#yes he is gross and sucks but there was some whimsy there. he was still a goof he just went nuclear

[planetbass]

does anyone else have a hard time comprehending turbo and king candy as being the same person or am i just a specific kind of insane

[littlemonstersau-blog]

The Feels Awaken, Part 3: A New Hope (for Friendship)

Written by @jkl-fff, illustrated by me

PART I - PART II [Interlude] - PART III - PART IV [Interlude] - PART V [FINAL] (you are here)

——————————————————————————————–

A new day dawned then waxed then began to wane, but Ford and Bill hardly noticed. A manic, obsessive energy (plus an unhealthy amount of coffee and sugar) kept them focused throughout their self-appointed task. Such is often the case for the kind of people who feel the need to write to right a wrong in the world. Not all heroes wear capes, after all; some wear turtlenecks and trenchcoats, some wear paper-based clones of teenage boys produced through unholy abominations of SCIENCE!.

… For that matter, not all heroes are particularly heroic; some are morally ambiguous straddlers of the line between antihero and antivillain, some are demonic chaos gods who (quite frankly) still wonder how in the 79 Hells they found themselves in this position.

In the end, though it did take more than the one night, they still finished in just over 16 hours. The plot outline came in at just over 18 pages, which they tidily stacked together on the table and declared to be more than adequate … before passing out on the carpet. Facefirst.

When Bill next regained consciousness, he was in his attic bed and morning light was streaming through the window. His mouth tasted like an abandoned prison for criminally insane chalk and his head felt like the internal turmoil of a buzzsaw having an existential crisis. It was a pain that was anything but hilarious; it was the sugared caffeine hangover equivalent of nuclear fallout … Mouthwash fixed the first problem. The second took an adult dosage of aspirin, a lot of water, and deliberate manipulation of many of the clonesuit’s normally automatic processes for a full eight minutes. And even then, not completely.

“Guess I can’t pilot one of these things through 36+ hours of no sleep on a gallon of coffee … Not if I wanna be able to still maneuver it the next day without crashing every ten feet into a wall or the floor, at least,” he grumbled to himself. “Major design flaw … Can’t believe they got evolutionarily approved for mass production with such weak durability …”

Downstairs in the kitchen, Stan greeted him jovially enough. “Stancakes are up, and so are you, it seems. How you feelin’ today?”

“Honestly, confused,” Bill graveled, his clonesuit throat still raw. “I can get longterm possession of a meatbag leading to me—y’know, the real me—developing emotions and physical cravings and other … gross, brain-mush junk like that. Neurochemistry is basically just an addictive habit, like how people respond to hearing the question ‘What is love?’—”

“Baby, don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me no more,” Stan mumbled automatically.

“Exactly. But what I don’t get is why the real me is also feeling this coffee and sugar hangover. No joke: I tried leaving my clonesuit to get away from it, but it followed me. How is that fair? And, yeah, existence isn’t fair,” Bill interjected before Stan automatically could. “But still …”

Like the benevolent and experienced sage he was (more or less), Stan chuckled to himself. Then, laying a companionable arm around Bill’s shoulders, he leaned in and whispered the truth as grimly as Death itself, “You can outrun your sins, but you can never outrun a hangover.”

“W-wha?”

“Some say if you never stop drinkin’, it’ll never catch up with you. But they are fools. Sooner or later, all things must sleep—sooner or later, all who drink must suffer.”

“Uh … K-kinda freakin’ me out here.” Bill tried to lean away, but Stan’s hold was inescapable. “And, just sayin’, I’m kinda responsible for making most of the 79 Hells as freaky as they are.”

“Heed my warning, child.”

“I’m heeding! I’m heeding! Elder Gods, Stan, the only one who’s supposed to give people nightmares around here is me …”

Straightening up, Stan went back to the stove to continue what passed for cooking with him. “Once you’re done eatin’, by the way, I gotta plate for you to take down to Ford. He prob’ly needs some food and water more ‘n you do.”

Between mouthfuls of food, Bill said, “Yeah, sure … You seen what we wrote, by the way?”

“Yeah. It’s not bad at all. I’d def’nitely go see movies like that. Might even pay my own money for it, too. Heh … Even Soos admitted the storylines are better. Haven’t seen him that downcast ‘bout anything in a while, either. Looked as painful for him as cutting out his own kidney. Might have to do something nice for him soon just to make up for it,” Stan added to himself.

“Huh … Yeah, maybe …” Bill chewed on his breakfast, almost starting to maybe feel guilty. Then, when he finished, he put his dishes in the sink, picked up what was meant for Ford, and took it down to the lab.

Ford, as usual, was at his desk. He was hunched over with a pen, which was also fairly usual. However, and this was very unusual, all his notes and Journals had been pushed into a corner—neatly stacked, but well out of the way. Close to hand, as if for quick reference, was actually their Cosmos Conflicts storyline.

Bill cleared his throat. “Brought some breakfast for ya from Stan.” He set it on the desk, but away from any of the papers (just in case). “How you feeling? I woke up with a caffeine hangover I couldn’t escape even when I left my body. Er, clonsuit. Whatever. Same dif.”

“… I didn’t really sleep very deeply,” Ford eventually replied, his voice as hoarse as Bill’s. “Ergo, I can’t really say I woke up with such a hangover, but I’m suffering one all the same.”

“Yeesh, that sucks. Taken anything? Had some water and some food? That helped me.”

“Some water and aspirin, yes, though I’m not sure I could keep much food down … I suppose I ought to try, anyway.”

“If you feel more rotten than a two-week-old apple core, why are you working?” Bill asked, sliding the plate closer.

“I’m not really working, per se,” Ford answered guiltily. “Just … sketching. Some stuff. For what we came up with.”

Bill’s eyes lit up with interest. “Ooo! Really? Can I see? Please?”

For a moment, Ford’s jaw worked. As though trying to control himself.

“It’s okay,” Bill said hurriedly, though unable to fully contain his disappointment. “I get it. I’ll leave you al—”

A couple pages’ worth of images (some rough sketches, some little more than absent doodles, and some rather intricate and detailed) were thrust at the Demon. “Here. Can’t see any harm in you looking at them, anyway, so …” Ford mumbled. Without looking up, he cut in to his food. “Was just doing this since I’m too awake and restless to just not do anything, but too … wooly in the head, I suppose you could say, to do any productive work.”

Bill poured over them, delighting in the imaginative whimsy of them. Most were of characters from the prequels, though with distinctive touches—touches reflecting their own collaboration (such as Otherkin in a stained pilot’s attire, Imdolledupa aiming ruthlessly with a blaster, and Jelived Knights wearing a different style of clothing from Jelived Sentinels or Jelived Healers). But some were very different, especially among the doodles. “Ha! You made a Soos Wookie!”

Ford couldn’t resist smiling. “Soosbacca. Co-pilot to Stan Solo.”

“In their spaceship, the Mystery Falcon, right? Is Melody a Wookie, too?”

“Huh … That’s not a bad idea, actually. I was having a hard time seeing how to fit her in, since she isn’t really the Princess Leia type.”

“But Mabel and—pff!—Dipper are?” Bill snorted, pointing to where they were both sketched with the iconic braids wrapping around their ears. “Both of them together?”

“Well, they’re also both Luke, since I couldn’t really pick who fit which roll better.”

“Two sets of the twins running around, huh?” Bill murmured, though he was really thinking about two Dippers (and they weren’t running around, either—they were very much not running). “… And Wendy’s Lando, I see. Am I Yoda, since I’m the most triangular or everybody, and the right size?”

“Uh …” Ford hesitated.

“Pff, it’s alright, I can already see 3PO and R2 are both me.”

Lamely, the Weirdologist explained, “Because you’re shiny. That’s the extent of the logic.”

“You gonna do any more sketches?”

“Assuming I can keep breakfast down, probably,” Ford said around a mouthful. “It’s … distracting. And fun. And relaxing, too. Helps to pass the time on a down day like this.”

“Um … M-mind if I stay and watch? Please?” Bill almost begged. “Y’know how much I love watching you meatbags make art.”

“… Oh, fine,” Ford relented. Because what was the harm in being nice to the Demon? Ford didn’t have to trust him for that. “Just don’t make any noise. My head aches enough as it is.”

Bill mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key before pulling up a chair and settling himself comfortably beside Ford. The only time he broke his silence after that was to ask Ford if he wanted more water, and to assert that the others would get a kick out of seeing these sketches (“especially Soos … the Twins, too, though we’d have to text ‘em a photo of ‘em, or mail the whole project to ‘em to see …”).

All in all, it turned out to be a rather nice day for both of them together.

[vincent-marie]

So... Can I talk about Tim Burton for a few minutes?

I was recently thinking about how a lot of filmmakers, particularly the likes of Zack Snyder, seem to have these really cynical, defeatist attitudes, and yet despite the absence of happy endings, audiences apparently eat that shit up with how much of a profit it turns out.

At first I just kind of shrug my shoulders and say, "Who am I to judge? I've been a die-hard Tim Burton fan for years."

But actually thinking about it, even I am way off. Most, if not all of, Snyder's work is just nonstop misery and cynicism, giving off this idea that there's no point to being a hero or doing good things unless it benefits you. I'll spare you the anger-fueled lecture about how objectivism is a bullshit philosophy for already-selfish assholes, but what always bothered me is that there's no point to the cynicism and misery in his movies.

And that brings me back to Tim Burton. Yes, the guy's movies are popular with gloomy, mopey teenagers and some adults in the Goth community, but his movies, the good ones, aren't all the gloom-fests folks usually write them off as.

"Pee Wee's Big Adventure" I don't need to tell you is just fun and weird. In fact, it's goofy and upbeat, and it's all about Pee Wee going on this strangely epic journey to retrieve his stolen bicycle. I've never been a big fan of Pee Wee Herman, but even I enjoy this movie to the point that I'll probably watch it if it's on TV.

"Beetlejuice" is dark, but it's not really that depressing. It's a dark comedy about how the afterlife isn't all it's cracked up to be, and while it does have a character who contemplates suicide, the ghosts in the film talk her down by telling her, "Being dead doesn't make things any easier."

"Batman" is kind of its own thing as it was more of a studio commission rather than a pet project of any kind, but over all it was fun and ended on a rather triumphant note. Might not hold up as well as we think, but it got folks outside of comic fans to take Batman seriously (for a while.)

"Edward Scissorhands" has a sad ending, yes, but in a way that's cathartic and tragic and in a way that feels earned. It was an homage to classic "Frankenstein" movies, there's a good quirky sense of humor about suburban life, and it's coated with a good layer of whimsy that makes it less emotionally draining and more like a fairy tale. In fact, when you're a teenager struggling with mental illness and social anxiety like I was, Edward's situation of wanting to experience love but too afraid to get close to people for fear of hurting them is really relatable at that age. And while a lot of us wished Edward and Kim could've had a happy ending, I always took it as at least Edward got to experience that sense of belonging for a short while.

(Also, see Lindsay Ellis’s video on "The Shape of Water” and why we love Beauty and the Beast tropes.)

"Batman Returns" is the only one that kind of fits people's perception of "Tim Burton: Master of Gloom". Catwoman's story basically begins in tragedy and ends in tragedy, and that does suck because she was a cool character. (She was even supposed to get her own spin-off movie in which she rose back up again as a hero, but that never happened.) And the less said about how unnecessarily gross the Penguin was, the better. Yet I still consider "Batman Returns" to be my favorite of the live-action Batman movies. It’s just so cartoonish and silly in some places while also having that whimsical darkness to it that, for me, is just pure indulgence. Plus it’s what got me interested in Batman altogether, so there’s that.

Then there's "Ed Wood". I've always considered it the best Tim Burton film hands-down because you don't need to be a fan to like it. There's the friendship between Ed Wood and Bela Legosi that's like the film's centerpiece, but at its core it's about a filmmaker who wants to do the thing he loves and he remains cheerful and optimistic in spite of the cynical world that is Hollywood. You might disagree with me since both the real Ed Wood and his movie counterpart never got to have the fame and recognition he would have liked in his lifetime, but I always found that very inspiring as an artist myself.

For me that's pretty much the cut-off date for when his movies were mostly good. From "Mars Attacks!" and onward they're pretty much hit-or-miss with most people and I don't have the brain-juice to go into all of them to the present day.

I will say that "Sweeney Todd" was my first big disappointment as it took the Stephen Sondheim musical and sucked out all the humor and levity that helped balance out the darker elements. Not quite worth the novelty of hearing Johnny Depp sing.

But my point stands. I've seen folks dismiss Tim Burton's works as just "porn for fourteen year old girls", and that always bugged me because that wasn't giving enough credit to a good handful of movies that were a positive influence on me. Since my high school years my fan devotion has waned a lot (especially after that stupid way he tried to excuse himself for not casting more actors of color), but the likes of "Edward Scissorhands", "Ed Wood", and even "Batman Returns" were what helped inspire me to want to pursue art and animation.