#because unfortunately for alan he shares most physical similarities with them and not the others

[i3utterflyeffect]

I wonder how victim learns that Alan is now a stick figure? Probably from footage of the showdown, and victim somehow recognizes that the purple stick is Alan. Anyways, the mercs would probably be ordered to hunt him down and bring him to the base. This could be really interesting, especially if Alan and King have already met.

YEAH.... the hunt for c!alan throughly interests me in this au, especially since victim also could have just noticed the artstyle. like, alan's sticks have a very particular look

they could probably mistake alan for a creation MADE BY alan instead, which brings up a very interesting topic: what happens if ALAN gets captured and victim doesn't immediately realize it's him????

this could also go into the ending of The Box if victim assumed it was Chosen and SC that were the only other hollowheads, and then discovered that there was one more. instead of hunting yellow they might end up accidentally going straight to the source, which means that everyone else has to be as prepared as possible to defend alan, because even if they've probably taught him some self-defense he is not going to be strong enough to beat them, much LESS able to actually think in the middle of combat

#tommy's stickmen tag #we've already seen how victim tortured chosen #so god only knows what they'd do if they discovered they could PERSONALLY beat the shit outta alan. like.... good god #they would make sure he was in enough pain that he begs them to get it over with. that's for sure #i'm curious if they'd have any sort of reaction to the fact that they're doing the exact same thing alan did #because unfortunately for alan he shares most physical similarities with them and not the others #(alan with powers is an interesting thought though......) #also this isn't to say he can't use the pencil like SC. he absolutely can. he's just a lot easier to beat up #i definitely have already compared him to victim in my head though considering he is also basically helpless without assistance

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Van Pelt

“A hunter from the darkest wild, who'll make you feel just like a child.”

Jumanji is already one of Robin Williams’s most enjoyable films, being a fun dark fantasy adventure film based around a supernatural board game, and while the board game itself is technically the main antagonist, its desire to test its players is given form in the maniacal hunter Van Pelt. And while I certainly would not argue that Jumanji is the deepest film ever made or anything like that, I think there is a bit of unique symbolism and interesting character quirks that make Van Pelt an enjoyable antagonist.

Actor: Johnathan Hyde portrays Van Pelt, and interestingly enough, he also plays Alan Parrish’s father. This bit of casting is honestly brilliant; think of the description of Van Pelt quoted above, used to announce his arrival from the game into the world - he is said to “make you feel just like a child.” And who above all others makes Alan feel just like a child at this point? His father.  Van Pelt thus becomes symbolic of Alan’s parental issues, which makes his overcoming Van Pelt in the end all the more poignant and powerful. On a more meta level, it is an amusing coincidence Robin Williams starred in a film where the father and the antagonist share an actor, something typically the case when it comes to Captain Hook/Mr. Darling in theatrical adaptations of Peter Pan, whose eponymous character Williams had played five years prior to this film. It was likely unintentional, but it is an amusing thing to note.

Motivation/Goals: Van Pelt is clearly a creation of the game, a hunter conjured up by whatever poor schmuck draws his card and given a form that will cause the most psychological damage as well as the most physical damage. To that end, he relentlessly pursues Alan with the intent of killing him, with nothing stopping him and very little actually slowing him down. In fact, Van Pelt seems to be indestructible, likely a side effect of his supernatural nature. Nothing short of beating the game is enough to defeat him, and his goal is just to make that as hard as possible by targeting the one who brought him out. It’s a simple motivation, but it’s pretty effective and allows room for all the other insanity of Jumanji to take the stage without him overshadowing it entirely. He ends up feeling more like an extension of the game’s will than anything, and that’s honestly for the best.

Personality: Relentless, implacable, and clearly very bloodthirsty: these are the traits that define Van Pelt. Considering he’s just another manifestation of the board game, he didn’t even need a personality, but as the game tends to exaggerate real life dangers of the jungle, so too did they exaggerate the stereotypical “Great White Hunter” character into its perfect form. An interesting thing to note about him as that he seems to have a certain respect for Alan, and despite being incredibly dangerous and skilled never seems to land a single hit. An interesting idea is that perhaps he is intentionally missing as part of some ploy on the game to help Alan overcome his father issues and truly mature; of course, it could just be that Van Pelt enjoys the chase more than he does the kill.

Final Fate: Alan calls out “Jumanji,” ending the game and causing Van Pelt to be sucked back into the board. This version of Van Pelt would never be seen again, for obvious reasons; using someone else’s symbolic antagonizing force would be a bit weird, no? Van Pelt does show up in a different form in this film’s sequel, with some more intriguing powers but a lot less plot relevance and personality.

Best Scene: In an amusing and darkly comical scene, Van Pelt decides to forego any form of background checks while attempting to purchase a fancy new gun, instead opting to dump a pile of gold right on the gun shop clerk’s desk. Thankfully it is not this ridiculously easy for mentally unstable lunatics to buy dangerous weapons and perform horrible crimes with them, and this sort of thing only happens in fiction… Ahem.

Best Quote: His introductory quote: First, a bullet from offscreen whizzing by Alan’s head, followed by: "You miserable coward! Come back and face me like a man!"

Final Thoughts & Score: Van Pelt is definitely more of a living setpiece, an obstacle to be overcome much like the other supernatural critters the game unleashes, but he’s one with a lot of dramatic and thematic weight to him, seeing as he represents Alan’s conflict with his father that is set up at the film’s start. He’s quite similar to the T-800 in a lot of ways, seeing as he is a hyper-competent implacable and unstoppable assassin sent by a fantastical force to ensure the continued existence of its creator, with a dash of Captain Hook thrown in for personality and the little bit of symbolism present in theater adaptations of Peter Pan. 

Van Pelt is a solid 7/10 for the level of symbolic brilliance he brings to the table, but I can’t justify rating him any higher because, ultimately, he is just another figment crafted by Jumanji to make the game more entertaining, meaning he has no real backstory, goals, or motivation and exists only to cause trouble. Still, for what he is, he’s more entertaining and intriguing than he has any right to be.

But you know who isn’t entertaining or intriguing?

Psycho Analysis: Russell Van Pelt 

Ok, so that was unnecessarily dismissive and harsh. I actually think that the iteration of Van Pelt from Welcome to the Jungle has some pretty interesting concepts going for him. Ultimately though he’s kind of done in by the fact that he is the villain in an 80s video game, albeit a supernatural one. And 80s video games were not exactly known for their intriguing, complex villains.

Motivation/Goals: So this Van Pelt actually has a backstory, and it’s kind of interesting too: he was once a determined archaeologist who just wanted to have some proof of the Jaguar Shrine... unfortunately, said proof was the Jaguar’s Eye, which is the Chaos Emerald seen in the picture above. 

Here’s the problem: as he is a generic antagonist created to oppose our heroes, he has no motivation other than that he wants to use the jewel for nebulous nefarious reasons. He kind of just exists to be a threat, and yeah, it makes sense, but it is a bit of a letdown compared to the original. In fact, he’s very much a non-action villain and doesn’t even really directly confront the heroes until the very end, and even then it’s not like he has some spectacular throwdown. You’d think the guy with the one magical glowy eye would put up a better fight, but maybe Dr. Sivana and Sans Undertale just set the bar too high for glowy-eyed super battles.

Final Fate: The heroes return the eye, and he collapses into a big pile of rats and bugs. Why does he do this? I’ll get into it more below. Needless to say, he’s beaten in a way that lines up with all unsatisfactory 80s video game endings. 

Final Thoughts & Score: I definitely don’t hate Russell Van Pelt, but I think that he ultimately fails to even come close to recapturing the magic the original Van Pelt had. This is despite of, amusingly enough, having just about everything the original lacked: he has a backstory, he has intriguing powers, and he looks genuinely intimidating. The problem is that nothing is done with him and his motivations aren’t explained at all, and he ultimately lacks any sort of personality to try and glean some entertainment from.

It stings all the more because he utilizes one of my favorite tropes: The Worm That Walks. Essentially this trope is when a character is, in actuality, a mass of worms, bugs, or whatever other creepy critters you might want in there. Oogie Boogie is one of cinema’s shining examples of such a villain, and something of the gold standard; these sorts of villains are fun and creepy when utilized correctly. As you might of guessed, with Van Pelt... they don’t. It’s kind of just there to add to his creep factor and doesn’t much come into play very often. When he does utilize this strange power to store animals inside himself and add them to his hive mind, it’s suitably disturbing and eerie, but it’s not a major focus.

Still, I don’t think I’d give him more than a 4/10. Yes, he is a generic doomsday villain, but at least in this instance there’s actually a legitimate in-story justification for that. And even if they don’t use it to its full effect, I do think that his powers are really cool and the backstory he has is pretty neat. I think I would have preferred if they just tossed aside the backstory stuff and go for the more psychological approach of the original, but I guess that wasn’t exactly in the cards. Ah well, you can’t win them all I suppose.

#Psycho Analysis #Van Pelt #Jumanji #Johnathan Hyde #Welcome to the Jungle #bobby cannavale

[sa21-group5-bonggangbono]

written by Bono Reyes

We’ve discussed what helped made me, but in relation to the reading about Identity Agents, I can now specifically tackle WHO helped make me. Schachter talks about the big impact of parents in the formation of a child’s identity, and I can whole heartedly say that my parents had a big impact on mine. They are my main Identity agents. Schachter’s book defines Identity agents as “individuals who actively interact with youth in order to participate in their formation of an identity”. In normal households, who else but your parents will actively interact with you to help form your identity? My parents are part of me, and I’d like to believe that I’ve also left a small part of myself on them. Just like with any regular family, I grew up with 2 parents, a Mom and a Dad. Cherry Diane B. Reyes, and Alan C. Reyes. Two very different people, yet very similar at the same time. I don’t have enough space to tell you about how they met, and the rest of their love story, since you already know that leads to them getting married, and having me, their first child. Although I know that I am more than just both of them combined. The way I act, speak, complain, eat, sleep, study, are all mostly based on things I learned or observed from them. Not only that, but my values and morals are things they either taught me directly, or something I learned by example. Admittedly, a lot of my negative characteristics may have also come from them, but there is no way they will let me say that out loud. Let’s first delve into my primary maternal Identity Agent, my dear mother. My mom could be described as loud, naggy, confusing, and complain about anything. She can turn anything into an argument because of her extravagant personality and humor. But underneath all the never-ending sermons and complaints (it really does never end), is a heart that cares deeply for others. She not only cares for her immediate family, but she has occasionally shown great compassion for people she barely knows. She has made great effort to instill that great compassion unto me, and I believe it worked for the most part. She intentionally talked to me about kindness, and how you get more from honey than from vinegar when we were young, and taught me the value of sharing. Unfortunately, she also passed on, though unintentionally, the loud, naggy, complainer that she is to me. Yes, I am loud. I nag and complain about the simplest of things…. A little too much. This is probably why me and my mother clash so much at home. Her strong personality and the strong personality that she gave me were destined to clash. As my dad would sometimes note, hearing our arguments is like having to listen to my mother argue with herself. My next main Identity Agent, my dad, is a whole lot calmer than my mom. From him I learned the essence of being calm and relaxed. He made it a point to personally teach me my responsibilities as a man, and as human being. When the never-ending battle between my mom… well, never ends, he will be the one to settle everything with one word. My moral compass is mainly taken from my dad’s. He was the main person to teach me and my siblings the difference between right and wrong. In most cases, he would have to teach us these morals by being the executioner of physical discipline. If my mother is always angry in a flurry of unpredictable and never ending moments, my dad is the guy who gets angry once, but is explodes when he does. He rarely raises his voice, and never as much as mom does, but when he does, the whole house listens, everybody is on edge, and everybody is intimidated. You’re probably thinking that a combination of my mother’s never ending spurts of anger and nags, plus my dad’s explosiveness when he’s mad would be a very bad mixture. It is. It is something I have taken from both of them, and for some reason combined it into a more potent, loud, and intense way of getting angry. I’m always mad and complaining about something, then when I really get angry, I get really intense. My conclusion for this is that Identity Agents have the capacity to affect adolescents and Children however they want. But, they must also consider that the child has the capacity to learn the parts of them that they don’t want to teach. Yes, I gained all the goodness they wanted to entrust to me as part of my identity, but along with it came their attitudes and quirks. I’m sure my parents didn’t mean for me to inherit that side of themselves, and I won’t mean to pass this on to my children as well. It is however a herculean task to be the perfect and proper example for a child 100% of the time.

REFERENCES Schacter, E., & Ventura, J. (2008). Identity agents: Parents as active and reflective participants in their children’s identity formation. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18(3), 449-476.

#bono reyes #module 3