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finsterhund · 3 years

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A comprehensive guide to Heart of Darkness lost media. Fake, and real

a forward: there appears to be some sort of conflict between Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir. Things Eric speaks about, Fred denies. However Eric generally has proof to support his side of things but Fred never provides such.

I will edit this as I go along. I intend to source things as best I can. I will not post it to a better website until it is adequately sourced.

I’m not currently planning to include press material, promotional renders, alternate releases of the final game, etc. here (yet!! that may change)

The Movie

What we know is true:

Dreamworks was interested in adapting Heart of Darkness as a feature-length computer animated movie. Predominant parties at play were Jeffery Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. They invited several of the devs including Eric to the Dreamworks studio in LA, showed them Prince of Egypt storyboards, and toured them around. The movie was never made and development was never started.

According to Eric, the head of Virgin Interactive, Martin Alper repeatedly went to Paris to bother and harass him to abandon all work on the game and give the movie rights to Katzenberg. Eric didn’t want to throw away all that work and wanted to release the game first. Alper abandoned the team and project soon after, dooming the game to years of development hell as they needed to find a new publisher. Fred claimed that “half of the article (in which Eric discussed this) was incorrect” but never went into detail as to how or why

Rumors:

Even though George Lucas was interested in HoD’s display at several expos, he did not involve himself in any film ideas. It is believed he may have stolen ideas of alien monster designs for use in the Phantom Menace but this can easily just be coincidence and is unfounded.

The movie was not going to be live action despite some fan speculation.

The Pilot Animation/character test

What we know:

In Eric Chahi’s biography he mentions that a small animation studio did contract work of some animation concepts for Heart of Darkness. They were ultimately replaced with what Amazing would go with. This may or may not be associated with the same concepts as when they briefly thought to make the cinematics with 2D bitmaps but it is unclear. Eric states that this pilot was made however and in a demo reel from the studio they mention working with Virgin and Amazing Studio.

Rumors:

Fred said it wasn’t a thing but didn’t clarify.

This might have been the opening cutscene in 2D, or it may have just been character models and test animation. It is currently lost entirely with no actual stills of the thing itself.

Blood

What we know:

Someone untrustworthy but people latch onto this sort of shit said the original version of the game has blood in it. We know from tradeshow footage, digging through the final game’s code, an early build of the game, etc. that if anything the original versions were LESS violent. There is no evidence there was ever blood. Anymore than there’s evidence of the poison berries (which we will get to later)

The Gameboy Advance port

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was going to be ported to the Gameboy advance. According to Frederic Savoir the project was quickly canned due to cartridge costs that Nintendo didn’t want to pay for.

Rumors:

Someone claiming to work on this port said that Infogrames founder Bruno Bonnel wanted the game to have an Adidas promotion and change Andy’s shoes. Fred says this isn’t true, and there’s no evidence that this was ever an actual thing.

The Jaguar Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was briefly considered to be published on the Atari Jaguar. There are internal letters discussing how good of an asset it would be for the console. That’s as far as it ever apparently went.

The fake developer copypasta:

A copypasta of obviously fake ideas that were potentially given from Amazing to this apparent Jaguar dev has been passed around since 2014. This included poison berries that would make Andy explode, fan-theory sorta ideas about how other children perished in the darkland, a magic mirror, and what is very clearly just the maggots from spiritual successor “Limbo”. This individual provided no proof and his story was far from convincing. And no evidence that someone other than the Amazing team themselves having access to official development code from the game has ever been brought forward.

The Saturn Version

What we know:

Before the game ultimately came out for Playstation, it was going to be a timed exclusive for the Sega Saturn with Sega purchasing an exclusivity from Virgin Interactive. This fell through due to Virgin intentionally (according to Eric) throwing a monkey wrench in things and the Saturn was not viable when they were finally able to publish the game after getting picked up by Infogrames.

There is an incomplete playable demo of the first level and first two story cinematics in English and Japanese from the 1996 Toy Tokyo Show. In it there are slight programming differences such as a screen sliding transition animation, the inability for spectres to eat Andy, features cut from the final game involving the shadow dogs that are still mostly present in the final game’s code, and some slight graphical differences.

Frederic said the Saturn was easy for him to program on, and he finished things quickly so it was likely fully playable but no complete copy has been found.

Rumors:

It is unknown if there is a full build of this version of the game for Saturn. The Toy Tokyo Show build is the only publicly known one.

Based on footage from other events it appears to be from after changes were made to spectre sound effects and some behaviors. So this may have been a build from after the game was altered to be “easier” as mentioned by Eric Chahi at the time.

The Phillips CDI Version

What we know:

Heart of Darkness was offhanded mentioned a handful of times in a few CDI magazines in 1996. But there is no actual evidence the game was actually in development for the console and it was never confirmed in more trustworthy publications. CDI has less evidence than the planning letters of the Jaguar version. A supposed slipcover of a Heart of Darkness CDI CD was supposedly in existence but the guy claiming to have it couldn’t or wouldn’t prove this, with the only evidence appearing as convincing as a fake mock-up photoshop job and CDI websites discussing the final version of the game in full despite providing no evidence development for the console existed in the first place.

The most likely explanation is some idiot at Virgin said “CDI” when discussing this at-the-time secretive project because it would have had to be on a CD-based console and there weren’t that many of them yet at the time and this slip up briefly spread.

The iMac Version

What we know:

There was discussion of a Mac OS version of the game being developed, but nothing about the final product has surfaced online.

There was a page titled “imac” on the official website but the image files weren’t archived.

Heart of Dakness: The Return of Shados

What we know:

A scam artist on indiegogo pretended to be affiliated with Amazing Studio by using stolen assets and copying the kickstarter campaign of a different indie game in an effort to scam HoD fans out of money.

Both Eric Chahi and Frederic Savoir collectively agreed that this was a big fat scam.

It got taken down in under 24 hours of its discovery after I personally called the guy out on being a scamming piece of fucking shit and tattled to Fred.

As it was a scam with its only “evidence” being stolen text and doctored fan art and concept art from the original game, it’s very obvious nothing about this mess actually existed.

Delicious meal.

Merchandise (various)

What we know:

There are photos of merchandise, there have been real items show up, and there have been rumors or discussion of potential merchandise. Real confirmed ones include:

The Vicious and Amigo action figures. Given away for contests, at trade shows, sold on the infogrames store, and potentially included as part of a special box set of the French version

The Japanese big box version came with a mousepad. It is different than the round mousepad that also exists. We do not know where the round mousepad originated from. Potentially tradeshows or contests like the other items here.

Playstation controller and memory card. A memory card was sold separate in the UK, and in France a controller and memory card set were sold. Only photo of the set is in Eric’s collection. Memory card has shown up several times online. I own a complete sealed one.

The hat. Given away at press events, potentially worn by team members, and a version was also available on the infogrames store. Only physically existing version documented has the VIRGIN logo on it however so there’s definitely variations

Skateboard and t-shirt. Discussed in contests. Photos in magazines. Have never shown up so far. skateboard may have been available on infogrames store.

Photos exist of a backpack and fanny pack. Eric has these, the only known ones to exist, in his collection. Fred said they were officially released but they have yet to show up.

Rumored Merch:

A blanket. Briefly mentioned as if it genuinely existed on a French forum

Probably more tbh but my memory is shit. As I am writing this it is 2AM

#text post #long post #heart of darkness #lost media

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ritedudehere · 6 years

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With Mac’s performance, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia can no longer be a show about nongrowth.

Its only been like a day since I saw that beautiful season 13 finale of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but I can already sense the people around me getting tired because it’s all I want to talk about. My roommates are only vaguely aware of the show. They’ve never been obsessed with it like I was from 2012, until 2016. And then now. I’ve been haunting the apartment with my laptop, opened to youtube, the video clip of the end of “Mac Finds His Pride” queued up, ready to be watched for maybe the ninth time. I sent it to my friends who I think would be willing to have a conversation with me about it. It doesn’t matter to me who has the context of the rest of Sunny, and who doesn’t. All that matters to me is if someone is willing to watch and listen. Because I want to talk about it.

I think it was in 2016, in the middle of the 11th season, when I finally gave up on the new episodes. But sometimes, I’d open Hulu and binge on seasons 2 to 8, and I’d think about what I believe has gone wrong with the latest seasons, starting from season 9. I’ll think about why I stopped watching.

Maybe its just me, but it seemed like every character in Sunny had all turned into caricatures. In the beginning, the popularity of the show stemmed from the fact that these are all terrible people who no one would want to meet in real life. None of them have any sense of social responsibility, or empathy. But what made the show good, and the antics funny, was that on some level, the audience could understand the impulses the gang acted on in every episode. It was low budget with a simple concept. The worst people in the worst city in America acting on their worst impulses. And for the show to keep working on this concept, their characters could never learn from their behavior, could never grow or develop.

It’s Always Sunny was a good show until it wasn’t anymore. I don’t know. The jokes began to feel stale. The show couldn’t give me character development--this was their promise from the beginning, but it wasn’t giving me anything else to make the characters and their antics fresh. I could start to predict the plot easily. A few episodes might get a chuckle, but not a hearty belly laugh. The new episodes just didn’t feel new. The quality of picture and sound maybe got better, the budget more expensive. The gang was leaving Philly more and more often, and the schemes were getting wilder, bigger. But I wasn’t laughing anymore. My opinion was that keeping Sunny running for so long was a mistake. It seemed like the creators were becoming more progressive people who were trying to address complex topics--definitely a good thing, but they were growing past their own show, because their characters were not capable of complexity. Sunny taught their audiences that their characters will never change, and so the show was becoming stale because they were recycling material and old jokes without complicating them, because how could they when their own characters are not meant to be seen as complicated. They cannot grow or develop. That was the point from the beginning.

A couple days ago, I came across a few shots of Mac’s Dance. I thought, “Oh cool, Rob Mcelhenney is in another thing.” I never considered that those shots would be from It’s Always Sunny until I saw the whole thing. They looked too serious, too polished and sculpted.

My opinion is changed. Rob Mcelhenney did something insanely brilliant with Mac in the season finale, reversing the tone of the show unexpectedly, taking a giant leap, so to speak. And I don’t know what to do with this new thing Sunny has given me. But if any character of Sunny deserved character development, it was definitely Mac. If you were to ask me, he had the most complicated material to work with, not only including his sexuality. When I actually try and consider it, he was always the most sympathetic. As a practicing Catholic, he operates off of some kind of moral compass, no matter how flawed, damaging, and often bigoted. Of the entire gang, he was the one who tried the hardest to be a good person, or the person he believed he should be in the confines of something bigger than himself. The rest of the gang never thought of their identities as deeply as Mac. That was why coming out of the closet was such a big deal for him. In the episode where he comes out to the gang, he accepts his sexuality, but he gets depressed, telling the group that God is not real, because even though he accepts his sexuality now, he cannot accept that God would make him gay. The two main components of Mac’s identity, Catholicism and homosexuality, are contradictory. He cannot accept them existing at the same time. I can’t think of anything nearly as interesting happening with the other four.

Mac also has body dysmorphic disorder. He constantly changes his physical appearance as he seeks the approval of others. That’s part of the joke, though, that his appearance is constantly changing and nobody knows or understands why. In season 13, it only comes off as another joke aimed at Mac’s dysmorphia. The joke is that he gets ripped because he thought it was part of one of the gang’s schemes when it wasn’t. It’s a call back to a previous joke in season seven. Mac gets fat because he thinks he’s “cultivating mass” for another one of the gangs schemes, which isn’t actually part of any plan. In season 13, he presents his ripped torso to the gang, who don’t understand what is going on. Charlie then explains, “Oh, yeah, no one ever really knows what’s going on with Mac. He’s fat, he’s skinny, he’s muscular. It’s really a cry for help and attention, I think. So, what you do in that situation is you ignore him.” Then Mac, unsure, asks, “We’re not going to put it into the plan? Why did I do it?” Everyone: “Nobody knows.”

Mac: “You guys like me, right?”

Nobody answers.

Mac’s character was always seeking the approval of someone. It begins with his father in season 3, “Dennis Looks Like A Registered Sex Offender,” which shows Mac desperately trying to bond with an unresponsive father. In later seasons, Mac mainly seeks his approval from Dennis, who doesn’t approve of anyone in the gang, the gang is just easy for him to control, especially Mac. So, when Mac didn’t have approval from his dad, he sought approval from Dennis and from God. Neither of which worked out for him.

Now, we have the season 13 finale. It’s just so, so good. It’s emotional, heartbreaking, and the reason for this is because of who Mac is. He’s actually a sympathetic character. He’s complex, three-dimensional. Flawed, but tortured. The audience can react emotionally to the dance because of everything Mac had given thus far, not just from the beginning of “Mac Finds His Pride,” but maybe as far back as season six, or even further, in “Dennis Looks Like A Registered Sex Offender,” when Mac struggles desperately and fails to connect with his emotionally distant, ex-con father. Sure, in that episode, it’s meant to build to a punchline of the joke at the end, that as soon as Mac reacts appropriately to the way his father was treating him, he finds out that his dad did have plans to connect with his son, before Mac ruined it.

The dance is unexpected. For 13 seasons, Sunny fans have been taught that no matter what, Mac would make a fool of himself. Not this time.

In this article from Vulture, Rob Mcelhenney expresses his intention for the finale. “’We got a really overwhelming emotional response from the LGBTQ community last year,’ McElhenney said. ‘I took it seriously and I felt it would be completely unexpected to have this much more emotionally resonant end to the season. You would expect that Mac would express himself through the art of contemporary dance and it go horribly wrong, until you realize that’s not the direction we’re taking.’”

All Mac really needed was for someone to tell him that all the confusing things going on inside of him (the storm they are dancing in, the dance itself, all of it meant to represent his struggle) is okay. Mac needed someone to tell him that it was okay, that everything he is, and everything he feels even though it is confusing and contradictory, is okay. Thinking back to everything the audience has seen from Mac, you realize he is just a deeply wounded person. Maybe he’s involved with a bunch of narcissists like Dennis, Frank, Dee, and Charlie because of how wounded he is and has always been. But even before this, he has shown more complexity than all the other characters combined.

Again, from Vulture: “Rob came out of the writers room saying he wanted it to represent the struggle, the push and pull, and that helped Leo and me to put the choreography together in a way that showed vulnerability and strength,” Faulk said. “The woman represents the light and the good and everything pure and amazing — and he’s the dark. So it’s basically a giant metaphor for being able to love and accept yourself.”

Sunny did something completely different and unexpected for one of their most complex characters, they gave him a platform in which he is able to find love and acceptance, and then receive it as it came from somewhere he wasn’t expecting.

I feel pretty inspired by what Sunny just did, and now, I am going to expect more from the show. The creators have grown as people, and the stories they want to tell are more complex than before. Their characters are going to have to, or will have to continue to, catch up with them. I’ve been waiting for the show to end, thinking it could never grow. Sunny just proved me wrong.

One concrete example of what I wish to see in the next season: Mac standing up for himself against Dennis. If the show goes back to the way they were doing things before season 13, I will be completely disappointed. I don’t necessarily expect Mac to be completely different after this, but he’s the character who has shown the most character growth and complexity, even before the finale. If Dennis treats Mac the same way and Mac doesn’t stand up for himself in some way of another, I will be deeply uncomfortable. I might even feel betrayed.

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia just threw away their old playbook. It’s a new show now.

#iasip #discourse

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sethufiw261-blog · 4 years

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An Unbiased View of Ems Exercise

An Unbiased View of Ems Therapy

Table of ContentsSome Known Factual Statements About Ems Machine Best Electric Muscle Stimulator - TruthsBest Electric Muscle Stimulator Fundamentals ExplainedNot known Details About Ems Gym Getting The Stim Machine To WorkSome Known Details About Ems Training Machine Ems Unit Things To Know Before You BuyThe Best Strategy To Use For Ems ExerciseThe Best Guide To Electrical Muscle Stimulation BodybuildingElectrical Muscle Stimulation Machine Fundamentals ExplainedThe 5-Minute Rule for Ems ExerciseNot known Incorrect Statements About Ems Therapy

As a participant of the exhaustion generation (hi people! hope you're all hangin' in there!) that barely has time to clean her hair, I can not be bothered spending hours in the gym. Which suggests I need my exercises to be 2 things: reliable as well as reliable. It's why I have actually dropped so deeply crazy with megaformer classes that wed toughness training and also cardio into a 50-minute session.

So when I first found out about EMS, or "electrical muscle excitement" training, which guarantees to offer the equivalent of a 90-minute workout in thirty minutes level, I cleared a space in my back-to-back schedule and scheduled a strength-training session at NOVA Physical Fitness in Tribeca. EMS training uses electrical currents to enhance the contractions in your muscles.

Facts About Stim Machine Uncovered

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When you work out, you're voluntarily contracting your musclesthat's even more or much less Physiology 101. What EMS technology does, though, is trigger uncontrolled muscular tissue tightenings, which your mind does not know just how to do by itself, so as to get even more from your moves. So as an example, with a regular bicep curl, you get two muscular tissue tightenings.

While it might sound too great to be real, there's some science to back it up: Research has revealed that it decreases body fat and develops muscle, and a EMSCLUBISRAEL 2016 research called EMS training, "an attractive, time-efficient, as well as effective option to HIIT-resistance exercise for people seeking to improve basic strength and also body structure." NOVA has its very own EMS match, which is equipped with 20 electrodes (10 on each side) and also managed by an iPad.

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So if you wish to up the ante on a spin course, for example, you can do it in an EMS fit (though, reasonable caution, it will certainly be very, extremely tough). You can by hand regulate the electric excitement you're getting with the iPad controls, or choose a pre-set alternative like "endurance" as well as allow the suit do the job for you immediately.

It needs to fit super well in order to function effectively, and also considering I felt like a sausage inside of a casing I would certainly claim we got on the ideal track. The electrodes require some type of water conductor in order to work appropriately, so the workout began with a quick warmup to get me nice and perspiring (the fitness instructor likewise sprayed me with a little water to see to it things were wet and also prepared to go).

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My fitness instructor, Megan, was in control of just how much electrical energy I was obtaining, and also though I was completely prepared to have the living daylights surprised out of me, I was pleasantly stunned that it didn't harmed in all. It felt tingly in a weird yet additionally type good?kind of means.

Young boy, was I incorrect. By the end of the initial interval, I was leaking in sweat. The match sounds the muscle mass that you're working in a step to ensure that they're firing on all cyndrical tubes, so despite the fact that you're doing a routine squat, crinkle, or sit-up, it's stimulating your muscles at the exact same time and making your exercise way harder.

Electrical Muscle Stimulation Machine for Dummies

BTW: You could entirely use it while doing Fitness instructor of the Month Club: EMS extremely plainly revealed me where the muscle mass discrepancies in my body are. I felt the electrical stimulation on my appropriate glute a lot more extremely than on my left when I was doing squats, which showed that it was more powerful than my left.

" The added excitement will as a result make it terminate a lot more extremely than the 'weak' or less active one." By the end of the 30-minute exercise, I was soaked in sweat and extremely sore. Megan had me relax on the floor covering, and changed the fit into its "massage therapy" setting, which released continuous resonances on my muscle mass as well as really felt outstanding.

Electrical Stimulation for Beginners

I'm officially an EMS transform, as well as currently need to determine how, precisely, I'm going to fill all that added time in my calendar.

A new pattern sporting activity conquers the health and fitness sector: EMS training is obtaining extra as well as more prominent, and also EMS workshops are emerging like mushrooms. Below's everything you need to understand about this cutting-edge kind of workout! EMS (= electric muscle mass excitement or electromyostimulation) is a new pattern sporting activity that initially comes from physiotherapy.

Ems Stimulation - Questions

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Throughout an EMS training session, which only lasts about 20 minutes, all big groups of muscular tissues are boosted, additionally the underlying muscles. Despite its brief duration, EMS is as effective as several hrs of typical toughness training. The workout routine includes both vibrant and also static exercises that can be differed in all type of means.

Both the period and also the intensity of the impulses are regulated via an EMS gadget that permits each group of muscular tissues to be אימון ems חוות דעת boosted individually, at different or equivalent intensity. An usual misunderstanding is that the electric impulses are harmful to your body. The opposite holds true, actually. The reduced frequency isn't dangerous for humans, so you do not have to fret about being harmed by the electrical impulses.

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There are many mini studios that are specialised in EMS training. Typically, they are part of a franchise system, for instance, Bodystreet, fitbox, 20EnergyStreet etc. Those small workshops are around 80 to 300 square metres in size, and there is always a personal trainer that takes care of you during your remain.

Some fitness centers provide the cutting-edge training along with wellness centres, aesthetic studios, as well as hotels. Furthermore, EMS is an excellent alternative for freelance personal trainers because the EMS devices are really simple to deliver, and a training session can be done almost all over. If there are no existing health issue, practically everyone can participate in an EMS training including old individuals along with teens.

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To start with, this includes individuals using a cardiac אימון ems תוצאות pacemaker since the electrical impulses might have unfavorable results on it. You are expectant? After that EMS training isn't a great concept also. Yet after offering birth, the training aids to develop back and tighten your body. When having a cool, a temperature level, or a microbial infection, you should likewise terminate your training session.

If you wear a dental implant or have issues with physical initiative, you should likewise speak to your medical professional first. As a whole: everyone that is healthy and able to exercise with no problems can take component in an EMS training session! The effectiveness of EMS training has actually been scientifically proven.

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Via this reliable muscular tissue structure our body burns extra calories, what aids us to shed weight as אימון ems מסוכן well as reduce body fat. EMS additionally combats cellulite and also tightens our skin. It is also an effective way for both avoiding and also rehabilitating typical back problems such as disc herniations and also muscular tissue stress. Thanks for your score! Price this article:.

If you're anything like me, finding the inspiration to bust your butt at the health club is low on the ems Israel concern list. In between working, examining and also being a mum, I simply do not have time to commit a number of hours to exercising every week. As well as, if I'm being completely truthful, after many New Year's resolutions of encouraging, "Right, I'm going to get fit this year.

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So, when I was asked if I desired to offer EMS training a go for 5 weeks, I was around it. This dynamic design of workout can get results in a matter of weeks as well as the very best component? The sessions are only 20 minutes longGTFO! EMS (that's Electro Muscle Excitement) is a new means to workout without needing to invest hours in the fitness center.

It works by sending out low-frequency electrical impulses to get your muscular tissues while you're functioning out. Long story short, it's primarily three-way the workout in half the timeamazing, right?! Below's what took place when I headed along to fu/nisAuckland's very first store EMS training workshop. I'm not gon na exist, I was a little worried strolling into my first appointment.

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What was it mosting likely to really feel like? Was it mosting likely to harm? I was greeted by the wonderful Catrina (proprietor of fu/nis) as well as Kathryn (my fitness instructor) and provided my training geara tight-fitting pair of shorts and also a top that advised me of Lara Croft. They explained the training doesn't need any kind of exercise gearnot also a pair of footwear.

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windofderange · 7 years

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Let’s talk about gender in Stranger Things 2!

So there’s a bunch of stuff happening in my life and I keep meaning to post something about that, but it’s serious and scary and stuff, so instead, I’m going to ramble a while about why I really love some of the subtle gender role reversals in season 2 of Stranger Things! Like a normal, well-adjusted person!

Also, no major spoilers ahead, but I will talk about things that happened in Season 2, so if you want to come to it totally fresh, please skip this.

So I’m still a little sad that there’s no queer representation in this show. Yes, I know it takes place in the 80s and queer people hadn’t been invented yet, but still. (I was SOOO hoping that the big reveal at the dance would be that Dustin was building himself up to ask Will to dance, but I guess that probably would have been genuinely too much for an 80s middle school to handle.) However, despite that, I was actually really impressed by some of the smaller ways the story undercut traditional gender stereotypes this season, and some of the improvements to how the girl and women characters were written.

That’s not to say that I thought they were poorly written last season - I just thought they were a lot more one-dimensional. Emotional mother. Brainy, goody-two-shoes girl exploring her sexuality. Even Eleven, who was by far the female character with whom we spent the most time, was sort of scattered - the writers clearly couldn’t decide how unaware of the world she should be, and in turn, what things about gender she should care about (ie, she didn’t know what ‘pretty’ meant, but she still wanted to be it), a problem I don’t think they’ve entirely corrected (more on that in a sec). The male characters were similarly archetypal - the drunk, broken-down town sheriff, the maniacal scientist, the lovesick teen, etc.

This season, I feel like the characters all got a lot more flushed out, but more than that, the way they did so also made some really interesting choices about gender and gender roles. Also, I’m occasionally going to refer to the characters as sets because that how some of the storylines run - the adults (Joyce, Hopper, and Bob), the teens (Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, and Billy), and the kids (Eleven, Will, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max).

1. Joyce and Bob: Okay, so I know I’m apparently the only person in the universe who doesn’t ship Joyce and Hopper, but I loved Joyce and Bob. Bob is a ‘beta male’ - he’s fat, short, into electronics, likes Kenny Loggins, makes corny jokes, and is too much of a scaredy-cat to watch scary movies. However, it’s made immediately clear that Joyce isn’t just dating him because she needs a man or in order to fill some hole in her life - the first scene we see of them is the two of them adorably flirting, and then hard-core making out. Bob is also consistently shown to be the less driven of the pair (a theme that will actually come up a lot in this post). Joyce is a fighter. It’s an important aspect of Joyce’s character, one that was established last season, but in the context of her frantically fighting to get her son back. In the grand tradition of the Aliens franchise and Poltergeist, Stranger Things holds that mothers are the toughest fighters, and this season makes it clear that that’s always been true of Joyce Byers - it wasn’t just the panic of losing Will that drove her; she’s always been like this. Bob knew her in high school, and makes it clear that he’s always admired her for it. However, the story doesn’t present Bob as emasculated (a term I hate!) - he’s jazzed as all hell to finally be dating Joyce Byers!

In setting up their relationship in these terms, the story gives us something we don’t often see - Bob is a boy-gal Friday. In fact, he’s Joyce’s boy-gal Friday. He’s competent, with a complementary skill set; he’s valuable, and Joyce clearly values him, and he makes a lot of connections and discoveries on his own, but he’s not capable of turning those connections into actions that drive the plot forward until he turns them over to Joyce. And he’s perfectly happy in his role - even when he shows up in her house covered in Will’s bizarre tunnel drawing and is told he can’t ask questions, he’s clearly having the time of his life, solving a cool puzzle with a woman he loves. Like every gal Friday, he can’t conceive of a world in which he could be the protagonist - he’s a superhero, but he’s not the Hero. That’s Joyce

2. Hopper and Eleven: Off the bat, I have to admit that I think the writers are still doing the worst with Eleven when it comes to writing gender, just because they have the most room to play with and they’re not making use of it. There’s no reason for Ele to have a concept of gender performance - she’s a lab rat. We know that the mad scientist raised her to think of him as her “Papa” (whether he was biologically or not), but we’re given no evidence that she had any concept of being his “daughter” or a “girl.” Again, I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s part of the reason I actually really liked the episode with her and Eight (also because I’m a sucker for a coming of age story) because I think pairing her gender development with the punk scene is a potentially brilliant way to play with some of these ideas in a culturally-contemporary way (since gender non-conformity was a big part of punk), and it’s something I really hope the writers come back to next season.

That being said, I did really enjoy the relationship between Ele and Hopper, and in particular, the fact that Hopper is clearly raising a kid, not a girl. We never see Hopper force any gender norms on Ele (even though he had a daughter of his own and could potentially have those kinds of expectations for her), we see them sharing in not traditionally feminine things (building traps, eating garbage, watching scary movies - all things dads usually do with their sons in movies and TV), and even though it’s clear that Hopper knows about Mike’s and Ele’s feelings for each other, we never get any weird matchmaking or overbearing overprotectiveness from him - his overprotectiveness of Ele is always about keeping her safe from Hawkins, not keeping her away from boys. He even embraces her “bitchin’” new look, but clearly also helps her get ready for the dance.

3. Mad Max and the AV Club: So I love Max. I love Max so much. And I still love the AV Club. I do get the point of articles like this one that part of the nostalgia of Stranger Things is a nostalgia for nerds who are actually bullied and oppressed, but I think that’s over-simplifying things. To start with, Lucas is black, and this season they finally managed to engage with that a little, in the same way they managed to engage with Dustin’s disability a little last season. Also, I think the way that the AV club’s masculinity is presented is important. This is not the adorkable misogyny of the Big Bang Theory. They are not traditionally masculine and they are absolutely fighters, and those two things are never presented as being in conflict in any way. Indeed, the constant references to D&D, including their own nickname for their group as “the party,” sort of reaffirms this - for people who know the game, they know you need a balanced party. You don’t want all muscles, or all magic, or all rogues. In many ways, Will becomes the ultimate symbol of this in Season 2 - he is absolutely a soft boy (Hopper even asks if he’s gay in Season 1, to which Joyce rightly replies, “why would that matter?!”), and yet, he is both the major villain AND the one fighting hardest against that villain in this season. His strength to fight the mind flayer stems from his nontraditional masculinity - from his art, and ultimately, from his empathy, being kept in control of his body by the stories of love and affection from his mother, brother, and best friend.

Max is similarly nontraditional - we’re introduced to her by the traditional nerd trope of “girls don’t play video games!,” “girls don’t skateboard!;” however, if we’re really supposed to read the AV club as models for nerd culture, then the important element surely comes in their immediate reversal in meeting Max and seeing that she does indeed play video games and skateboard. Not only do they not gatekeep or question her love of these things, they are immediately more impressed by her because of them. They want to be friends with her because she’s a girl who skateboards and plays video games, and it’s clear that this is the root of Dustin’s and Lucas’ attraction to her, as well. Even Mike’s resistance to bringing her into the party is never presented as her being a girl or a “fake gamer girl” - the show does a good job of showing that he doesn’t like having her around because she can’t know about Ele, and that having her there without knowing means that things are moving on and the others might move on, as well. As soon as Lucas spills the beans and Max is fully on board, Mike’s resistance disappears.

4. Nancy and Jonathan: So I think the teens’ stories are where Stranger Things does the best with undercutting gender roles because these stories are so ingrained and so formulaic normally. These are also the ones that I noticed the most while watching it. Also, full disclosure - I don’t really ship Nancy with anyone, and was sort of disappointed that last season had a teen girl, two love interests, love triangle story line. However, I do think the lovestory between Nancy and Jonathan has some of the best gender reversals. To start with, Nancy is absolutely the Protagonist of their story. Nancy causes everything to happen in their story. It’s her acts that inadvertently bring them together (by getting drunk), but she decides that they’re going to do something to get justice for Barb, she takes them to find the journalist, she comes up with the plan to blackmail Hawkins. Even in the scenes of them getting together, we see her sitting up in bed, trying to decide what to do. She goes to the door, and Jonathan is there. All of the focus is on her as the decision maker.

This role reversal comes to a head in the final showdown with the mind flayer. I loved the call back to the last season when Hopper asked Jonathan if he could shoot a gun, and Nancy took it instead - they had already established that she was the better shot, and again, this scene wasn’t presented as her emasculating Jonathan in any way (and Hopper doesn’t hesitate for a second in handing over the riffle) - it’s clearly just that their lives are at stake, and of the pair, she’s the better shot. But the best is the scene in the cabin - this could have so easily been the teary-eyed girlfriend hanging off her stoic boyfriend (which, to be fair, was a lot of how Jonathan was written last season). Instead, we got Joyce, raging and holding down her son, who was clearly in pain, as Jonathan screamed hysterically and cried, trying to stop her, being held back and finally comforted by Nancy.

Let me be clear - this scene only makes sense this way, given what we know about these characters. Joyce is driven and direct - she’s going to make a plan and stick to it, come Hell or high water. Jonathan has already been shown to be way too invested in Will and his well-being, and it seems completely believable by now that he would even fight his mother if he thought Will’s life was in the balance. Nancy is an outsider - she’s not family, and her concern is mostly for Jonathan. However, even as exciting as this scene was, I couldn’t help but step out of it a bit as I was watching it and realize how weird it was to see a young man portrayed as hysterical, rallying against a woman with a plan, and then being comforted by another woman, who was relatively calm and unaffected. It works so much better this way, but there are so many show where this scene would have had Nancy freaking out for no other reason than because women are hysterical.

5. Steve: Oh, Steve. heart eyes I am so in love with Steve after this season. Obviously Stranger Things is a show that loves its parallels, and Steve’s stories move increasingly into roles played by women in the original as the season goes on. The initial story with him and Dustin have parallels to Stand By Me and Gremlins, but by the big showdown with the mind flayer, Steve opens embraces his role as “the babysitter,” a role that actually has some decent echoes in 80s movies - Adventures in Babysitting would be the obvious, but Steve’s role in the group also directly parallels Mary Plimpton’s character in the Goonies, as the third wheel to the big brother and girlfriend (except in this case, those two had buggered off to go do The Omen instead), who also delivers the incredibly quotable line, “I feel like I’m babysitting, only I’m not getting paid.”

However, again, we’re not given any hint that Steve has any problems with his new role. After the rest of the adults and teens leave, he directly parallels Mr. Mom, the movie the Byers were watching earlier, wearing an apron and slinging a kitchen towel over his shoulder after doing the washing up. But whereas the entire premise of that movie is how embarrassed Michael Keaton’s character feels to be a stay-at-home dad and how bad he is at household tasks, Steve seems genuinely proud of himself for tidying up the Byers house, and proud to serve as guiding voice to the remaining kids left in his care. Even his use of a traditionally-masculine sports metaphor to explain why they have to stay put reaffirms how much he’s internalized his role - he clearly means for it to be rally speech, as he’s presumably delivered to his teammates, and he shows his own confusion when it concludes with, “and that’s why we’re on the bench.”

The episode briefly looks as though it’s going to offer Steve a redeemingly masculine role of protector with the arrival of Billy, Max’s big brother. We get some macho posturing and a fist fight, and although Steve does get to come to Lucas’ rescue, he’s still soundly trounced by Billy. Again, this is completely in keeping with the characters - we’ve already seen that Billy isn’t just up for a fight, but abusive and dangerously violent. However, it’s Max, the only girl in the room, who puts down Billy, again in a series of gender undercuts - first, she beats him subversively by drugging him (poison being a woman’s weapon and all that), but then, in another reversal, she takes the opportunity as he’s weakened and blacking out to threaten him with Steve’s baseball bat, extracting protection for her and the AV club using the same oath as we’ve seen used previously by Billy’s abusive father. The rest of the episode is clearly The Goonies, with Steve-as-Mary-Plimpton and the kids running around underground, and Steve reiterating that he’s there because he’ll be held responsible if anything happens to them.

Even in the final denouement at the dance, Steve gets the same final appearance as Joyce and Hopper, the other two caregivers, dropping off his ‘kid’ and driving away. (Interestingly, of the teens and adults, only Nancy gets a denouement at the dance - Jonathan is also there, but just gets to smile and wave from the sidelines, the same ending as basically every supporting girlfriend from every teen movie, again highlighting that it’s Nancy who is the Protagonist.)

So why do I care about all of this? Well, one of my biggest frustrations with a lot of TV and films is that I feel like writers still suck at writing women - in particular, women as protagonists. It seems like way too many writers can’t understand how women can make choices that drive the story forward, and that means way too many stories fall back on traditional tropes where women are the backups and support. It’s cool to see so many of those tropes not only avoided, but directly reversed, and so effectively. Bob, Jonathan, Steve, and the AV club are cool, interesting, likable characters. They’re not diminished by not being the protagonists, or not being traditionally masculine. Like I said, I would love to see the writers do more with Ele because there is so much opportunity there for a truly agender character, which is something else sorely missing from modern TV, but I also hope they continue to present women who are ambitious and driven, and men who are emotional and empathetic because it’s super cool to finally get those kinds of stories.

#stranger things #stranger things 2 #jessica over-analyzes things!#spoilers stranger things 2

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namelessblacksheep · 5 years

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BULLSHITTING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

The desire to be a success is a healthy and normal concept in life. Whether you apply that to a hobby, career or how you live your day-to-day existence.

Being ‘successful’ will vary from person to person, but generally speaking, success is a gradual and progressive upward curve with a few peaks and troughs along the way. It takes time and effort and it brings with it a sense of achievement.

We live in this fast moving society with countless messages to encourage us to be the best we can be, but that is often offset against pressures to see the fruits of our labours. By our very nature, humans like to quantify and measure the progress of success, which can often skew the true path to achieving it. Success involves a goal and a path in its most simple form. You take steps down the path to get you to where you want to be. Some victories can be achieved more quickly than others.

A diet, dependent on your starting weight can lead to a successful body transformation or weight loss in a matter of months. Learning how to do the requisite tasks of a new job perhaps 6 months or so dependent on the complexity of the role. Becoming a legendary guitar player who would make Jimi Hendrix blush, might well take a little longer.

All of these are examples where success can be achieved by taking measured steps with tangible measuring points to see progress towards the end goal. Straightforward and not rocket science. However, many people in society today for whatever reason, seem to not want to follow this most simple process. Everything is about taking shortcuts and getting there faster than others.

This concept of cutting corners making you the smarter guy or gal than the fools who follow the long and lonely path to destination ‘success’ is very enticing. It’s quicker, not everyone takes that path and who wants to follow the crowd anyway, right?

A place where cutting corners and rising to the top is increasingly prominent is in the world of work. With a diet you can cut corners, lose a lot of weight and achieve your goal, it might only last a week or two despite punishing yourself with starvation and some weird potion that you only drink between the hours of 12 pm and 2 pm for a month.

There is a belief that the corporate world is not the same as the real world. Working hard is for idiots. Playing the game and presenting in such a way that makes you get seen is the quick path up the corporate ladder to a plum job and a nice benefits package. Boom, you’re now killing it and sticking up your middle finger to the tried and tested path to success.

Just stop to think for a second of a colleague (or colleagues) and co-workers who are successful and have done so by failing at every turn, never delivering anything and somehow always seem to be in line for a promotion or have got to a level way above their station. If you can’t think of anyone that fits that mould, congratulations one of the following statements is true:

You work for a kick-ass company that rewards success, weeds out failure and operates a corporate culture of constant improvement and development.

You are a ‘corporate bullshitter’. AKA a deceitful and self-entitled lazy so-in-so.

The rise of the Corporate Bullshitter

These people are typified by high levels of self-belief, self-entitlement and they tend to have the gift of the gab. Now, it’s not to say that people who have these particular characteristics automatically are corporate bullshitters.

The thing that makes someone progress to that modality is someone who is lazy, has narcissistic tendencies and is willing to do whatever it takes irrespective of morality to get what they want. Corporate bullshitters want success like everyone else, but they perceive themselves (quite often incorrectly) as someone special and above the ‘normal rules’.

They describe themselves as ‘big picture people’ and are not concerned with the minor and irrelevant things like ‘details’. That kind of thing is for the other minions in the workplace, the little people who do all the work and get none of the credit.

These individuals have a persona that emits a sense of importance and authority (even when they really don’t have any). They always seem to speak the same language, full of jargon-laden nonsense that when actually translated doesn’t even relate to what they are actually talking about.

When someone who knows more about a subject than them, they are inclined to vehemently agree with everything the person says to their face, but probably subtly undermines the same individuals when in other arenas. Or, they will seek to belittle the more intellectual counterpart by emphasising their elevated status and connections. They may also try to go toe-to-toe with the person by throwing out terms until one is not recognised and then harp on incessantly about it until the other person gets bored and ends the conversation.

All of the corporate bullshitters I have ever come up against always have at least one go-to subject area that they twist a conversation to when things are not going their way just to preserve that perception they have, that they are ‘smart’. Most, if not all, corporate bullshitters are not really that smart. If they were, they would be experts in the jobs they somehow manage to inhabit, having put in the work to command the authority and respect for the role.

These hapless miscreants are not satisfied with their current role. They are aiming for one of the highest positions within the company. The one with all the status and money, where they can sit back and delegate like a true boss. Like a Bond villain swivelling in their leather chair, feet up and supping 10-year-old whiskey from a crystal tumbler. The fluffy white cat is an optional extra.

Aspirations of elevation to a senior level are absolutely admirable. Investing all your time and effort in achieving this by taking shortcuts rather than by hard work and dedication to do the job well, and having the requisite skills and knowledge to be there, is not. Eventually, like a poorly executed diet, these people will pull the fat parachute chord and everything will blow up.

That may sound relatively harmless, but when you really think about it, what if the person in charge of major catastrophes that have occurred in the world achieved that position, not by being the best, but by playing the game the best?

People see the whole ‘fake it until you make it’ thing as a part of life, a choice that some people make. I have met people who talk of their admiration of such characters saying things like ‘fair play to them’ for getting to where they did, despite not doing things the moral way.

How people achieve success is up to them, and I’m not about to start preaching about who should and should not be successful or how they achieve it. But ask yourself, if you had to have major surgery or were about to invest your life savings in some venture, would you want the person performing the operation or brokering the deal to be someone who has an ethic of hard work or one who was much smarter and saw a shortcut to get there?

How to identify a Corporate Bullshitter?

The list is meant to highlight potential characters to be mindful of but not all will immediately mean that someone is a feckless lying fuckwit, or has the potential to be:

They send emails at late hours or on weekends but are often late in and leave early. they complain about how endlessly 'busy' they are whilst you catch them checking social media and planning their next trip away.

Corporate Bullshitters are experts on all topics, but rarely challenge other experts when that specific topic is being discussed. They will often become quite sycophantic in an effort to be seen in the same light as the visiting expert (as if they were separated at birth by God).

They know all the movements of the higher-ups and regularly spend their time trying to break into higher level meetings they don’t really have a place at. They are likely to have all senior diaries saved to their calendar.

They dress in a manner to be noticed beyond the norm, often in a quite eccentric way. Think here: ‘Chino Wanker’ meets ‘Townie Twat’. However, when the big boss is visiting they look like they are dressed for a meeting with Queen.

These people have a very high profile presence on company social media platforms. They communicate messages in support of the status quo or from persons of authority. Their presence on such platforms is noticeable to all. They also are one of the first people to like any article or message from a senior figure regardless of how dull the subject is. (Insert winking emoji here, you know who I am talking about).

They are ‘ideas people’ and take credit for other people’s work, truly believing that they contributed in some way. Like a having a notion that time travel would be a cost and time-saving means of transportation, but having no idea how to make it happen (get a Science guy in). Then when it is invented, quite rightly pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Inventor extraordinaire!

They attend many non-work corporate networking events (often with other, fellow Clint and Cythnia types from other companies) and they do this within work time. Nothing of substance ever comes from these events, but they never miss them.

During projects, they demand to be part of the project team, make lots of elaborate and convoluted comments during the meetings but are often the ones who make excuses about competing demands that means they didn’t deliver their assigned actions.

When talking to people that don’t know them well (like a new starter) they will convey themselves as more senior and in charge than is actually the case. ‘Oh yes, John is in my team and Margaret’. John and Margaret may well be in their team but they are likely to report to someone else because the CB in question is in charge of making the tea.

They gravitate towards fellow Clint and Cythnia personality types (Cockney rhyming slang for 'Jeremy Hunt' type individuals) and form little cliques (otherwise known as hierarchical structures of management). They cover for each other in public but conspire in private to create the next opportunity. There is no honour amongst this band of thieves.

They don’t do ‘details’. This would require them to actually have some knowledge of what they are doing. The work they produce is often for a ‘big picture person’, not joined up at all and entirely self-serving. Their portfolio of work is littered with ‘pet projects’ and when they inevitably fail, they just claim credit for the ones that someone else made a success of through some associative properties.

Never do they do anything wrong. These people have skin made of Teflon and nothing ever sticks. They are the embodiment of cockroaches following a nuclear fallout.

They go on to become ‘consultants’, giving the genuine consultants out there bad names. These folks would ask to borrow your watch to tell you the time and then charge you a mortgage payment for their effort.

Corporate Bullshitters are always trying to promote new fandangled approaches rather than tried and tested ones where others are already likely to be experts. If it’s not fanciful bullshit they just don’t want any part of it.

They attend learning events, but reject everything they are taught because they don’t agree with the philosophy. In short, they have zero capacity for learning, because they believe that they are already the finished article and don’t want to learn.

These people like their status symbols and like everyone to know about it. Whether it’s the brand new sports car in the car park, the elaborate meal they went to on the weekend or the lavish fourth holiday they are taking this year. They want people to know they are doing well to keep up the pretence of their rise up the ladder.

They don’t have any real friends or the ones they do are called Clint and Cythnia. They also struggle to form relationships with colleagues that go beyond the work.

Not always the case, but they often don’t have the qualifications, knowledge or experience to do their jobs and justify that such things are not necessary. Or they make claims of having other skills and expertise that is more than adequate. Kind of like a Doctor with no formal training, who watches ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Casualty’ religiously and knows how to use a chainsaw.

Total opportunists. Whenever change comes around. Restructures, mergers or downsizing activities always bring these people out of the woodwork. They might be forever out of the office, but when the big announcement is made, suddenly they are everywhere like an infestation of termites. They sign up to everything and their usual absent manner is replaced by a sycophantic presence, especially when the important people are around.

They suffer from a rare affliction known as ‘delegationitis’ whereby they pass off all work to others due to their allergy to doing anything. These people talk the talk, but tag in a lackey to put the leg work in.

There are no shortcuts to success

Even in the situations where the corporate bullshitter breed ascends to high offices, this is often time-limited. Eventually like any ill-performed approach to any path, they get found out in the end.

If the route to the top is achieved at a fast pace, then the road down will be as quick. They will then have to start all over again. The alternative is getting to a place of high authority and holding the reigns when a tragedy occurs. Money and status are only part of the picture when you fall from grace the effect on the things that really matter could be a bigger price to pay.

Anyone who read this article as a means to find the quickest way to the top or to become a success, the message is simple: work hard and be good at what you do. Do all the things that experts in your field have done and put your hours and effort into the tried and tested. Slow and steady wins the race, and if the climb up is long and steady the path down will be equally so.

Malcolm Gladwell once suggested that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. If you invest your time wisely and diligently, you can become an expert in anything within 5 years. Sooner, if you put the hours in over and above. In the span of a normal career that means you could potentially become an expert in up to 9 areas.

If you spent time thinking about what you want to achieve, where you want to succeed, chances are you wouldn’t choose to become an expert in bullshitting your way to the top. Perhaps the key is using those 10,000 hours to actually be good at something and then the fruits that come with that labour will be even more satisfying and worthwhile.

Perhaps the seduction of money, status and prestige has become so rife that people give up on improving themselves to become a better version of themselves. One day the ‘shortcuts’ taken bullshitting your way through life will come calling for payment and what tangible things will be there for all that time wasted?

Here’s something to consider: if the apocalypse, or some other significant change, comes calling, who are going to be the people who prove to be of use and in demand? Those who can actually do something, or, those who wasted their time talking utter nonsense and not learning a goddamn thing?

‘If you focus on success, you’ll have stress. But if you pursue excellence, success will be guaranteed’ – Deepak Chopra.

#humour #work #office #corporate #worklunch #office politics #monday mood

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adambstingus · 5 years

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7 Dumb Back To The Future Products You Won’t Believe Existed

A good 80 percent of Cracked’s content is devoted to peeling back the kaleidoscopic layers of WTF-ness contained within Back To The Future, but this article isn’t about that. Nope, this is about an even more ridiculous topic: the many confounding ways people tried to squeeze big bucks out of the Back To The Future flicks.

This ordinary tale of a time-travelling eccentric and his pet teenager has spawned such baffling shit as …

#7. The Back To The Future Cartoon Was A Fucking Crazy Parade

As we’ve mentioned before on the site, Doc Brown’s character-concluding decision to father children with a historically dead woman and blast through time in a screeching lightning train was reckless at best. And so it’s only natural that the 1991 Back To The Future TV show would follow the horrific mishaps of this family, sandwiched with live-action science demonstrations by Christopher Lloyd and an oddly mute Bill Nye.

They’re like the Penn and Teller of mad science.

But despite its audience of the young and curious, an average episode of Back To The Future: The Animated Series played out like Rick And Morty episodes Adult Swim rejected for being too bleak. Don’t believe us? The pilot for the series starts with Doc’s younger son Verne stealing the time machine and traveling to the Civil War … followed by Doc finding a photo revealing that little Verne died for the Confederate Army.

“But hey, it says here that the Alabama chapter of the KKK is named in his honor.”

Doc eventually prevents this by creating a truce between Verne’s Confederate pals and the Union, and the gang happily flies home like they didn’t just irrevocably alter the outcome of a Civil War battle. That’s basically the story of the series, as Doc, Marty, and Doc’s kids manhandle historical moments while Doc’s wife Clara waits back home with sandwiches.

In the third goddamn episode, Doc brings his kids to the very moment the dinosaurs are wiped out by a meteor, saving the group by hastily stopping the comet and changing the future into a lizard-ruled wasteland. (One of said lizards looks like Biff, implying that a Tannen once fucked a dinosaur.)

This means that Doc is forced to go back and kill the dinosaurs himself, re-altering his actions so that the meteor gets back on a collision course with Earth … but not before one of his kids befriends a scared pterodactyl. So how does Doc handle this unfortunate attachment? Obviously, the rest of the series would involve the group goofing around with their adopted dino friend. I mean, otherwise, he’d have to …

… tear his son from the sobbing grasp of a doomed animal …

… stuff him into the time machine and fly away …

This also serves as the official series finale for The Flintstones.

… and watch as the comet tears through the atmosphere and vaporizes the boy’s dinosaur pal. That’s seriously what happens in the special “watch all the dinosaurs die” episode of this nightmare series. Happy Saturday morning, assholes!

#6. A Japanese Video Game Made BTTF 2 Into Crazy-Ass Anime

Anyone who played the early Back To The Future Nintendo games knows that whoever made them clearly didn’t bother to see the movies. Either that, or Back To The Future Part III cut a scene in which Marty ingests a crazy amount of peyote and starts seeing mutant cow men everywhere.

Presumably named “Beef Tannen.”

The Japan-only Back To The Future Part II Super Famicom game, on the other hand, tried to follow the plot of movie … and somehow ended up being even weirder. You control Marty, who spends the entire time on his hoverboard — because, realistically speaking, if you owned a hoverboard, why the fuck would you ever not be flying around on it?

The game starts on a grimly prescient note, with trigger-happy 2015 cops shooting at Marty for no apparent reason.

When we reach the alternate 1985, Marty goes around fighting disoriented crackheads, mistaking their agonized gasps for taunting chicken noises. Marty then discovers his murdered father’s tombstone, and he … seems pretty copacetic with this development, all things considered.

Doc, on the other hand, turns into an angry pink Gollum.

If you’ve ever wanted to see these iconic moments reimagined as demented Sailor Moon episodes, you’re in luck. When Marty discovers the 1950s girlie mag instead of the sports almanac, the mere sight of boobs gives him a stroke.

Which is weird, because this is after meeting his mother’s gargantuan dystopian breasts. Marty’s perma-smirk in that scene is somehow even creepier than when he was standing at his dead dad’s grave.

Also, why are they in the Technodrome?

By the time Biff seemingly vampire-bites the almanac away from Marty and gets covered in a sea of 16-bit horseshit, you’ll probably never see Back To The Future the same way ever again.

“I won’t close my mouth. I deserve this.”

And speaking of which …

#5. A Hot Wheels Biff Car … Complete With Manure

There aren’t a ton of Back To The Future toys, but the ones that do exist are mostly DeLorean-based. There’s a DeLorean Lego set, a remote-control DeLorean, and even a Power-Wheels-esque DeLorean for ’80s kids whose parents wanted them to explore their confused Oedipal feelings outside the house.

Sadly, this kid was easily taken out by Libyan terrorists.

So it’s only natural that the DeLorean be adopted by stalwart toy car company Hot Wheels. Recently, the company decided to expand their Back To The Future line to include not only Doc’s DeLorean …

Oh, sorry. Doc’s “Time Machine of Indeterminate Brand.”

And Marty’s sweet 4×4 …

“Complete with two coats of wax and Fat Biff’s tears!”

And even Biff Tannen’s Ford Super Deluxe Converti– oh, shit.

You can get a non-poopy version for an extra $300.

Yes, they produced a beautiful classic automobile overflowing with rancid manure, as seen in that scene and that other scene and that variation of the scene. It looks like an amusing Internet Photoshop job, but it’s a real toy which you could go buy right now … or, you know, make at home yourself with a toy car and some laxatives.

Couldn’t Hot Wheels have mass-produced Doc’s hover-train? Or one of those kickass police cars from 2015? Nope. Instead, we get the shit-encrusted rapemobile. Think of all the ways kids could play with this. “Oh no, Biff’s car got covered in manure … again …” Assuming your kid even knows what Back To The Future is, how are they supposed to integrate Biff’s car with their other Hot Wheels products?

“Yes! The race is delayed due to track turds!”

#4. ZZ Top Turns All The Characters Into Ogling Creeps

Along with “The Power of Love,” Huey Lewis and the News wrote “Back In Time,” the surprisingly engaged recounting of the events of Back To The Future from Marty’s perspective. Sadly, we were less lucky with ZZ Top’s “Doubleback,” a jabbering spray of temporally-themed rhymes in no way related to the third film.

The one band you’d think you could trust to hitch their beer-drinking, hell-raising wagon to Wake-Up Juice, but noooooo.

Now, “Doubleback” is a fucking abomination, an artistic charley horse clearly farted out 12 minutes from the studio call time. But then there’s the music video, which superimposes the band into random clips from the movie in such a disjointed, cookie cutter way that it comes alive like a serial killer’s scrapbook.

GOOF: ZZ Top were only teenagers in 1885, so they shouldn’t have beards yet.

It’s everyone’s third-favorite time travel movie, perpetually interrupted with the looming presence of three guys who look like the personification of bathroom assault. By the end, they’re literally sticking their faces over the action so that we don’t forget to be bummed out by their existence.

We’re all for them supplanting Marty’s mom in this scene to make it less creepy, though.

But the weird stuff begins when this monochromatic onslaught changes the movie’s finale to include a pimped-out ride randomly rolling into Marty’s standoff with Mad Dog Tannen …

… and releasing three jean-short bombshells of various ’90s fabric patterns and foxy accessories, to which the movie’s characters react with stock disbelief appropriated from the original scene.

OK, we have to admit that these guys clean up nicely when they shave.

That’s right — Doc reacting to Marty’s fakeout death is the same expression as his boner face. Or maybe he’s wondering how a Cadillac Sedanette went back in time without a bunch of nonsense sticking out of its hood. Either way: boner.

#3. Pizza Hut’s Back To The Future Ads Are Rather Sad In Retrospect

Having the ability to engorge on a puck of meat and cheese has been every child’s dream since Marty’s mom hydrated a Pizza Hut pizza in Back To The Future II.

The most fantastic concept here is a 2015 pizza without a gimmicky crust.

So delicious. At least, if you ignore the fact that eating a waterlogged dough slice sounds like a fucking nightmare, and that the Pizza Hut of this future solely makes the equivalent of microwave meals. In fairness, the brand’s own advertising campaign had a slightly different take on their role in the future:

Their kinder, gentler take on Robocop was probably their lamest (and most inaccurate) prediction of all.

According to one 1989 commercial, the Pizza Huts of 2015 are built like techno mosques. It makes sense in the context of the ad, which begins with two unknown ruffians taking the DeLorean out for a spin, presumably after swiping the keys from Doc Brown’s ransacked corpse.

To save you 15 minutes on IMDb: It’s Mikey from Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.

The ne’er-do-wells zoom to 2015, where, to the sad grumbles of their stomachs, they find the streets barren of any pizza eateries, as Domino’s has long been converted into a hardware chain. Luckily, there’s still one place in business, and it’s the all-hail Pizza Hut temple.

The Noid was executed after a show trial in ’94.

It’s unclear why a restaurant that makes cookie-sized products needs multiple neon spires, but it probably has to do with the announcer’s assertion that, even in the future, Pizza Hut is the “only one place to get a great pizza.” The fact that Pizza Hut was envisioning an all-exclusive Demolition Man scenario with their brand is made that much more heartbreaking by the company’s actual 2015 situation:

Also depressing: the current state of journalism, since no one realized this graphic should be a pie chart.

Turns out that all the movie projector pizza boxes and eye-tracking tablet menus in the world can’t get us to that Utopian Italian palace where dressing like it’s the ’80s is still hip and (according to another tie-in ad) absolutely everyone wears futuristic solar shades.

The nuclear fallout has melted all of our eyes by now.

#2. Doc Brown Teamed Up With Doogie Howser For Earth Day

Back in 1990, people were really committed to saving the environment … as long as the extent of that commitment was appearing in some kind of extravagant TV special instead of cutting back on fossil fuels. Regardless, this newly-discovered sense of eco-awareness led to one of the craziest moments in pop culture: The Earth Day Special.

The special starred a slew of wacky creatures, like the Muppets and Danny DeVito and E.T., who looks to have been living in a filthy alley since the events of his film.

He’ll touch you with his “magic finger” for $5 and some Reese’s Pieces.

Since this was the year that Back To The Future Part III came out, Doc Brown naturally joined the cross-promotional fray. Who better to promote environmental activism than a guy who hoards large quantities of plutonium in a garage in a residential neighborhood?

The loose plot of the special is about the personification of Mother Earth dying. Doc Brown shows up in his DeLorean and offers his assistance to the doctor in charge of healing Mrs. Earth — who, because this was 1990, is Doogie Fucking Howser.

“Not even Edward James Olmos’ mustache could revive her.” “We’re doomed.”

Doc whips out his suitcase TV and shows them footage of how screwed over the Earth is, which is kind of a dick move, considering how she’s right over there. It doesn’t help that the clips are seemingly stock footage pretentiously edited together by first-year film students.

“What are those ladies doing with that cup …?” “Whoops, wrong year.”

As always, Doc ends up finding the solution: science! Not any specific science but, like, the act of reading and shit. Look, it was 6 a.m. and someone wanted to finish that goddamn children’s TV show script already.

#1. The Back To The Future Novelization Gets Dark

Movie novelizations are generally terrible, but the one for Back To The Future takes it to a whole new level. It’s the Back To The Future of bad literary cash-ins.

“What do you mean it’s not about a kid with a camera who farts fireworks?” — the author, probably

The book opens with a vivid description of a dead family getting bent out of shape by the detonation of a nuclear bomb, which turns out to be a scene from a film Marty is watching. This never comes up again in the book — because the author is too busy thinking up even crazier, tangentially BTTF-related shit. For instance, we get a scene featuring the Libyan terrorists casually hanging out in a shitty motel, which answers the question you always had: Yes, one of them is a psychotic former fashion model.

You can only be told to look “sexy like tiger” so many times before something inside snaps.

And she doesn’t mind offing Doc Brown because he … “looks Jewish.”

Doc goes commando in his jumpsuits in this version.

Even when it’s a scene we recognize from the movie, the author’s prose manages to make everything seem a tiny bit seedier:

Not that “Let’s hire your attempted rapist as our live-in manservant” is any less creepy.

The novel also features the most disturbing context for the phrase “giggled naughtily” in all of fiction:

A parent’s naughty giggling is typically reason #1 Protective Services gives when taking away their child.

The whole book is so bizarre and creepy that it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that it was imported from the shitty alternate 1985. And we’re only scratching the surface here. A whole other book could be written just pointing out all the fucked up moments, page by page. Did we say “could”? We meant “someone on the Internet did exactly that.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/7-dumb-back-to-the-future-products-you-wont-believe-existed/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181924707857

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allofbeercom · 5 years