off-guard. This ad specifically features him opening up a can of pep, causing a tidal wave of Pep. This actually becomes important later, though I won't go into detail.

We then cut to the channel ID, which is exactly like the old and current Disney Channel channel IDs. The big difference is instead to drawing Mickey ears, Dewey, the lovable breakout character everyone loves, is drawing a lamp. It's the kind of lamp that would hold some sort of djinn, and not the djinn that looks for found lamps, either! Also, it's the Baba network...hey, just like that Baba guy the show is now credited to! Hmm...

Huey, of course, managed to notice all of this, and he runs back to the study after Donald tries to convince him to get some rest. Meanwhile, Mr. Quackington is all tied up by Webby, thinking he is some sort of suspicious special agent, and has Launchpad keep an eye on him. This leads to Launchpad and his band thinking he's a different kind of agent. Those are all about as far as they get with those plots, to be honest; it mostly focuses on Huey's plight and a plot with a certain other character that will appear in a few more paragraphs from now.

Huey's plight is about why he's in this strange realm where people are constantly laughing at him. He then sees tiny versions of Randy and Johnny from the Ottoman Empire. No, I'm not going to do the joke this time. That's in the past, much like 3 tiered rating systems. Huey figures out that is is an ad, and the dominoes just drop from there as he realizes the guidebook he was holding was a prop, the room doesn't actually have any pipes, and one of the doors just leads to a brick wall.

Nobody is convinced, and they're just thinking he's going coo-coo. However, he does have a fool-proof plan: point to the fourth wall, which they only now notice is missing.

They see some lights and some strange creatures that look sort of like those hairless apes Ludwig Von Drake was warning us about, but that can't be it! This is definite proof, and they all take it. Glad they won't take the entire episode to realize this.

Meanwhile, Donald shaves off the mohawk, only for him to have a bald spot. What's only slightly better is that Webby, who wants a meat tenderizer for some "cute girl stuff", still doesn't want to tell Donald where the photographer went. What else could go wrong?, says Donald, clearly signalling for something to go wrong. Though, if anything, something is going to go very right for us, because what would a sitcom be without a guest star?

Appearing for the first time in DuckTales is Goofy. This is heavily based on the Goofy from Goof Troop and A Goofy Movie, even wearing the same outfit and making the same pose he does in the former's intro a few seconds later. Donald doesn't seem to think too highly of him, though, and the way he "borrows" some ketchup by squirting it into what I hope is his pocket is not helping matters. Nonetheless, his appearance is just like one would imagine an appearance of Goofy would be like in DuckTales.

He does fit into the photography plot pretty well, as his job in this appearance is a photographer, but I'm more willing to focus on how Goofy is also someone who notices a change in Donald. Maybe it might be something else, but I'd like to think that Goofy is more familiar with Donald's usual voice. As in, he's a real person and not just a construct of whatever this is. There's hints of this throughout the episode, and we did get to see Roxanne and Powerline before, so it's not that much of a stretch.

It doesn't take long for the A plot of Huey dealing with this strange realm he's in and the B plot of the kidnapped photographer to crash into each other. I mean that literally, too, as Team Believes They're In A TV Show collides with Team Gotta Impress The Agent as the floor of the study collapses right into the room the photographer was kept in.

Slowly but surely, Huey convinces the rest of the people that something is wrong by simply saying that they should be going on an adventure. This is supposed to be an adventure series with an adventurer, and the biggest adventurer of them all, Scrooge McDuck, realizes it, too. However, he has no idea what would happen to get them into this realm.

Dewey: If only I could remember... (scratches his chin)

Everyone notices the world around them swirl around, and they panic until it stops. Huey tells them that this is a flashback, and they could use this power to try to figure out how they got into this mess in the first place.

At this point, Donald is the only one that thinks trying to get out of this world is just a waste of time, even stating that they should get back to the plot, er, photo. Yes, in that way. At this point, it was pretty obvious who is the culprit, but this scene in particular reveals a different co-culprit.

Finally, we get to see what was really happening: during an adventure to find the lost lamp of Collie Baba, they were stuck in a trap involving a ton of scorpions. Donald, in the barely comprehensible voice we all know and remember, decides to wish to himself that he would have normal family problems.

Donald's actions in this episode do make sense. Even though one of the main reasons why Donald Duck gave up on adventuring has been resolved, one cannot help that Donald just wants to be with his family, doing family things, and not getting into adventures that may risk his and his nephew's lives. I'd imagine being kidnapped by Moonlanders would do that to a guy.

After they get out of the flashback, they notice that the photographer is slowly trying to leave the room, and everyone knows at this point that this guy is not who he says he is. I mean, we got to see him quite clearly in that flashback.

The photographer is revealed to be Gene the Genie. We managed to get two rebooted characters out of Treasure of the Lost Lamp, and somehow they're completely separate from each other. He's here to make his master's wishes come true, and that master happens to be Donald. Donald still has two more wishes, and he could use his second to undo the first. One problem: he loves it here.

We also learn the reason why this show is dated: he hasn't been out of the lamp since 1990. This is another nod to Treasure of the Lost Lamp, as that was its release year. Goof Troop was a few years after that year, but I'll let that pass. What I might not let pass is the sheer amount of internet references, something that wasn't too widespread in 1990. Huey sure wouldn't have his emoji hat, also. Maybe their modern technology combined with Gene's sitcom world, but I felt that was a little missed opportunity to see some time-related shock.

Anachronisms aside, I have to mention this particular scene when the siblings ask how long they're going to stay in this realm if Donald decides against ever letting them out.

Gene: Probably at least three seasons, plus spinoffs. And I assume they'll reboot the show eventually!

It's pretty obvious why that line stood out. He really must be stuck in the past; most reboots are softer and rounder nowadays. I'd say more, but I'm trying not to fill that "YOU-KNOW-WHAT potshot" jar.

They want to go home, forget the three seasons, the spinoffs, and the dark and gritty reboots. Not speaking of softer in any sense of the word, that line does not go too well for those fourth wall dwellers...

...and we get our answer to how the ducks would react to hairless apes in the same universe as they are. Granted, when they're all grinning these horrifying open mouthed grins, it would make even people in this universe shudder. I know I am!

We get this big scene where they beat up the humans while they wait for Donald to come to his senses and wish them out of here. I'm not going to describe this scene in detail because there's just so much here. The mentioning of different episodes, the realm trying to fix itself, and a big rotation scene, pictured, that was put to good use in the trailers.

Another line in particular that stood out for me: Louie says that the episode where his pet snake gets loose isn't a well written plot. Gene tells him everyone's a critic. I can't help but feel that one.

I will mention that we do get to see Goofy have a parent-to-uncle talk with Donald, and, yes, this leads to even more for the Goof Troop/A Goofy Movie fans. This is a very pivotal moment in the plot, and it's all because of the guest star. Honestly, even if they're trying to get out of the sitcom, that is a very sitcom thing to do!

It shouldn't be much of a spoiler to reveal that they do manage to get out of the sitcom universe. We got a F.O.W.L. plotline to get to. How exactly do they do it? Does Donald get his two other wishes? Go watch the episode and find out for yourself, but I'll say that it is satisfying.

How does it stack up?

This is a very interesting and very funny episode. Purists may be a little upset by this episode focusing more on mimicking the 90's than take any inspiration from the comics, but this is a good tribute to the era. It all hold up together, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Fantastic episode, 5 Scrooges.

Next, we finally get to that F.O.W.L. plot, not so oddly enough!

← Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks! 🦆 Double-O-Duck in You Only Crash Twice! →

#fpb dt 2017 #ducktales 2017 #ducktales #fpb reviews #disney

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hellyeahomeland · 5 years ago

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“In Full Flight”: an HYH recap

The most delightful Homeland episode since “Two Minutes” picks up with Mike, Jenna (in a chambray shirt), and Alan in Kabul station, observing drone footage of Carrie, Yevgeny, and crew. Jenna deduces that they’re probably going to Kohat, and she is correct for the first time all season.

Mike asks about an exfiltration team from Islamabad but they won’t be there until later tonight. Saul interrupts their pow-wow to ask what’s going on:

Saul: What is this about grabbing Carrie Mathison? Mike: Oh, hello, sir. Let’s go into my office. Saul: Fuck your office and fuck you, too. What are y’all talking about? Mike: No problem, sir. A special ops team is planning to grab Carrie. You know, because she’s a defector. Saul: FOR FUCK’S SAKE SHE IS NOT A DEFECTOR. Actually she’d be right here telling you that herself if you hadn’t cornered her like an animal three hours ago without telling me. Mike: Actually actually she was supposed to be back in America like a week ago but then she broke custody and started her adventure with a GRU officer. Now they’re out there doing God knows what. Sir. Saul: I’ll tell you what they’re doing. They’re finding the flight recorder. Mike: What’s a flight recorder? Saul: I can’t believe I’m still having this conversation with you. Do any of y’all have brains or critical thinking skills? Mike: By the way, sir, you’ve been called back to DC. Saul: Fuck my whole life. Fuck all of you too.

Carrie and Yevgeny are very much on their way to Kohat. It’s been just a few hours since Carrie turned her back on Saul and her loaded expression as she stares out the window is very much “questioning all my past life decisions.” That could take a while, Carrie!

Carrie and Yevgeny arrive in Kohat and begin driving under a series of … I have no idea what they are, basically overhangs in the street so you can’t tell where their car is. It’s very “From A to B and Back Again” when Quinn lost Haqqani in the classic baseball stadium game “Which hat is the ball under?” trick. The team in Kabul is annoyed and prepares for a grid search.

Carrie & Co. are checking into a hotel for the night. Yevgeny makes a very obvious performance of leading Carrie to her room and what ensues is the most sexually tense scene on this show… ever. First he offers her some Ambien and Carrie cracks a joke for the first time in eight years and says she could open up a pharmacy of her own.

She apologizes for not telling him about the flight recorder sooner. At first it was all personal, she needed to find Max, she couldn’t focus on anything else. Yevgeny asks what she thinks actually happened to the presidents’ helicopter, since she certainly doesn’t believe Jalal was involved. She thinks it was probably just a freak accident: pilot error, mechanical failures, shitty weather, any or all of the above. Then she reveals that detail from the fifth episode, that the Black Hawk fleet has had a series of mechanical issues. Oh, I should add that this conversation all takes place in the doorway of Carrie’s hotel room and every fifteen seconds or so Carrie and/or Yevgeny glance back toward the bed. You can cut the sexual tension with a knife.

Yevgeny asks if there are any more secrets she’s been keeping from him. She smiles, pauses… it’s the most interesting moment. Then she says very quietly, “I think I’m fresh out of secrets.” They stare at each other for a long time, Yevgeny probably wondering if Carrie is going to invite him in and Carrie probably wondering if Yevgeny can take a fucking hint. Finally, I exhale, and Yevgeny says to just “bang on the wall” if Carrie needs anything, which at least elicits a laugh.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, a Pakistani military officer named Aziz has come to see Bunny to ask just where the fuck Tasneem is. Aziz is pissed because Tasneem was supposed to control the Taliban—first Haissam, then Jalal—and her “incompetence” has led to the Americans threatening to invade. Bunny is the opposite of worried. The Americans are all talk, no bite. They won’t actually invade Pakistan for failing to produce a man they claim they can’t find. I guess he hasn’t met John Zabel. Anyway, he says Tasneem is off to find Jalal somewhere in the mountains.

Instead, she actually meets (Haissam) Haqqani’s right-hand. She is beyond pissed that he just let Jalal control the shura last week. This is all so fucked. He doesn’t have much of a response, beyond, “well, he was the emir’s son, so I guess so?” He offers to take Tasneem to Jalal but only if she puts a hood over her head and lemme tell ya, Tasneem is none too pleased about that either!

It’s the next morning in Kohat and Carrie and Yevgeny really are going shopping, just like the logline said. They’re winding their way through the bazaars on the street but still no luck finding this flight recorder. Enter A Kid. He’s all “pardon me, excuse me,” and Yevgeny puts on his best Dad Hat and tells him to get lost. It’s very touching. Then he says he knows what they’re looking for, which is enough to get their attention.

He takes them to a shop where Mr. Shop Owner #1 is like, “Hi, do you like flight recorders? Because I’ve got lots!” Unfortunately he doesn’t have the one they’re looking for and he also seems pretty skittish because a) what the hell are a Russian and an American doing together? and b) is this official government business or something private or, like… just generally what the hell?

Saul has arrived back to DC and meets Hayes in the Oval Office with our favorite Odd Couple, Linus and Zabel (this should really be the name of a sitcom). Saul passively aggressively says he knows of Zabel “by reputation.” Aside from that jab, the meeting unfortunately goes from meh to ugh to wtf for Saul. He has to play bad cop and tell Hayes that the video of Jalal is unvetted intelligence, completely lacking in context, and probably just a straight-up lie. Hayes has the expression of someone who’s never followed Thought A to Thought B—which is true, obviously—and Zabel has to jump in to say of course POTUS has already done the Thought A to Thought B exercise, he just arrived at a different conclusion. You know, mine! The best part of all THIS is that as Saul grows increasingly incredulous at the conversation, Linus sits there, silently, looking like he’d like to be swallowed up by an alligator. Afterward:

Saul: Wow a bit of warning would have been helpful. Or maybe just an assist there, Linus. Linus: I didn’t even know you were coming back. I’m outside the ~information flow~ Saul: God, we’re so fucked. Linus: I wish I’d get swallowed by an alligator.

Back in Kohat, Carrie has entered another shop, this time sans Yevgeny. This one proves a bit more fruitful. She actually finds Max’s rucksack, which means that flight recorder had to have been here recently. Mr. Shop Owner #2 feigns ignorance, but Carrie is relentless.

Yevgeny enters all of a sudden to let her know that that special ops team from Islamabad is here, so they need to get out of there, pronto. He leaves quickly to lose the tail and instructs her to go back to the hotel and wait. His absence gives her the perfect opportunity to keep grilling Mr. Shop Owner #2, whom I actually love and seems really sweet. Poor guy is just no match for Carrie. He finally reveals the flight recorder was there but he sold it to a broker he works with. Carrie offers him a lot of money to find the broker and get the flight recorder back there for a trade at midnight.

Tasneem gets the black hood off her head in exchange for an audience with Jalal, but homie remains pissed. Jalal is sort of confused at her reaction. A few episodes ago she was plotting to put Jalal in the place he’s currently in. What changed? Well, for starters, now the Americans are threatening to invade Pakistan. She says he’s got to go to ground, but he refuses to run.

Jalal: Who do you think I am? Tasneem: You’re the loser whom I picked up on the side of the road. I bandaged your feet and listened to you crying about your daddy issues for hours. Jalal: You think that you control us. Actually it’s the other way around.

He leads her up to a rooftop where hundreds of Taliban fighters have gathered. He says the last time the ISI got in the way, they killed a thousand of their officers on the street. And now they’re twice as strong, so you do the math. Tasneem has a general “oh fuck” expression on her face and… same.

In Kohat, Yevgeny finally shows back up in Carrie’s hotel room. He reveals that eight men are hunting her and they need to leave, now. She says they can’t, as they haven’t found the flight recorder yet. Of course we know Carrie has found it—and in hindsight, at this point Yevgeny probably does as well—but she needs to stick around a few more hours to make the trade. For a split second you think maybe Carrie is going to preoccupy Yevgeny for a few hours in her bedroom but instead she calls Jenna.

Carrie: Hey, how’s it going? Jenna: OH MY GOD I STILL HATE YOU. Carrie: Chill for a second. Also I know you’re walking toward Mike and do yourself a favor and pause and just listen to me. Jenna: Ugh, fine, I’m listening. Carrie: I need you to give up the location of the exfil team that’s looking for me. Jenna: Are you high? Carrie: I am not, but you are if you think this will end up any other way than me convincing you. Jenna: You’re putting me in an impossible position. Carrie: You must do this. I compel you. Jenna: If I give up their location, you’ll turn yourself in there? Carrie: “Sure.” Jenna: Ok I’ll call you back.

This entire conversation transpires with Yevgeny sitting on the sofa in Carrie’s hotel room, legs crossed. It’s… I’ll be honest, it’s hot. When Carrie hangs up he applauds her performance and says she was clever and convincing. That’s right, Carrie played Jenna… again. Again! Again again again!

Carrie is kinda down on selling out her own people but Yevgeny says she did it for all the right reasons and in any case, the local police will only hold them for a day (uhhhh yeah right). He starts to compliment her strong instincts. He really respects her for that.

“Why, how do you do it?” Carrie asks.

“Me? I am more of a planner,” Yevgeny answers.

The alarm bells start ringing in her head and Carrie asks him all speaking of which whether he arranged for them to “run into each other” outside G’ulom’s office way back in the season premiere (show time: 10 days???). Before he can answer, Jenna rings back and tells Carrie the safe house location. Carrie says “you did the right thing” and the amount of self-disgust in her expression for this just being too fucking easy is … significant.

A few minutes later, Mike is on the phone with one of the special ops team members in the Kohat safe house. Local police have surrounded the building. Exasperated, Mike tells them to stand down. One by one, they file out and are led into custody. Jenna watches in horror and the amount of self-disgust in her expression for this just being her life is… also significant.

In Rawalpindi, Tasneem is at Bunny’s house and freaking out. Jalal has consolidated power extremely quickly. She’s concerned, but Bunny says they just need to take him out, root and branch. Bunny is offended by the prospect of being ordered around by a smarmy teenager but Tasneem thinks they need to protect him. If Pakistan protects Jalal, they’ll protect themselves too. And they need to respond to the Americans not with concessions but with threats just as strong. Remember when they were three minutes away from a generation-defining peace agreement?

Back in her hotel room, Carrie is growing restless. She decides to get some fresh air and by that I mean she jumps out the window to get the show on the fucking road. On the way she calls Saul, to whom she is apparently still speaking. She asks if their protocols for transferring money over the dark web are still a go and he says yes. She says she’s got a lead on the black box and he promises to arrange the funds ASAP.

Carrie winds up back at Mr. Shop Owner #2’s shop. Mr. Shop Owner #1 is there, too! Plus the broker. They do a little thing, Carrie says she won’t pay any more than $999,999, she is very In Charge and it’s pretty great to see. Not that we needed any more convincing, but the kind of instincts and improvisation Yevgeny admired just a few hours earlier are on full display here. She knows exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. It’s breathtaking.

What’s also breathtaking is Carrie doing something correctly with a computer. Apparently the black box just hooks up to her Macbook with a USB-C cord… whoulda thunk?! After pulling a gun on Mr. Broker and telling him to beat it, she starts listening to the cockpit recording.

Then Yevgeny arrives! She starts to apologize but he stops her—he just wants to listen. They each share an earbud like goddamn Jim and Pam and continue listening. Turns out, Carrie was right. No one shot down that helicopter. A freak mechanical malfunction, “brace for impact,” etc. “Fucking helicopters,” Yevgeny says.

Carrie attempts a segue and says, “So… what now?” She wants to get this to the embassy in Islamabad. He wants to do the opposite of that. Then Carrie starts on him. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all. Maybe he’s actually… good.

Carrie: Plus, I’d owe you a favor. Yevgeny: Carrie, if I drop you off at the embassy I’ll literally never see you again. Carrie: Not true. I won’t betray my country, but I’d still move to Scottsdale with you. Yevgeny: I still don’t believe you. Carrie: Why not? You’ve already helped me a ton, and it’s cost you nothing! There has to be a way where we can make a “mutually beneficial arrangement.” Yevgeny: Is that what they’re calling it these days? Carrie: What? Yevgeny: What? Carrie: …anyhow, aren’t you sick of all this bullshit? Shitty bosses, shitty politicians, clearly the current way of business isn’t working for us. We could do better. You and me. We could chart something new here. You and me. God, we’re already halfway there! Yevgeny: Our own private network, huh? That would be nice, but it’s a pipe dream. Also, I like what you’re saying, but you still lied to me. Carrie: Technically, I just withheld the truth. Which is exactly what you did to me. Yevgeny: Heh? Carrie: The asylum, Yevgeny. What actually happened? We just took long walks in the woods and shared our life stories and you just happened to be the there the day I tried to hang myself? Give me a fucking break.

She moves closer and mentions the whole “picking up where we left off” thing. Well, will he or won’t he? Because she’s already decided.

There is a long pause and then they start making out. It’s exactly what you’d expect it would be, by which I mean it’s really hot! The scene is fraught with the unknown. How much are they playing each other? How much are they being genuine? Like Carrie says, they’re living in the grey areas. And who’s the first to blink?

Evidently it’s Carrie. After a few moments she breaks away and says they need to wait until after Islamabad. “Ok,” he says quietly. She tries to kiss him again, but he pulls ever so slightly away.

She hops off the table and begins to pack up the flight recorder. At that moment, he stabs her in the neck from behind with a tranquilizer. “Sorry, baby,” he says as she falls unconscious.

In DC, Saul is waiting anxiously by the phone. It rings. It’s not Carrie, but Linus. Everyone’s in the situation room, there’s some sort of activity in one of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Saul’s day goes from bad to worse.

In the situation room, resident hottie Scott Ryan is giving a PowerPoint presentation about said activity. Hayes is trying to understand literally anything that’s happening. Zabel explains that Pakistan only has the nukes in the first place to defend against a possible invasion from India. They’ll never actually use them. Saul growls that that’s because India isn’t fucking stupid enough to invade Pakistan. Hayes is beginning to understand the whole concept of “consequences” but before his mind can dwell on that for too long, he decides to just up the ante. More troops, more preparations for war, more of the same.

Saul’s day is not possibly as bad as Carrie’s has wound up. Yevgeny carries her, still unconscious, back into the hotel room. He places her gingerly on the bed and then kisses her forehead. He shuts off the lights as the camera moves in slowly on her her peacefully sleeping face.

#homeland #homelandedit #an hyh recap #in full flight #*#by: sara #homeland spoilers

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idlnmclean · 6 years ago

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In which someone doesn’t actually read what was written.

Me: “This nowadays tendency of putting on the author the responsibility of teaching their readers morality.”

Bullshit. Ever hear about the Hays Code or the Comic Code? Before the advent of the commonly published graphic comics and the movie there were all manners of normative structures mandating that the primary function of publication was teaching people about what is right and what is wrong.

This goes back a long time in all classical cultures. It isn’t “nowadays” as if there were a mythical golden era of before.

Authors are allowed to write whatever the fuck. But whatever you write has consequences. Maybe you write something interesting with a lot of care that has great social value and happens to be about child abusing serial murders. Chances are that if your primary product is indistinguishable from political propaganda for Nazis and child abusers that you are indistinguishable from a Nazi and child abuser apologist.

Being the author for a thing does not make you immune to criticism for your authorial choices and does not bar people from opposing the publication of your work particularly in an environment where such work constitutes a kind of political propaganda to normalize violence and oppression.

Whatever you create is never truly independent of you. Narrator is not strictly identical to the author, but they may be similar enough that for general arguments the difference can be neglected without loss of precision.

You get free speech. That does not mean freedom from social consequence. In situations of injustice such as colonial, imperial, patriarchal, or capitalist politics choosing a neutral point of view as a creator is siding with the abuser. If you as an author choose to not teach ethics or morality or consider such things real world implications then you have made a choice which is reflected in your artifacts.

Language matters. Representation matters. Political apathy is not commendable.

Them: I literally stopped after you cited the Hays Code and Comics Code as “mandating that the primary function of publication is teaching people what is right and what is wrong.” Because if that’s the case, you must think that gay people, interracial marriages, adults drinking alcohol, and married couples sleeping in the same bed are wrong. Let’s be real clear here: the Hays Code was both ridiculous and unconstitutional and the Comics Code was a parody of itself, and both of them made queers invisible unless they were suffering for their queerness. It was literally a rule, because homosexuality was “perverse”. Under the Hays Code:

`Crime (again, including BEING OPENLY GAY) must have consequences shown on-screen. You couldn’t be gay without punishment for your gay. The “correct standards of life” must be upheld. Guess what? NO OVERT GAY, because that wasn’t correct. No interracial marriages. Both of those items were directly and explicitly banned as “perverse.” Anything that didn’t fit the sanitized version of life could not be shown. Also, directors shied away from depiction of poverty, or anything that the ruling class didn’t think was ‘correct standards of life,’ because showing people living in poverty could be construed as not showing people ‘living to proper standards.’ No nudity or sexual activity even between consenting adults. The Hays Code is why married adults on sitcoms had separate twin beds. This also included pregnancy and childbirth, as those were the ‘results’ of sex. To prevent love scenes from being considered sexual, a woman had to be shown with one foot on the floor. Adults could not drink alcohol unless it directly was related to plot. Religion could never be ‘depicted in a mocking manner,’ which led to some editorial changes. For example, 1940′s Pride and Prejudice? Mr. Collins was a librarian. 1948′s Three Musketeers had Prime Minister Richeleu. To avoid being accused of ‘mocking’ religion, studios removed religion altogether. And, of course, the sanctity of marriage had to be upheld. You know. Marriage between one cisgender heterosexual man and one cisgender heterosexual woman. That marriage. `

The CCA was so ridiculous that it wouldn’t approve a comic written by Stan Lee called ‘Green Goblin Reborn’ which was explicitly recommended by the US Dept of Health, Education and Welfare, because it depicted a character’s drug use in an extremely negative light and had an extremely anti-drug message. The CCA wouldn’t approve the comic because it showed drug use at all. Comics couldn’t even have positive messages or show characters overcoming or recovering from negative paths they were on because those negative paths couldn’t be shown in the first place. And of course they had all the same issues as above. It’s also worth noting that the United States Supreme Court began neutering the Hays code 14 years after its inception, and in 1965 it ruled that the Hays Code could only approve a film, it could not ban one, because that was an infringement on the First Amendment. This is how we got – wait for it, wait for it! – a ratings system instead of content bans! Jack Valenti was elected to the head of the MPAA in 1966 with the specific promise to move from bans and codes to ratings. So, if your point was ‘this already existed and it was good!’ actually, uh, those things already existed, and they failed, and it bears repeating that attempts to bar films from being shown without Hays Code approval were explicitly declared unconstitutional, and were replaced by ratings systems and content warnings. I don’t give one good goddamn about shipping wars on Tumblr, but for fuck’s sake, at least take three hot seconds to Google the history you’re citing and see if what you’re holding up as some standard that supposedly “established blah blah movies should only teach us morality” did something other than

`fail miserably lead to a bunch of ridiculous workarounds and euphemisms and Melanie in Gone With The Wind giving birth like she’s some shadow creature about to stab Renly Baratheon disproportionately affect LGBTQ/queer people, POC, and other marginalizations get declared unconstitutional (because, as it turns out, making a big board of people who decide what can get published does in fact violate the First Amendment) make such a parody of itself that comics companies stopped giving a fuck and released comics without the Comics Code approval. Like, seriously, this isn’t difficult history. You could Google it. Literally the only film critic these days who actually supports the Hays Code is Michael fucking Medved. You know, the guy who says that all non-Orthodox Jews vote primarily based on their hatred of Christianity? The one who’s super great buds with Daniel Lapin? The one who wrote “Six Inconvenient Truths About The US and Slavery”? That’s the only film critic still around who thinks that the Hays Code was ever a good idea. That’s who you’re aligning yourself with by pointing to the Hays Code and going “see? The Hays Code! ‘mandating that the primary function of publication is teaching people what is right and what is wrong.’” That is literally the only film critic I could find who agrees with you. Someone who thinks that the United States didn’t prosper because of slavery and that the concept that slavery is what built the US a lie, who champions himself as a former delusional leftist turned ‘conservative champion.’ That’s your buddy. That’s your pal in morality, methods, and rightness. Jesus fuck, read a little history. I’m so exhausted.

The person that is responding to commentary fixates on arguing something that to me is unnecessary. We are in gross agreement on the nature and history of the Hays and Comic codes. They didn’t read my commentary and did not actually comprehend the nuance of what I wrote.

To make it explicit: the Hays Code and the Comic Code were bad, and there was a political uprising that took up most of the 20th century to peel them back.

‘this already existed and it was good!’ is the exact wrong interpretation of what I wrote.

A bunch of authors got together and deliberately wrote in political stances and created representation in defiance of the Hays Code and the Comic Code. They wrote both fiction and non-fiction lobbying against those codes.

Much of the explanation above is useful for those who are not familiar with those codes and their histories, but they are irrelevant to the point I was making which was that things like them are not new.

Authoritarians do and absolutely will take unambiguous political stances with respect to media that they either outright create or which they malappropriate and decontextualize.

To be explicit about the relevance of the Hays code and the Comic Code to the specific things being argued here: authors political opposed those codes with their work and in doing so argued effectively about morality and ethics.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s great contributions to the world of comics was in teaching readers around the world what was right and what was wrong.

A bunch of the examples in the OP, like Lolita to cite one, are written by authors who arguably had good intentions in their writing but none the less contributed works that have lasting and damaging legacies.

What we write has consequences. Some consequences are good and desirable. Some consequences are bad or undesirable. Write in opposition to laissez-faire authorship in times of rising fascism, and you may find yourself blocked by people who might otherwise be well meaning.

Sometimes writing a dystopian depiction of society in sufficient detail is irresponsible especially when the author try to “let the work speak for itself” rather than outright condemn the people and circumstances that create the dystopia. The representation may be used as a blueprint for implementing that dystopian society, and it can be demonstrated for a wide variety of cases that is exactly what has happened.

Much of the advice of the thread is perfectly fine with good faith politics and good faith authorship among trustworthy and responsible communities of readers and activists. However, my view comes specifically from watching the underworlds of authorship where bad faith abounds.

An awful lot of things which are written as fiction are no such thing. They are either retellings of real world abuses in coded terminology shared among abuse cultures or they are de facto manifestos of political ideologies for covert organization by abuse cultures.

There is a reason why rape, incest, and abuse narratives are so prevalent in erotic and pornographic media development communities particularly those adjacent to the neo-technocrats.

it is important that authors never lose sight of the world and history from which they emerge and within which they exist. It is important that we teach each other about this world and about these histories.

#abuse

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randomgifgirlwrites · 2 years ago

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To the writers: Yes, I am still mad after all this time. I can’t even go back and enjoy the show because the buildup was actually a predictable sad twist that didn’t add up. You didn’t realize the rules of the sitcom changed after Seinfeld. What Seinfeld did when it created a show about nothing is now sitcom characters have to actually evolve, because Seinfeld pointed out how ridiculous it was that we had characters that didn’t change ones single bit from their collective experience. You also betrayed the viewer experience by defying the “Bible” of the show. It’s fine to do this and play with it as you slowly changed Barney’s character, but what isn’t fine is that if you slowly change the show Bible to allow for this, reverting it back offends the people you changed those verses to. To the casual observer, it seems fine. To a hardcore fan that was paying attention it feels like you replaced a chapter that say you were in the middle of the book and it just ended there. If you had the whole thing plotted out like you obviously did because you had to film the kids before they grew too much, then you should have stopped the seasons at a certain point and had an arc more like the good place where the hero’s journey feels like it’s actually a cohesive journey and not a op, let’s just go back to the middle of our hike when we are 5 yards from our destination .

remember that post our fandom had with the gif of the mother (it feels weird calling her tracy now) breaking the glass in anger? that post literally had all the theories that bother us: robin and ted ending up together, tracy, and that the mother’s dead. and they all came true. sorry to the writers, this episode just didn’t do it for me.

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peace-coast-island · 6 years ago

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Diary of a Junebug

Fall book recs!

Swear to Me by Rose Madison An old classic, a book I never get tired of reading! I met Rose in college and she’s a super talented writer! She wrote this, her debut novel, back in high school and it still holds up pretty well. I love the characters, especially Tux. I don’t know why, but I have a soft spot for well meaning and adorkable dumbasses. I also have a soft spot for characters like Rina, also an adorkable dumbass who’s a sweetheart most of the time and internally screaming half the time, usually over minor inconveniences.

The book is silly, heartwarming, and action packed. I think it could make a great manga adaptation if done properly - I’d definitely read that! A fairy quick read - about 160 pages, and the pacing is quick so the only issue is that it feels too short. But a lot happens in that short time!

Portal to the Past by The Livy Aubree Company I pretty much love almost everything by Livy Aubree. I’m also loving the new show, Orla and Ozzie, which is based on this graphic novel. I was always fascinated with the history behind the classic characters Orla and Ozzie, mainly Orla. Up until recently, Orla has been put on the wayside and aside from the graphic novel, she hasn’t really had time to shine.

I love the character dynamic between Orla and Ozzie, which is the strongest part about this story. The sequels are worth looking into, but they’re not as good. There’s some strong points but overall the sequels are inconsistent in terms of plot and character development. The show, which is finishing up its first season, is definitely worth the watch!

Orla is one of my faves and I’m happy with how they handled Ozzie as his character has become a bit stagnant over the years - mainly because he’s the company’s mascot and all. What I like most is how the book and the TV show didn’t shy away from his flaws. Instead of making him a perfect goody two shoes (even when he’s clearly in the wrong - something that always annoyed me) they addressed the consequences of his actions and fleshed out his personality more so he wouldn’t be one dimensional. He was one of those characters who I always felt had a lot of potential to be interesting so I’m glad for this novel and the show.

An absolute must read! (Also I’m happy to say that my copy was signed by the show’s producer Levi Romero when I visited the island earlier this year!)

Wilde Louie by Jimmy Mathieson I enjoyed Postcards a lot so I looked into more books by him. This one is his second most popular book so I bought a copy at a second hand store when I found it. The Fairweathers is full of talented people and Jimmy has a knack for writing!

Back at Concert in the Stars, Jimmy told me he’ll send an advanced copy of his latest book a week before it comes out - which will be around the end of the year - so I’ll be doing a review on that for my winter book reads!

So the story was really interesting! I love Louie and Shep’s relationship - the found family trope has always been one of my favorites! They both may be shady con artists but underneath they’re also good and caring people. Shep tries to act tough and all but the truth is he’s a father figure who ends up unintentionally adopting a bunch of misfits. And Louie turns into the exasperated big brother who’s like 10000% done when everything goes wrong. The humor and fast paced dialogue are the book’s strongest points!

Blizzards by Chuck Wortherly A book full of poems relating to snow and blizzards. There isn’t really much to say as that’s as straightforward as it can get. They’re short, one page poems and it’s a very fast read. I love the imagery and the brevity, which is really effective.

My top favorite is Freshly Fallen Snow, which to me reads like a song. It’s quiet and a bit sad, the imagery makes you feel alone and small - but not in an entirely bad way. Sort of like a quiet melancholy that settles into you. Another favorite is Ashes and Ice, which provokes striking and powerful imagery. There’s also Snowball Fights, which is about nostalgia, and Howls, which tells the story about a wolf lost in a blizzard.

Serena and the Cracked Sapphire by Shion Yuki One of my favorite mangas! It’s basically a magical girl type story, which I enjoy. I started reading the series in middle school and it still holds up really well. There’s twenty books in the series, which takes place in a span of five years. There’s a TV adaptation in the works that is planned to be released next year so I’m looking forward to that! Based on what I’m hearing, I have high hopes for the show.

So there’s the main character Serena, who’s a reincarnation of a princess. Her weapon is a wand with a cracked sapphire and most of the time she’s pretty OP as hell. There’s her team, a band of friends known as the Jewel Shards who fight alongside her. And there’s Celestia, who’s a reincarnation of a princess from a disgraced family, and she and Serena are soulmates. Serena’s like any other typical magical girl protagonist - clumsy, badass, sweet, stubborn, and optimistic. It can be cheesy and silly and it can be dramatic and sad.

The first book in the series was and always will remain a classic. If you liked the first one, then you’ll enjoy the rest of the series. My favorite main arc is Team Crystal Shards because that’s when Serena’s team really comes together to fight the big boss. It’s basically the turning point in the series where Jewel Shards finally win the trust of the Crystal Stones and work together to fight the Shattered Diamonds. My favorite side arc is Apartment Hunting, where Serena and Crystal learn how to adult and fail epically at it.

Shockwave by Rose Madison Rose’s first sci-fi book and it was a wild ride! I’ve never really got into post apocalyptic stories so I was intrigued to see how this would play out. I tend to like slice of life stories so this was nice. In the story, the apocalypse already happened so now it’s based on the characters living normal everyday lives - well as normal as it can get.

What I love most about this book is the storytelling. It’s third person narration through three main characters and the chapters are structured a certain way. Jenna’s chapters are focused on the present. She’s an inquisitive character who’s naive and easily impressed by everything. And there’s Swan, whose chapters starts out in the middle of the event going - sort of like that freeze frame moment where the narrator is trying to explain something by going back to the beginning. She represents the past and present, the one who provides most of the backstory behind the Shadow Wars. Finally there’s Lina, who represents the future as she’s always getting ahead of herself. Her chapters are dialog heavy and fast paced. The three characters are what carries the story and it intertwines together so well!

Unlike most stories about the apocalypse, this one is quite optimistic and lighthearted. There’s a lot of funny moments in the book like poor Swan who’s unable to catch a break as she winds up falling into all her cousin’s traps. Or Jenna mistaking a giant spaceship for two pyramids because she overslept and forgot her glasses. And there’s a running gag of Lina’s inventions always going haywire and turning evil, including the notable Project Shockwave. This book could make a really interesting sitcom!

Bumblebees and Lavender by Margie Shen Another poetry book, and it’s become one of my favorites! I’ve heard about Margie Shen for a while on social media but I was a bit hesitant to check her out at first. The last few popular poets I checked out were underwhelming, to put it nicely. I liked some of them but overall they were overhyped and the books were mediocre at best.

As for this one, I was throughly impressed. What I liked about this book is that the poems had substance. They’re not super short and simple - instead they’re complex and descriptive. My favorites were the ones that told a short story like Nutmeg Tea and The Beekeeper. There’s profound and thoughtful poems like Flora with Lavenders in Her Hair and Bittersweet Chocolates. I love A Touch of Honey, which made this book easily one of my favorites. I’m definitely going to look for more books by Margie Shen and keep an eye out for her next one, due out next year!

Seventeen and Counting by Eldred Emerson This is a ridiculous book and I love it! Sure some parts area bit too silly but it’s a wild ride from start to finish. There’s a movie adaptation that’s pretty faithful to the story and just as funny. It’s about this guy, his growing collection of cats, and their everyday misadventures.

What I like the most is the names he gives his cats as he likes to go for the unusual. My favorite character is a black cat named Whiskercheeks, who goes by Whisk. His twin brother Wyn, short for Llewelyn, is considered the evil one and has the worst luck. Moneybags, aka Mon, is the baby of the family and causes a lot of mischief for the twins. There’s also Cotton Puffball, who’s always done with everything because everyone she knows is a mess. And there’s Rake Chewer, who likes to chew rakes and is a big klutz.

Overall it’s a really funny and cute book about a bunch of cats and their dorky owner.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble #Daphne Primrose

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thebombzen · 8 years ago

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Little Witch Academia Review (Gluten- and Spoiler-Free!)

Alright, so here's a review of Little Witch Academia, which I finished today. This is my initial review that is subject to being changed later, but let’s face it, I’m probably too lazy to revise anything like this.

One thing worth noting before I get started: In particular, this is by Studio Trigger. This means a lot to people who have seen Kill la Kill and Gurren Lagann (stfu, it's Trigger). It has a lot of similarities in structure with KlK and TTGL and does excel at what Trigger is good at, but that doesn't mean it's a show like TTGL or KlK and if you assume it'll be a similar show, you will be expecting something that is different than you are watching. It is Trigger but do not assume that it's like the other recognizable Trigger shows. (What about Kiznaiver? Idk, I haven't seen it. Can’t comment.)

That being said, thanks to Anime Senshi for being consistently good about subbing this well (and quickly!). You rock, Asenshi Subs - http://asenshi.moe/

Overall - 8/10. Why? Well you’ll see dammit, if you keep reading.

As usual, this will be divided into several parts based on various things like voice acting and characters and music and plot and stuff. You will notice a recurring theme. (Categories not weighted equally.)

Characters - 9/10

The characters in this are very well-designed, round, and interesting. At the beginning, it looks like the main trio of Akko, Lotte, and Sucy (the main protagonist, the red-haired quiet girl, and... Sucy) are just a Harry/Ron/Hermione trio opposed by Diana (Draco Malfoy) with her Crabbe and Goyle posse. But this just ends up being subverted completely.

(Akko)

Akko is one of those silly characters like Miria Harvent (Baccano!), Monkey D. Luffy (One Piece) or Mako Mankanshoku (Kill la Kill) . She acts like a dunce a lot of the time but she's actually surprisingly good at problem solving even if nobody (including her) realizes it. She has this ability to always think of what is needed, even if it's weird and unconventional. I'm a fan of this type protagonist so I liked Akko a lot. She did frustrate me with her unreasonable goals and stubbornness, but that's part of the reason I like her. She also has a charismatic charm and aura that attracts people around her to liking her and it's not clear how she does it, yet the writing makes it feel totally natural, and it happens to the viewer as well.

(Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger)

Not even counting Akko, the characters are real and believable and make mistakes. Not mistakes like Shounen mistakes, where someone who needs to do something physical randomly doesn't pull through for whatever reason (I'm looking at you, Eren Jaegar) but Mistakes like interpersonal interactions that could be handled well but aren't, because people have these annoying things like insecurities and emotions that get in the way. But these mistakes and failures do not result in subpar sitcom hijinks - instead they cause the feels to be greater and you like them even more.

(Mr. Blackwell and Andrew Hanbridge)

I want to take a minute to talk about the diversity of the cast as well. Let's consider the main 9 witches - Akko, Lotte, Sucy, Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger, Amanda, Jasminka, Diana, Professor Ursula, and Professor Croix.

(Sucy and Lotte)

Akko is as I described. Read it if you didn't already. (you did, didn't you? did you?) Lotte is a quiet bookish girl with a fairly standard character design, but she does not seem to be a classic studyholic like early Hermione. She is generally happy but pragmatic, and takes things at her own pace. Unlike Akko and Sucy's stubbornness, Lotte also has the strength to recognize that she genuinely can't do something and that sometimes that's okay, because she can do and wants to do what she is good at, not what is thrust upon her by others.

Sucy has a very iconic character design and her personality is also a subversion of many common tropes. Unlike Lotte and Akko, she's pretty cruel and will play practical jokes on Akko that are more than "just a bit of fun." At one point she seriously considers giving Akko a potion when she's asleep but concludes that it might kill her and she'd lose her ability to torment Akko anymore. However, she's also got a soft side and she wouldn't constantly go with Akko's schemes if she didn't actually think they were fun. She cares about Akko even though she won't admit it.

(Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger, Amanda, and Jasminka)

This is just the main three. Team Amanda / Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger / Jasminka is another diverse group, and different from the original. I don't want to clog this up with character descriptions - but here's a few short ones - Amanda is a reckless skateboarder-type who nonetheless has the self control not to do ideas she thinks are genuinely bad. Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger never talks (as in, she's mute) and a mechanic who likes to distance herself, but ends up welcoming Akko's stubborn requests to help her because she actually likes company. Jasminka is a girl who loves to eat (I mean, who doesn't) but she's sweet and calm and gets excited about everything. Jasminka doesn't get as much exposure but I still like her character and her existence in the story.This case is incredibly diverse and does not suffer from a common problem of having many cast members with similar personalities and designs

(Croix-sensei)

Note that I didn't give it a 10/10, because I don't like Croix very much. She ends up acting somewhat villainous and Obviously Evil, and puts on a pretty evil persona despite actually being most accurately Lawful Neutral. I also didn't like how her character arc went at the end, but that's basically a spoiler.

Plot - 7/10

Obviously I can't really comment on it too much without spoilers. The plot is fun, but I wouldn't consider it to be incredibly special. It follows Trigger's traditional overall plot structure, which is when the first part of it is primarily episodic and has a conflict-of-the-week feel, but it serves to set up the characters and the worldbuilding. Then the true conflict and action starts just about halfway through. The individual episodes have fun ideas, but I primarily got attached by wanting to watch the characters do things, not wanting to watch what the characters were doing. The plot did pick up and get cool after the second half when Croix arrives, and did a good job at capitalizing on the character's successes and failures. It wasn't "bad" or "cliche," I thought the plot was decent, but it wasn't something really special.

However, I can say the ending was great. It wasn't quite a Gainax Ending because it made sense - however, it was a very good ending. Believe it or not (er, Believe it) I did actually predict most of the plotpoints of the ending, but I'm also weird and have an uncharacteristically good knack for that sort of thing. I still loved the ended and thought it was done very splendidly.

Music / OPs / EDs - 8/10

(I also ship Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger)

I didn't like the songs at first, but they really really grew on me. The second opening, for example, really reflected the spirit of the show. OP2 (Mind Conductor) starts out kind of confrontational and sharp song with the visuals dividing the cast members into two sides no matter how you look at it, but flows into a fluid dreamy catchy fastpaced song that has the main cast on the same side of everything all flying together. It sounds good and looks good and is catchy. I also liked ED2 a lot, and I thought OP1 and ED1 were fun too. The music in the middle of the show is not something I pay attention to so I'm not going to rate it, because I'm not really qualified to do that if I didn't hear it or think about how good it was.

(Amanda, with Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger’s ship behind)

Voice Acting - 8/10

It was pretty decent and some scenes were remarkably well done, but other than those, nothing struck me as incredible. I'm also not as familiar with this, and didn't pay attention to it all that much, so I cannot really provide a fair rating or weight it very highly in my aggregate.

Visuals (i.e. the Animation) - 9/10

(Akko)

This might come across as an uncharacteristically high rating, but I think this show's visuals deserve a 9/10 in my opinion, because the animators did an incredible job.

(Ursula-sensei apparently didn’t expect Akko to drop by at an inconvenient time. Foolish mistake, for Akko will always be there when it is least convenient.)

It's very hard to explain how with still shots, because it's not good because of lighting. Studios like Ufotable are famous for "looking beautiful" but keep in mind that they're very very good at lighting, which places an unfair comparison on animation that excels in other areas.

(Diana Cavendish)

First, this is a Studio Trigger show, and it excels at what Studio Trigger excels at. Exaggerated everything. The first half of Kill la Kill was a 13-episode long Caffeine Trip, but this is not like that. However, Trigger delivered on what Trigger does best - faces. Faces are really varied and unique, extremely expressive, very exaggerated, and also calm when necessary. Trigger is not caught up in being "realistic," in their animation - they focus much more heavily on having their faces tell a story all by themselves. This is very clearly what's going on with Akko, Sucy, and Amanda, but it's also really apparent for the more quiet types. Ursula-sensei, Diana, and Andrew all have facial expressions that change with the mood pretty significantly and they are absolutely capable of complex faces like scrutiny/suspiciousness, hesitation, or "definitely hiding something." The faces are done very well.

(Ursula-sensei, waving your hands and saying “chigau desu” doesn’t help)

It's not just the faces though - the animation style is "flat" and cell-shaded, but it does not lack depth. This is because the character models are animated fluidly and realistically. Realistically? Yes, humans are weird. Deliberately improper stylistic anatomy like Huge Anime Eyes or enormous smiles does not bug us, but when physics enter an uncanny valley in animation, it looks weird. The characters move in a way that makes you not think about it - the interactions between objects has a definite depth to it even if that animation is flat. I was sold on it in the First Episode when Akko was running with a wheeled suitcase down the sidewalk and dragged the four-wheeled suitcase behind her. That sort of attention to detail was not missed by the animators - I happen to own a similar suitcase to Akko and I have run like she did when trying to catch a bus, and I can attest that Akko's suitcase does exactly what those suitcases do in that situation, which is "bounce annoyingly."

(Akko Kagiri and The Annoyingly Bouncy Suitcase)

The animation has good depth and fluidity and surprisingly accurate Newtonian mechanics (for a show about magic, I mean) and even if the lighting is not something special, the animation is still very well done.

(Some random angry guy, and company)

Basically, you know that Miyazaki quote where he basically complains about how the anime industry is dying, and that animators can't draw girls because animators don't go out and look at real girls anymore? Well that broad edgy pretentious Miyazaki generalization about how modern animators can't animate girls realistically is... not accurate, by the looks of Little Witch Academia. All the little witches are animated quite well, thank you Miyazaki. You used to be cool like 15 years ago, you know.

Environment and Attention to Detail - 8/10

(Parody cards clearly based on Magic: The Gathering. Nicol Bolas- and Winter Orb- inspired cards are present.)

Detail is done well. With most of the topics involved, the writers either did research or were already familiar with the topics, and their familiarity with what they were animating showed through. This includes minor quirks like putting a directory named "New Folder" on the desktop of a computer and putting a Toxic Tumblr Anon Ask (TM) on someone's phone, but it also includes some medium and major attention to detail. The Magical Linguistics class had actual linguistics - "The Luna Alphabet is a traditional writing system used by ancient witches. It constitutes a form of phonemic orthography." This is a very verbose way of saying that the Luna Alphabet is a writing system where characters (approximately) represent sounds, like Latin, Hiragana, or Aramaic. (Contrast this with writing systems like hànzì or Hangul which characters do not stand for sounds.) In the Magic Numerology class, they did not teach real world stuff, because in real life, numerology is a pseudoscience and is not real (however, magic is a thing in this show, strangely enough). However, the stuff they taught did come from real world numerological ideas, like Kabbalah. I didn't recognize most of it because I'm not an expert in pseudoscience, but I did notice some things that also are numerological in real life.

(Anons on Tumblr, for those of you who have never experienced Anon hate.)

One thing worth noting is the collective bargaining scene - I was very surprised and pleased how accurate the collective bargaining scene was. There was a scene where several nonhuman employees of the school collectively bargained with the administration about fair labor compensation and benefits. It was shown more or less how collective bargaining exists in real life - both parties and counsel sat around a table and explained cases and negotiated with each other. It did not fall to the cliche of demonizing the union for going on strike, and unreasonably stopping services to make unreasonable demands. The writers did a very good job displaying the complexity of labor relations as they pertain to real life and how in many of these collective bargaining cases there is no clear answer and someone will always end up with the short end of the stick. It turned out not to matter when in the middle of the meeting Croix arrived with some Deus Ex Machina (i.e. a god machine that could fix the scarcity causing the issue in the first place) but the accuracy struck me as well-done.

(Collective bargaining negotiations with the Labor Union.)

Memeability - 10/10

(Croix pretends to be Yoda for a second.)

This section is not part of the aggregate. But I'm only half-joking.

(Shiny Chariot can also impart Kamina wisdom.)

This show lends itself extraordinarily well to memes and slays, and that sort of thing. (You know, like 94 percent of the content on my blog.) Some good shows are very memerable, like this one. Others, like, say, Fate/Zero or Clannad, are not, just by their nature. But this one? 10/10.

(Wendy’s is actually an anime girl in anime canon)

Overall - I'd give this an 8/10

I emphasize plot very heavily and that was the lowest score, so otherwise I might have rated it a 9. But either way, this show seemed pretty cool at first and really, really grew on me as time went on. This show is very good and I would recommend that you watch it, but I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to recommend you read the above if you haven’t already (you did, did you? did you?) and decide for yourself whether you want to watch it.

(Constanze Braunschbank Albrechtsberger thinks this is is a weird way for me to end.)

P.S. The show also has a fidget spinner:

(If you believe it is a fidget spinner, then it is.)

#little witch academia #studio trigger #review #little witch academia review #spring 2017 anime #not a shitpost

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thegloober · 6 years ago

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Thumbnails Special Edition: National Disability Employment Awareness Month

by Chaz Ebert and Matt Fagerholm

October 24, 2018 |

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Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety. This special edition of Thumbnails celebrates National Disability Employment Awareness Month, which runs through the entirety of October. Our contributor Scott Jordan Harris gave us the following article recommendations, and they provide a vital array of perspectives on the need for inclusivity in media.—Chaz Ebert

“Growing Up, I Only Saw Half of Myself Represented On TV—That Needs to Change Now“: A personal essay from Bustle‘s Andrea Lausell about representations of Latinx people with disabilities. See also: Melissa Hung’s Huffington Post piece on “the most damaging way movies portray people with disabilities” and an article by prominent activist Vilissa Thompson on her Ramp Your Voice blog about portrayals of disability in the Black community.

“As I’ve grown into my adult years, it has made me happy to see Latinx-centered media begin to share stories of other marginalized non-disabled groups in the Latinx community (LGBTQ+, Afro-Latinx, Indigenous-Latinx). Representation is slowly improving with how these identities are viewed with TV shows like ‘One Day at a Time’ having a teenager like Elena Alvarez come out as queer and work through the emotions while seeking acceptance from her Cuban family. ‘Jane the Virgin’ highlights characters of color tackling the topic of immigration, all while making a political statement about our government and its treatment of people seeking a better life. Although these strides are giving us a diverse representation of Latinx culture and are being received fairly well by the community for being marathon-worthy, if Disabled Latinx were to be included in the narrative, would the public receive it as well? I’ve noticed that non-Latinx communities are just starting to embrace disabled narratives on their TV screens. Often, disabled representation in Hollywood, like in the novel-turned-film ‘Me Before You’ starring Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin, portrays the harmful stereotype of disability being a burden. However, shows like ABC’s sitcom ‘Speechless’ have been a game changers for showing a disabled lead character happy with their life. But that’s just starting to happen now. Growing up, I learned to be ashamed of who I am because there were so few positive disabled Latinx representations on TV. Hearing from my Latinx community that disabled Latinx don’t exist — or that there’s ‘no need’ for us to be shown — told me that my place as a Disabled Latina within Latinidad wasn’t welcomed.”

“Why are disabled actors ignored when it comes to roles like the Elephant Man?“: Asks The Guardian‘s Frances Ryan. See also: Ryan’s piece on the controversy regarding Netflix’s “Afflicted” series and Julie Rehmeyer’s Los Angeles Times essay on how Netflix is “televising prejudice against the chronically ill.”

“The BBC has been widely criticised over its decision to cast a non-disabled person in its remake of ‘The Elephant Man.’ The role of Joseph Merrick – who had severe physical deformities – will be played by the Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton. Notably, actor Adam Pearson – who has neurofibromatosis type 1, a condition which was once thought to affect Merrick – has said he wasn’t even given the opportunity to audition. As Pearson told LBC, it’s part of a culture of exclusion for disabled actors. ‘It’s a systemic problem, not only in the BBC but industry-wide.’ From Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man to Eddie Redmayne in ‘The Theory of Everything,’ it’s routine for non-disabled actors to play disabled characters, often gaining critical acclaim in the process. At best, it takes work and exposure from talented disabled actors and further adds to an arts and culture that pushes disability representation – much like race, sex and class – to the sidelines. At worst, it sees non-disabled actors mimic the characteristics of a minority group without any involvement from the community it depicts.”

“‘A Quiet Place’ proves there’s no excuse for using non-disabled actors to play disabled characters“: According to The Independent‘s James Moore. See also: Variety‘s Joe Otterson reports that Maysoon Zayid, who has cerebral palsy, will write and star in “an autobiographical comedy series in development at ABC,” while CNN‘s Wayne Drash analyzes the outrage over the portrayal of epilepsy on Netflix’s “Seizure Boy.”

“The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by blind monsters that zero in on sound with the aid of supersensitive hearing. Silence is thus a matter of survival. Because her family uses American Sign Language (ASL) they have an advantage: they can talk to each other in a world where speaking can get you killed. The script could have fallen down at this point by having Simmonds perform a functional role without much else to do other than move the plot along for the other actors, including A-lister Emily Blunt, to shine. But it has more ambition than that. Simmonds’ Regan Abbott is a fully formed character; a stroppy teen, chafing against her parents’ overprotectiveness and haunted by what she sees as her role in her little brother’s death. It’s not just her deafness that is central to the plot: she is. She’s neither an afterthought, nor is she an inspiration, which is another trap films involving disability fall into. She’s a person. She’s also the best thing about a film that is full of good things. Director John Krasinski, who pushed to cast her, has further revealed that she changed one of the signed parts of the scripts in an important way that makes it better. In fact she elevates the whole project. As Kamran Mallick, the chief executive of Disability Rights UK, says, she brings ‘an extra dimension to the role which a hearing actor would not have been able to do.’”

“Toppling Structures of Inequality in the Documentary Field“: A great article published at IDA by Nicole Opper.

“New Day Films, a distribution co-op created by and for independent documentary filmmakers in 1971, has recently been grappling with what it means to be truly representative of the broad spectrum of filmmakers that exists, including filmmakers of color, working-class filmmakers, trans and gender non-binary filmmakers and those with disabilities—groups that have historically been underrepresented or poorly portrayed in the industry. At our Annual Meeting in upstate New York this past June, a panel was convened to discuss the findings of an Equity and Representation task force, and to open up the conversation to all member-owners of the co-op. ‘Very often in the documentary space, I’m the only person of color,’ remarked Michael Premo. Premo is the director of ‘Water Warriors,’ the story of a community’s successful fight to protect their water from the oil and natural gas industry. ‘This is also sort of dually equated with poverty, which is equally as racist as being the token black guy.’ Cheryl Green, the director of ‘Who Am I To Stop It’—a documentary about individuals with traumatic brain injuries—shared her perspective as a filmmaker with acquired disabilities herself: ‘There is no one disability community. What is a film about disability? What is a person with a disability? We’re not a monolith. There’s not one way to talk about it; there’s not one way to present it. The main way disability is represented is non-disabled people parachuting in and filming a medical story. Usually it’s one that starts off as ‘That’s gross or scary or painful! Phew! They got better.’”

“CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion“: Scott Jordan Harris recommends Jenni Gold’s documentary in his RogerEbert.com review.

“‘CinemAbility’ is the most entertaining and comprehensive history of disability in American film and television ever made. In that sense it is the onscreen equivalent of Matthew F. Norden’s classic book Cinema Of Isolation: A History Of Physical Disability In The Movies, and Norden is prominent in the film’s opening scenes, explaining the early and generally disheartening history of Hollywood’s ideas about disability. Due prominence is given to Lon Chaney, an able-bodied actor notorious in the disabled community for making a career out of grotesque and exploitative parodies of disability. He often did so in partnership with director Tod Browning, who in 1932 made ‘Freaks’ with a cast of disabled actors. Norden uses ‘Freaks’ to make an important point about audience attitudes to disability then that is still relevant now: ‘Audiences couldn’t handle [‘Freaks’]. People supposedly went screaming down the aisles because what they were seeing on the screen were not able-bodied actors wearing tricky makeup … They were seeing authentic disabled people.’ But ‘CinemaAbility’ never feels like a lecture. It is structured like a conversation, with contributions from an array of industry heavyweights, including Marlee Matlin, Ben Affleck, Geena Davis, William H. Macy, Ben Lewin, Peter Bogdanovich and R.J. Mitte.”

Image of the Day

TV Guide‘s Alyssa Andrews explains “how TV is still failing people with disabilities,” in graphic novel form.

Video of the Day

[embedded content]

The official trailer for Jenni Gold’s documentary, “CinemAbility: The Art of Inclusion,” reviewed above by Scott Jordan Harris.

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