#but it’s always been one-on-one… an entire audience is just… whew this will be my greatest feat yet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

twig-tea · 9 months

Text

My Ride Re-Watch Self-Reflection

This is going to be self-indulgent and long, apologies in advance!

Something you need to know about how I watch shows: I care the most about character arc. I prioritize character arc over plot holes, pacing, and possibly even politics. This is not an endorsement for watching shows this way AT ALL and it certainly isn't a moral judgment on any viewers that do or don't do this, it's just how my brain is wired (and it's not an objective judgment on shows, either! Not every character actually needs to grow--even though typing that out is giving me hives lolol). So when a character does something that I think is either out of character or unearned by the narrative, I get annoyed; if they don't change or they keep making the same mistakes I lose interest; and if a character arc is awesome, I forgive a lot of things that can make shows unwatchable to other people.

I watched My Ride as it aired in 2022 and I was so in love with that series, it was poised to become a favourite. I was so burnt out on series that had a misunderstanding leads to breakup in the second-last ep, and this show has sidestepped that with the conversation about Khai by having Mork insist on talking right away! Plus Tawan, through the entire fiasco with Por, was always direct, he didn't run from Por and he didn't ignore his own suspicions or jump to conclusions, he sought Por out to ask directly: "Are you mad at me?" "Did I do something wrong?" "Are you seeing someone else?" I loved both Tawan and Mork so much, they clearly deserved one another and deserved happiness.

And then at the end of ep 9/start of ep10, Tawan sees Mork hug Fern and runs away, quits his job before he finishes his certification and internship?! And Mork is the one who the narrative seems to think has to prove his commitment to their not-yet-a-relationship when he's been the one committed this whole time? I had 2gether flashbacks and I did not like it. I didn't like either side couple's resolution, I didn't like that Tawan had regressed in a way that didn't feel (to me, at the time) earned, and I didn't like that Mork didn't have any (again, to me at the time) character growth.

So I never rewatched it. I remembered the first 9 eps fondly, loved so much of what the show had in it, especially Cheep and Dej and the characters of Mork and Tawan, and recommended it when it came up, but always hesitated to put it on a favourites list, and I struggled with the ending and how I felt about it--at least partially because I suspected it was a me thing rather than a show thing. And then, after La Pluie, I realized this screenwriter was good and trusts their audience and I should give it another chance and maybe pay more attention. Plus the re-airing was perfectly timed to start. So I've been (mostly) quietly watching again, and whew I'm so glad I did.

I still don't love the side couples, lets get that out of the way lol [if you don't want to think about these storylines, skip this and the following paragraph]. I think Boss is neurodivergent-coded and you don't get "over" neurodivergence through force of will (at least, not without burnout). Thinking about this couple through the lens of Semantic Error, which you could argue is very similar on paper, Toy tries to pull Boss out of his carefully constructed world, while Jaeyoung tries to make space for himself in Sangwoo's world while doing his best to follow Sangwoo's rules (though he definitely pushes--but contrast Jaeyong moving a single pen to Toy throwing whole shelves of books to the ground). If My Ride had shown that Toy didn't need Boss to completely change, and had them find a way of working through Boss' and Toy's needs to find a new normal together, I would have been much more comfortable with this story. On rewatch, I will say that Toy's initial bribery attempt was not as bad as I remembered, but that man needs to keep his hands off those bookshelves, and the show needs to stop scaring Boss in order to give Toy one redeeming thing to do, as @callipigio said that was not cute.

As for the hets, the only thing I picked up on rewatch that I didn't appreciate the first time was that despite her confidence, Nadia was also not used to being chosen by the men in her life, and so when she saw Mayom had options after coming back from Japan, she assumed he would choose anyone else and that's why she was so upset. And so, the reveal that he got this attention because he was trying to meet her expectations, and that he was thinking of her in Japan and bought her a souvenir, showed he did put her first and did choose her. I just wish Nadia had suffered longer by seeing Mayom being appreciated for the hot, talented, and kind man he is, and had visibly learned something or changed in any way because of it. I don't think she has a satisfying character arc and so I didn't like this story. [again: this is just my taste! Not every story needs to contain personal growth! I am not advocating for this to be seen as a moral judgment! It just means this story was not satisfying for my brain because of it.]

Ok, Mork and Tawan time. This time, on rewatch, I picked up on hints they dropped earlier; that Mork struggled more than I noticed the first time with his bisexual awakening; that Mork didn't like how he hadn't gone to college or university, but he had been willing to make that sacrifice for Fern. How Tawan really missed his family and wanted to eventually practice medicine in Chiang Mai. How Tawan only ran from Mork and Fern after Mork described their relationship as work buddies [he not only calls them friends, he backtracks and says "not even really a friend, I know him from work"! And as @sparklyeyedhimbo pointed out in their rewatch, Mork had literally asked Tawan to co-parent just the day before, so the messages were extremely mixed]. All of this feeds into what happens in eps 9-10.

[Mork you were like this even when you were just "workplace associates", stop this foolishness]

Firstly, the timeline of ep 9-10 struck me on this rewatch in a way it didn't when watching the first time. If I'm not wrong, Tawan was already mostly burned out; his heartache led him to use up his accumulated vacation to go home to Chiang Mai, but then came back after just a few days because Mork missed him; then went to see Mork while he was still on vacation, got shocked by the existence of Mork's kid, spent a day or couple of days with them, then made study materials for Mork and Khai (likely because he knew he wouldn't have much time in the future) and then got surprised again by seeing Fern--this would I think still be during the week of his vacation? At that point, he just wanted to go back home to once again lick his wounds but his vacation was over and he had none left (he told us he used it all when talking to his parents at dinner). So in that context, actually, quitting as an instinct makes a bit more sense--I've actually been there, at one point I was going to burn out and put in my notice, and my boss stepped in and told me to take leave instead. I'm really glad his advisor was able to do the same thing my boss did for me, and talk him out of quitting but encouraging him to take leave instead so that he could go home without messing up his future.

And in paying better attention, I realized this time around that for Tawan, going back home rather than confonting Mork both made sense and was good for his character arc. Before this, he'd clearly not been visiting home at least partly because he kept taking shifts for friends, and partly to make time for Por; so after giving up some of his time in Chiang Mai to be with Mork, it makes sense he'd want to be there when he thought he might have read Mork wrong after all. And Tawan pushing and pushing Por to get answers blew up so badly in his face last time, that retreating rather than confronting Mork actually does make sense in context. Also, like Tawan said to Nadia, he was tired of not being put first, and when Mork didn't go after him outside the garage after Fern called him back, Mork had put Fern first in that moment. And up until then the only confessions Tawan (and the audience) has gotten from Mork were in Mork's imagination; he'd flirted but not actually said anything concrete aloud. So Tawan needing something more from Mork to prove that Mork actually does feel the way he's been implying, and he would put Tawan first, is fair and fits what took place in the show, actually--my past self was I think applying an unfair lens on this as a point of convenient dramatic tension. Finally, I realized on this rewatch that Tawan leaving without saying anything, after he knew Mork panicked last time and specifically told him not to do that, could be read as Tawan being a little bit selfish, actually, (which as @bengiyo said these two characters could use more of), and leaving to be chased after could be seen as Tawan (at least subconsciously) indulging a self-indulgent impulse. Having thought that through I now appreciate it as an action of his character arc rather than resenting it.

And now we get to Mork's character arc. Because Mork is already the best boy, so what could his character possibly stand to learn?

This was my thinking on first watch, but on rewatch I think he demonstrates that he grew in a few ways. First, he goes through the self-realization and acceptance of loving another man. I didn't give that journey enough credit the first time around.

Secondly, he re-orients himself after a breakup from a relationship that spanned multiple years. I know a lot of people saw the petrol/gas analog by Dej as learning to love men instead of women, but I saw it as learning to love Tawan rather than Fern--because they are two different people, and they have different things they need from you, and he has all of these learned patterns from his relationship with Fern that he has to unlearn, including putting her feelings first. Going back to the moment when Mork doesn't go after Tawan, if you accept my reading of Uncle Dej's advice, Mork's choice not to go after Tawan but instead to stay with Fern is contextualized through this conversation as Mork falling into old habits and putting Fern's wants and needs over all others including his own. He then corrects this by not agreeing to get back together with her, but not until promising to always be her smile--in other words, he's still struggling with reorienting himself in terms of who Mork is in relation to Fern when not her boyfriend. [This also makes Dej's pointed comment about gas being cheaper than petrol a pointed jab at Fern and her demands of Mork's money specifically, which the petty part of me enjoys.]

Mork also faced his fear of heights for Tawan, though he did that before he even acknowledged he had feelings, so I'm not sure I'm counting that as anything other than Mork continuing to be the best. But when, on the mountain, Mork finally says aloud the thing he's been daydreaming about for at this point months, this is definitely character growth and feeds into my first part about Mork struggling with his feelings for a man. I realized on this rewatch that Mork always talks about his feelings for Tawan as a hypothetical or a question--"Do I like him?" "Could we be together?" "If I do like him, what should I do?" He doesn't state his feelings as a statement except in his imagination (I think--may need to rewatch again to confirm), until the confession on the mountain. So, as @lurkingshan pointed out in her post, My Ride also makes the same point as La Pluie that clear, verbal communication is key to a relationship.

Mork also gets to be a teensy bit more selfish near the end, which I didn't really clock the first watch-through. When Tawan explains why he thought about quitting and how he wanted to relocate to Chiang Mai so that he could help take care of his mother, Mork's wheels started turning and he began planning for their future together up North--again this is not new, Mork planned his future with Fern and her goals in mind so it makes sense he'd be planning his future with Tawan in the same way. Because Mork is best. But! This time he includes in his future plans his goal to get a degree and open a garage of his own. I love this, it's such a small victory but I think it's important for his character that the thing he's seemingly regretted most about his choices (giving up on his own chance to go to school) and that he did for someone he loved (putting them through school) is now something he's doing for himself (as well as for his shared future with his partner). And this also reflects Mork internalizing Dej's point about how he's got to recalibrate--because what Tawan needs from Mork is not the same thing as what Fern needed from him, and these different circumstances allow him to adjust his future plans and fit in his own dreams. Love that for him.

I love that we get the timeskip to see a glimpse into their future, beyond it just being so sweet, it allows us to see the ways in which they've fit together, and how their relationship is not perfect--Tawan forgets their anniversary, Mork is trying to establish himself in a small community that probably does not open easily to outsiders--but it's balanced in that they support each other to make up for one another's weaknesses (Mork doesn't actually care and is happy to be the one who remembers these things; Tawan is happy to pay for the restaurant).

I didn't say anything about the Tawan/Por relationship above because I didn't really catch anything new on rewatch, from the get-go I thought it was so well done. Por is believably self-absorbed and Tawan really does such a good job of trying to do everything right. He talks to him directly and listen to his own instincts, but is surrounded by people (Por, Nadia, Mork) who tell him to let it go and ignore the signs. I continue to love to hate Por. This thread is a little unresolved because Por comes sniffing back around Tawan's ward, but we didn't really need to see Tawan reject Por, which I appreciated as the show writing him off as not a threat. I did pick up more on the glimpses of the kindness that La Pluie shows its female characters in how Fern is treated; Fern is shown to be selfish and materialistic, but also legitimately struggling with their life as-is, and by showing her trying to get Mork back, at least it gives her the credit of letting her realize what she was missing when it was gone. I'm glad La Pluie went further with keeping Nara complex and human.

Finally, I have to shout out how much love this show has for queer community and found family. Cheep and Dej give Mork and Tawan and even Fueang a safe haven to come to when they're hurt and confused, and they give so much advice. Everyone else has said it (I know @chickenstrangers mentions how special it is in their rewatch but I'm sure others have too) but it's worth repeating how much of a difference this makes for these characters.

Fueang and Mork also give one another advice and support, and I think it works well in the show that actually both Fueang and Mork can mostly just give support and some generic advice, but they can't speak from experience the way Cheep and Dej can. Still, the motorcycle gang support Fueang, and then Mork, in getting their respective partners. Tawan's sister knows exactly what is going on and gives Mork a challenge to make sure he's good enough for her brother. Fueang and the gang also show up in Chiang Mai because they're so sure their bro is going to mess up his confession, and then they cheer on the kiss when it does go well.

Mork taking on Khai as his own child when his brother failed to step up is also a beautiful reflection of the love and care his uncles gave to him and modeled for him; he clearly sees them as parental figures and was able to imagine himself as a parent to Khai because of it--and he never questions whether his getting together with a man would have a bad influence on his nephew/adopted son, the way we see Jim struggle with this in Moonlight Chicken, for example. More queer elders in stories please and thank you!

I feel so much less conflicted about this show now that I've gone through this exercise. Feel free to tell me if you think I got too far in my head and overanalyzed lol I'm always open to being told I'm now adding things that aren't there. I just really needed to deconstruct why I had issues last time and what changed for me when I paid more attention. Also, this experience makes me want to binge Step by Step to see if it makes a difference in how I feel about the ending to that show...but I don't think I'm ready for that yet.

And if you read all that, you're awesome.

#my ride the series #my ride rewatch 2023 #typed so i can stop thinking it

38 notes · View notes

maddsmallow · 1 year

Text

tagged by @thirium-800 !!! fuckin love doing these things lmao let’s goooo

Rules: Tag 10 (or less) people you want to get to know better

relationship status: married for 3 years! will be 4 in september, and we’ll have been friends for 11 years in october ❤️

favorite color: i’m honestly not sure i have a favorite color. it was indigo for a really long time, like during my entire teenage years, but when i moved to be with my husband, i went from trad-goth to more cottagecore?? really weird lmao, so these days i REALLY love, like, muted browns and greens. it’s pretty funny how much it contrasts with the music i listen to, i’ll be in a soft blue sundress with a petticoat and pastel moomin clips in my hair, and then have fuckin like, type 0 neg playing or some shit idk lmao. ANYWAYS to answer the damn question. maybe brown. maybe green. i like those. earthy tones. good stuff

song stuck in my head: ‘runaway’ by aurora. i knew it was popular on tiktok for a while (at least during the short time i used it) but i never heard anything past the little sound clip that was used over and over again, but literally last night i was like, i should hear the whole thing. and holy fuck, the chords n shit that start like halfway thru the song?? goosebumps, its SO GOOD

three favorite foods: [my type 1 diabetes screaming in the background] CHOCOLATE. and then i guess maybe cereal? real healthy stuff i know. and then i guess anything chicken-and-rice related. big slut for rice these days

last song I listened to: besides the one i just talked about above, i think it was ‘i love you’ by woodkid. i got over my stupid fuckin superiority complex about only listening to 60s/70s/80s that i had as a teen a few years ago and i’ve been trying to catch up with more 90s/00s and especially 10s and now 20s music since then, so i really dont know anything about that artist because im still really not like, “in the loop,” but i do really like that song. idek how i found it, probably randomly payed on spotify or something lmao

dream trip: no idea tbh. pretty much just anywhere with my husband [audience boos me off the stage for being sappy] no but real talk, maybe germany? i wanted to go there when i was in elementary school but i cant even remember why. i have a friend here who’s from germany and is moving back in a few months, which makes visiting a lil easier, so that’s cool. i guess japan and china and maybe thailand would be cool to experience. maybe this is really stupid but a video game i liked as a kid made me really interested in like, tibetan monasteries?? so i think it’s be dope to see something like that, assuming it’s, y’know, a respectful thing to visit. i’ve never actually looked into it cuz i just always assumed i’d never have the money to travel :P

last thing(s) i googled: a picture of a poster frame i wanted my husband to get for me haha

tagging: this is always the hardest part im such an open fuckin book when people ask me shit, but reaching out to other people?? im so shy uhHHHH just ignore this if you dont wanna do it, dont feel obligated!! @versailles-dove @the0ldmann @marieantonanton @walkingencyclopediaofweirdmayo @styx1an @felinaszsz @pure-plums @partyinthemysterymachine @starlitflowers-secretgarden @silverloreley TEN WHOLE PEOPLE WHEW

okay byeeee i love uuuuu

#the blogger says words #chain mail

8 notes · View notes

britesparc · 1 year

Text

Weekend Top Ten #572

Top Eleven Top Tens

So here’s a funny thing. I've been doing this blog for over ten years. I know that, because I know I was writing it before my eldest was born. In fact, 2012 was my tenth anniversary. And yet – and yet – somehow, in my idiocy, I missed it; I totally forgot about it. Despite frequently making a huge deal when I reach milestone numbers – 100th Top Ten, 250th, 500th, with my six hundredth blog going up this autumn unless I die or the world ends - I somehow, catastrophically, comedically, counter-intuitively failed to recognise when I'd actually been doing this for ten whole years.

I mean. You'd have thought the 520th Top Ten would have been a bit of a giveaway, y’know?

So having missed my proper anniversary I've decided to go on the hunt for another. Because doing this for as long as I have is quite an achievement, even if I do say so myself. I write these things every week for an audience of, like, four people maybe. But I enjoy it and it gets the creative juices flowing! And doing it for over a decade, whew. It's quite an undertaking, when I think back to what it was like at the beginning. I remember writing some of those early ones sat at my desk at Granada Studios. There was hardly any blurb, hardly any explanation; it was an exercise in list-making rather than creative writing.

Nowadays it’s more of an effort, in more ways than one; they take longer to write because I write more. But I've also ticked off a hell of a lot of things to make lists on; it’s increasingly difficult to find new things, or new spins on the old things. I make no apologies for going back to the well of Transformers, the MCU, or Xbox games; those are three pretty big things in my pop cultural life. I know barely anyone reads this thing, but I do hope I keep it entertaining and my lists varied and mostly interesting.

So how did this all start anyway? It was definitely the lists rather than the writing. I used to think how, if ever I was a columnist at The Guardian or something, I'd end my weekly column by just doing a random list of ten things. It could be anything; favourite Ninja Turtles villains, favourite BBC2 idents, favourite flavours of ice cream. I do remember distinctly one I thought of was favourite videogame weapons; that was always high up there. And then I got a Tumblr, and I decided – hey! – why not actually do that? Why not just write a list? Do it every week. Originally it was going to be “Friday Top Ten” but I very smartly realised before I even began that tying myself down to getting one of these out every Friday was probably impossible. And so it proved, because I tell ya, there have been a few weeks where it nearly missed Sunday. On the other hand, I don’t think I've ever missed a weekend since this began – with the possible exception of one list appearing on a Bank Holiday Monday. But really, eleven years, a number of holidays, work, kids, Civilization VI – and I've still got one of these out every week. That’s no small feet, as Bart said to Sideshow Bob.

So by my reckoning – which might be wrong – this week is the eleventh anniversary of my first Top Ten blog. And so, in lieu of doing a tenth birthday special, we have eleven. Like Matt Smith or Millie Bobbie Brown. And those guys both rock. Anyway, what we’ve got here is an entirely self-indulgent list of lists: my favourite of my own lists. I think I did this before, in the foggy mists of time, but one of the beauties of my Sisyphean quest to keep putting things in groups of ten every sodding week is that the number of weeks increases and stuff keeps happening in between and old lists are old now and I get to do the same thing but with new stuff. Like how every four years I list my favourite MCU moments. Like how I did Top Christmas Films again, a decade after I first tackled it. Like how many times I've managed to write about Transformers. Like how I accidentally did Best Films of 1999 twice. Like how every four years I list my favourite MCU moments. I get to go back and tweak things and make jokes that some people think are mistakes and not jokes! I get to change my mind and reflect on the passage of time. I get to fill lists with references to shows my kids are watching that, seven or eight years later, I have next to no recollection of.

Bringing us to this: a list of my favourite lists, a window through time. It’s in chronological order, from oldest list to most recent. So kick back and take a trip down memory lane: lines of dialogue, stuff to do with babies, Christmas, Star Wars, and my most popular Top Ten list of all time.

See you in 2032! Or maybe 2033, who knows.

Moments in Spielberg Movies (as Illustrated by a Line of Dialogue): the first ever list I did and already we’re into one of my ongoing preoccupations (Spielberg) and also a recurring “bit”: lists of quotes. Something I’ve tried to do a few times, although it’s not always easy. Not sure I agree with all of these moments; I must have really loved A.I. in 2012, because I barely remember that scene now.

Emotions After Reading About Disney Buying Star Wars: it was a big deal finding out Lucas had sold Star Wars, and that we were going to for-realsies get new films. Of course, there was a good degree of doubt and trepidation too; hence my simple but (if I do say so) rather witty reaction, ending with a cute Star Wars joke.

Things a Christmas Film Must Have to be Called a Christmas Film: my first Christmas writing these Top Tens and as you can see I’m already banging the drum for Die Hard. I like this list because, whilst I think I’d write it better today, using Die Hard as a template to explain what defines a Christmas film – rather than attempting to justify Die Hard as adhering to a Christmas movie template – is quite a nice idea.

Toy Story Questions: an example here of when I do a really deep dive into something largely because I have to watch it a lot with the kids (note the references to Brave and Frozen). So I seriously over-think the Toy Story trilogy (and there were only three back in 2015!) in relatively amusing fashion. I’ve since learned that loads of people ask these same questions. I did another similar list back when Daughter #1 was obsessed with The Snowman.

Gritty Films That Could Become Kids' Show: jumping ahead to 2017 and I attempt to unpick the whole “grim and gritty” motif that often sees ostensibly children’s properties get all serious, usually because their original audience are older now but still want to like the things they liked as kids. So I viewed it in reverse, and adapted some distinctly sweary and violent films so they were suitable for nippers.

TNG Characters With the Best Episodes: nothing too complex in this 2020 list, but I quite like the way I chose to look at The Next Generation; which characters are best served by episodes dedicated to them. Prompted largely, I think, by my realisation that Geordi is a great character but most of “his” episodes were a bit pants.

Characters Who Came Back From the Dead: this was to coincide with Easter 2021, and was an example of a list where, despite being a relatively obvious subject, I didn’t get round to it for ages for some reason. In this case I think it was partly an assumption that I’d already done it! But it’s an amusing topic, and I think relatively well-written.

Violent Moments in Transformers: still in 2021, and one of my recent favourites: listing the goriest moments in Transformers history. I’ve written about Transformers A LOT, often either quite simple lists or bigger, more philosophical things. This splits the difference by having an amusing topic and allowing me to wallow in depictions of rent metal and shredded wiring. But to be honest the thing I love most is the gif I found to illustrate it.

500 Films of my Lifetime: several times over the past eleven years I’ve done really big lists; Top 100 films, Top 100 games, that sort of thing. In those cases it’s really just a ranking job because, well, writing about 100 things would take a while. For my 500th list in 2021 – which I really made a bigger deal about than the tenth anniversary the following year, for whatever reason – I decided to just go utterly crazy and do a Top 500. I think the hardest part was just remembering 500 films that I’d seen without forgetting really obvious ones. Anyway, fun times.

Books That Could Be Muppet Movies: ah, here we are. Around Christmas ’21, inspired by the perennial Muppet Christmas Carol, I had a good long think of what other books could you adapt for the Muppets. They only did Carol and Treasure Island (and Wizard of Oz, sorta), but what else was there? Anyway, for whatever reason this took off. Now, look, nobody reads my blog, I know that; I’m not saying it was an intense viral sensation. But for ages I was getting notifications that someone had liked or reblogged it, and it even spiked a bit again last year.

Moments in the Lost Light Saga: and we return to Transformers, and one of the philosophical ones. But I’ve written so much about More Than Meets the Eye and Lost Light, I had to include it. This recent (December ’22) list highlights my favourite moments, but also tries to go into why this run on the comic meant to so much to me. It was popular and shared relatively widely among TF fans, who are Quite Online at the best of times. But really it’s just a distillation of a terrific comic and a popular thread for my Lists. And it might be more-or-less my final word on it, too.

Well, there we are; the only Top Eleven I think I’ll ever do, so I hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be back to a regular number of items in a Top Ten next week.

This was fun but a little daunting. No wonder I’ve only tried it once before – and back then I only had 52 lists to choose from! But it was hard ditching some of my other favourites; how to tell if someone’s a geek, favourite Starfleet uniforms, useful superpowers for a parent, and arguably the list that inspired the whole thing, favourite videogame weapons (sadly a rather dry, pedestrian ranking compared to some other efforts). But it was good to see the evolution. It's interesting that some of the early ones from the first couple of years have really stuck with me, and there are quite a few from the last couple of years, but the sort of middle period – the 200s and 300s, I guess – fade from memory and didn’t really stand out. I think there are a lot of rather specific things going on there – stuff I was excited for then, stuff that’s less well-written – and maybe they’ve not stood the test of time. Or maybe next time I’m foolish enough to do this, I’ll find something to celebrate from 2016. That’d be impressive.

#top ten #top eleven #eleven #lists #ranking #muppets #star trek #star wars #transformers #not really anything about the mcu though was there

0 notes

jounetsunosymphonia · 3 years

Text

Alex in Wonderland (Mankai Stage Spring 2019 translation)

translation for the stage version of spring’s second play! song can be found in full here

i’m including a little bit of spoken lines before the song starts because...yeah. it’s technically still part of the thing. but u just won’t get to hear it and i’m sorry for that.

cast list Usui Masumi (Makishima Hikaru) as Alex Chigasaki Itaru (Tateishi Toshiki) as Mad Hatter, Professor Minagi Tsuzuru (Maekawa Yuuki) as White Rabbit, Usaka Sakuma Sakuya (Yokota Ryugi) as Cheshire Cat, Nekota Citron (Furuya Yamato) as King of Hearts, Shintani (i’m not sure this is actually his name i can’t hear very well and i don’t have the script sdjfndjsh if anyone knows lmk!!)

[bell chimes]

Shintani: A~h. They’re late.

Nekota: Hey!

Usaka: Sorry to keep you waiting!

(all three of them like, fist bumping and going EYYYY at each other. yeah)

Usaka: So something really funny happened at my club today--

Nekota: Oh, if it isn’t Alex! Good morning--

Alex: (walks past them)

Nekota: Eh, he’s totally ignoring us? Don’t you recognise us? It’s Nekota, Usaka, and Shintani!

Shintani: We’re in the same class so...let’s be friends! (holds out his hand for a fist bump c’mon alex don’t leave him hanging like that)

Alex: No thanks, I’m not interested. (sits down to read his book)

Usaka: Man, he’s sour. What’s he even coming to school for?

Shintani: (puts his hand down with the most hurt look on his face i’m so sad)

Nekota: Nah, it’s fine, right? Everyone’s different! But anyway-- (nekota and usaka exit)

Shintani: (running after them) What is it~?

Professor: Now, are you sitting here reading on your own again? Why don’t you act a little more like a college student and go have fun with your friends?

Alex: That would be a waste of my time. Books give me knowledge, meanwhile all they can give me are pointless conversations and boredom.

Professor: Though you might hate humans, you like animals, do you not?

Alex: For the most part, yes, but...that’s because they’re fluffy. Fluffiness can heal people, it’s not pointless at all.

Professor: Do you really hate useless things so much?

Alex: Of course. I didn’t come to university to waste time being unproductive.

Professor: Hmm. Productivity, you say. ...Alex, say there is a treasure of gold that only your friends can see, but is invisible to you. What could it be?

Alex: If we think about it logically, Professor, a situation like that could never exist in reality. Therefore, the only conclusion is that it is a dream. Please stop with the pointless questions.

Professor: Alex, what you have in intelligence, you lack in imagination. Here, try drinking this. (SIR DON’T OFFER YOUR STUDENT ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES. SIR.)

Alex: And this is?

Professor: Plain black tea. Perhaps it’ll help loosen up your rigid way of thinking.

Alex: I doubt it, but I’ll take your word for it. I know you won’t let me leave til I drink it, anyway...

Professor: You’re a tough one, as usual.

(alex drinks the tea and stuff starts to get funky! from this point onward is the actual song)

White Rabbit: Oh dear, I’m late! You, get out of my way!

Alex: What’s with the ears? You’re in college, but you’re still dressing up like that?

White Rabbit: Enough of that, just let me through. It’ll all be over for me if I’m late!

(commotion ensues as white rabbit tries to carry alex out of the way, and throws him down to wonderland)

Alex: Ah---!

White Rabbit: I’m going to be terribly late!

Professor: Now, Alex. It’s time to search for that golden treasure!

(i’m not typing this all out it’s the same lalala as in wonderland a go go dnfjsdhsd)

Cheshire Cat That’s my favourite napping spot Get out of the way! Go away!

Alex: What are you--?! Where am I...

Cheshire Cat I’m Cheshire and this is Wonderland!

Alex: Wonderland, you say? That’s absurd! Even making me put on this kind of costume...

Alex I need to return to my own world Have you seen someone with white rabbit ears?

Cheshire Cat If you mean White Rabbit, he’s seeing the King

Alex Take me there, he’s the one who brought me here

Cheshire Cat You’re one to demand something of me! Well, it’s fine~! This fellow and the King should be fun to see

[spring telepathy time part 1] Sakuya: (Isn’t this amazing, Masumi-kun? It’s only the first show, but we’ve already settled down like this!)

Masumi: (You seem like you’re enjoying yourself, as usual.)

Sakuya: (Yeah! Maybe it isn’t enough for me to just be doing that, but...this really is fun!)

(more funny stuff where they’re thinking while still acting as the character bc...sakuya is talking as himself here, but walking on all fours as cheshire. and masumi is responding to him perfectly normally. it’s hilarious.)

Cheshire Cat: Follow me.

Masumi: (That’s fine...I think you’re fine that way.)

King of Hearts: The court has decided, the White Rabbit will be put to death.

White Rabbit: Please wait. I was only late by three seconds!

King of Hearts: For the crime of stealing away my time, White Rabbit is sentenced to death. Off with his head!

Alex: Wait. Don’t just murder that rabbit!

King of Hearts: What is it to you? Are you a friend of his?

Alex: No. But I need him around.

King of Hearts: Then you can take his place.

Alex: Eh?

King of Hearts: We’ll have another trial by croquet just for this. Now, the preparations for the trial!

Alex: Hold on. This is a flamingo and a hedgehog.

King of Hearts: And what of it?

Alex: I can’t do this...not to these cute little babies...

King of Hearts: Then you have chosen death. Off with his head!

[spring telepathy time part 2] Citron: (I’m saying the lines properly. I’m getting better at Japanese!)

Masumi: (If you’re going to act onstage, that’s only to be expected.)

Citron: (I hate kings, but I like this role. I’ll move upstage more like you said, Masumi!)

Masumi: (Good. We’ll get along better if you’re not forcing it.) (you all need to know that this entire time he’s just holding the flamingo and hedgehog plushies to his chest like little baby. son.)

White Rabbit: Ah--! I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?

King of Hearts(??? i think): What are you--

White Rabbit: Take that! (he smacks the cards. it’s cute.) Let’s go. This is thanks for you saving me. That way, I don’t owe you anything!

King of Hearts: What do you think you’re doing! Seize them!

White Rabbit: Whew, we finally shook them off...

Alex: Tell me how to get back to the surface.

White Rabbit: No idea.

Alex: Huh?

Cheshire Cat: My, my, looks like you finally found White Rabbit~

Alex: And yet I haven’t achieved my goal. I want to return to the surface.

Cheshire Cat: Then you should go ask the Hatter.

Alex: Professor?!

White Rabbit: This guy wants to go back to...his own world, he says.

Alex: If I drink that tea again, I should be able to return home! Mad Hatter: Now, I’ve never heard of anything like that. Isn’t that right? (directed at the audience) What do you all think we should do with this young man? Hmm, I see! Alex: ...who have you been talking to. Mad Hatter: Reality is not limited to what you can see. There are those in this world who sink a lot of money into things that cannot be seen. Like, say, items in a game.

Alex: I’m getting a headache...

[spring telepathy time part 3] Masumi: Don’t do weird adlibs like that.

Itaru: I told you, let’s just do things our own way. Besides, you look like you’re having fun too. Is that for the director?

Masumi: Of course. But today, it’s not just that. Acting...is fun.

Itaru: Hmm~? What was that?

Masumi: Shut up!

Mad Hatter Then I shall tell you! The world is always the world that you are in!

Alex: Huh?

Mad Hatter You are me, and he is you, and I am he

Alex: Enough of the Zen questions and answers! Just send me back to the world I came from!

Mad Hatter The only one who can rescue you from what you’re telling me is yourself.

King of Hearts: Found you!

Alex: What are you doing here?!

Mad Hatter: You ask why, well, that’s the King’s seat.

King of Hearts: Off with his head!

Alex: Wait! I don’t want to die here!

King of Hearts: Then you should ask one of your friends. If the White Rabbit will take his place, then Alex will live.

White Rabbit: I don’t owe him anything anymore. In the first place, we aren’t even friends.

King of Hearts: And you?

Mad Hatter: You must be joking. I have no need for friends.

King of Hearts: And you?

Cheshire Cat: Isn’t having friends pointless?

Alex: Haha...we’d get along. I feel the same way.

Alex: ...get along...? You are me...he is you...I am he...could it be that this world is my subconscious? How absurd!

King of Hearts: For the crime of having no friends, you are sentenced to death!

Alex: You’re only being so aggressive because you do want friends, don’t you?

King of Hearts: Huh? Just who do you think you’re talking to?!

Alex: You’re lonely. So you push everyone away to protect yourself.

King of Hearts: How do you know that?

Alex: ...because I’m the same.

King of Hearts: What...?

Alex: So...if you’ll have me...can we be friends?

King of Hearts: Friends...with me?!

Alex: I don’t know what it’s like to have friends, so I was afraid of having anything to do with anyone. You’re the same, aren’t you? But since we’re each other’s first friends, even if we’re both awkward, we’ll be able to forgive each other.

[spring telepathy part 4] Masumi: Tsuzuru, this is just what’s in the script and not my own words.

Tsuzuru: But you’re acting it out even better than I expected!

Masumi: Of course I am. For Director’s sake...and because I’m an actor.

Tsuzuru: They’re lines I don’t think you’d be able to say if you didn’t really think them, Masumi.

King of Hearts: Let’s...let’s be friends!

Alex: I also want you to stop doing terrible things to animals.

King of Hearts: I will. An official decree! Free all the animals, and all of the prisoners. Ten days of consecutive holidays for all the land!

White Rabbit: My dream vacation?!

Alex: He’s way too happy about this...

King of Hearts: Now, everyone! A party for the whole country, and a toast to my friend, Alex!

Everyone: Yay!!

the lalalas from wonderland a-go go

King of Hearts: Let’s carry Alex into the air!

Everyone: Yay! Heave-ho!

this is like, the part where it’s just alex and hatter for a bit and everyone goes away. like a dream. woooo.

Professor: Good morning. How are you feeling?

Alex: Awful. Like I just wasted a bunch of time.

Professor: That’s the answer to my earlier question. That which only you cannot see, is the treasure of spare time.

[i’ve lost count of the spring telepathy times] Itaru: So, do you get it? What it means to be an adult.

Masumi: Yes, with you as a cautionary tale.

Professor: Was it a bad dream?

Alex: I didn’t...hate it.

Professor: My! How honest.

Alex: I just don’t want any more of that tea.

Masumi: I won’t grow up to be like you.

Itaru: Well, if you’ve ever got any worries, you can come talk to me.

Masumi: No thanks. I’ve had enough of arcades.

Itaru: Come on, it’s the last scene.

Masumi: Don’t you tell me what to do. Let’s go.

Alex We are alone, but

Hatter We are not alone

Alex and Hatter If you close your eyes, Everyone will always be there smiling in your heart

Alex There, in Wonderland

Hatter (in Wonderland)

Alex I found

Alex and Hatter An important key

All Now unlock your dreams and your heart It’s a fantasy!

(and as always, they go into the actual song here. tl from the wiki, as usual.)

Alex Since I've fallen into this Wonderland, Why don't you and I go on a journey together?

Hatter Although this world is filled with uncertainty, As long as

Alex I'm with you

Alex and Hatter It seems like we'll be just fine.

Alex and Hatter Since we've fallen into this Wonderland, Why don't you and I go on a journey together? Although this world is filled with uncertainty, As long as I'm with you It seems like we'll be just fine As long as I'm with with you, it seems like we'll be just fine

#spring 2019 #mankai stage #usui masumi #chigasaki itaru #minagi tsuzuru #sakuma sakuya #citron #makishima hikaru #Tateishi Toshiki #maekawa yuuki #yokota ryugi #Furuya Yamato #a3 #november translations

43 notes · View notes

luvlyrv · 3 years

Text

Our Songs | Extra | Wendy x F!Reader SM!AU

Word Count: 1.4k

A/N: So happy to say this series is completely finished now!! Enjoy!! I'm moving onto more projects and hopefully can wrap up some one shots I've been working on. This is a different style from what I usually do since it is an extra, warning that the post looks really long because it's in bulleted style lol

Date: 9/1/21

Series Masterlist

after your confession with wendy you were stuck with an enormous burst of energy

you were on cloud nine, a seemingly never-ending high

you decided not to text wendy the day right after

you didn't want her to think you regretted anything but you also didn't want to seem too clingy

also it didn't help that just thinking about her was enough to throw you into cardiac arrest

you didn't receive any notifications from wendy either

it was a bit disappointing, but you assumed she was also trying to take in the shock of it all

trying to take your mind off of wendy you spend an entire day running around your house

you pick up your instruments and have the jam of your life

emotional highs are very good for your creativity it seems

you decide to record some things and save some drafts

who knows if it'll be useful in the future?

you worked till you felt dead tired and like you couldn't have another thought in your brain

even after you spent an entire day trying to exert your nervous and elated energy you were still hesitating on texting wendy when you woke up

but you missed her so much already

so you send a text asking her how she feels

she says she feels okay, and then asks about you

'yeah, i'm okay too'

your conversation was rocky

things weren't going as smooth as before

and it was evident that it was because the both of you had no idea how to behave

you took a deep breath before texting her your question

'so, can i take you on that first date?'

you see a bubble showing that she was texting

and then it disappeared

before showing up again

and disappearing

and- ugh! your heart was racing waiting for her answer

i mean, she liked you back right? so why would she say no?

'yeah, of course! :)'

whew, okay, looked like you almost made a big deal out of nothing

little did you know wendy was freaking out

she was a bit embarrassed at herself, acting as if she was a high school kid in love or something

it took wayyy too much concentration for her to type out something sensible

but she was excited for you to finally ask

you were also excited for her to say yes

your first date is at the downtown center

there was a festival and you were hoping to enjoy all the effort the artisans put into their work with wendy

you're walking with her through the numerous stalls set up

as the both of you admire the beautiful crafts set on display your hand reaches for hers

you feel the pressure of her hand squeezing back and you look at her

she looks at you and giggles

you didn't even realize what you were doing

'oh, i'm sorry. i didn't mean to do that suddenly.' you freak out and let go of her hand

you're worried that she was laughing at you and that she didn't want to hold hands

'it's okay! i thought it was cute'

she reaches out for you and you don't let go this time

instead you enjoy how happy she seems to be sharing this moment with you

and out in public too

later on you both go to the square where there were musicians

the sun was beginning to set, allowing for beautiful lighting and you appreciated songs you've never listened to before

wendy tugs at your arm while still staring at the performers

'i hope we can perform up there someday. together.'

you smile at her as she still looks on

'i think we will.' you assure her

finally night hits and you both call it a day

you walk her to her car and stop her

you kiss her forehead

'so, will there be a second?' you ask with a smile

you feel like you already know the answer

'i think that sounds great.'

life with wendy in it became easy

you guys seldom fought

and even when you did at least one of you would make something for the other

dropping it off at the doorstep and leaving an apology note

and after enough time of cooling down you would always come back to each other, talking out your problems from before

you personally felt like your work improved as well

wendy had become your muse

you sought to create tracks that would impress her

or that would be worthy of having her voice in it

and you felt like it was easier to write lyrics

because every experience with wendy created new feelings

feelings that you could hardly describe sometimes

when you guys decided to finally start working on your second collaboration you busted out the drafts you created long ago

wendy was impressed after sitting down and listening to your drafts

'woah, how many hidden gems do you have on your computer?'

'well, these ones in particular i made on the same day. the day after i confessed to you.'

you're both flustered

because it's easy to tell the kind of state you were in by the songs

wendy takes your hand and kisses it gently as your music continued to play

'you must think of me pretty highly, if the thought of me compelled you to make something so incredible'

you heat up at her cheesiness

'oh stop it.'

the two of you end up choosing a refreshing feeling/sound for the album

'cause you recharge me every time i see you!' she says

when you guys are almost done producing the album, that was when you went on the dinner date with wendy

the one where you guys would finally confess to the world

after recording and uploading the announcement video the both of you decided to turn off your notifications and avoid reading people's reactions

instead you guys opted to spend the rest of the day baking and then watching a movie together

the both of you decided that it would be stressful to engage with your audience right away, and that's why it took a full day for you both to check your phones again

both seulgi and yeri already knew about your relationship but they both flooded you guys with congratulations anyways

they just wanted you to know they were proud of your bravery!

besides them, both of your families already knew and didn't comment much

they'd already stated how they think you're good for each other when you guys had visited together

especially your younger cousin

cause apparently she's a big fan of wendy and is definitely not using you as a way to get close to her idol

and is definitely not bragging about her how cousin is 'super super cool and famous and is dating another famous person and i think they'll be rich someday!!! so get on my nice side!'

you're happy to see that a lot of fans are happy for your relationship

wendy just keeps telling you 'of course they are, who wouldn't for a cute ass couple like us?'

it was at that point that you guys had decided to save up and move into a nice place together

you guys had talked about future plans before

not only that, but you had been practically living together already

between all the dates that lead to seemingly indefinite sleepovers

and the recent collaboration that made you guys be stuck together

it was really you guys living at each other's place weeks at a time

when you guys move in you're grateful

because you get to experience all the little things from her even more

some nights when you're stressed she rubs circles on your back to help you sleep

when you guys shower together she takes her time to carefully wash your hair

it was those deeply intimate moments that made you the happiest

both of your careers were doing really well due to the reception of your second collab and all the media fuss that happened with your dating annoucement

you both still have solo careers and interact with other musicians

but along with moving in, you guys decided to become a duo and consistently create music together

in the morning when you share breakfast you always remind her how good life is and how thankful you are

#wendy x reader #red velvet scenarios #red velvet imagines #rv imagines #rv x reader #rv scenarios #gg x reader #kpop imagines #kpop writing #kpop au #son seungwan #girl group scenarios #girl group imaines

18 notes · View notes

rainbuckets8 · 3 years

Text

Settings in She-Ra

Today I will talk about setting and how She-Ra uses its settings to do some very cool things with its writing. I didn’t even notice all of these things until a recent rewatch because it’s so subtle and yet so brilliant at unconsciously making you notice things. TL;DR: The two major characters, Adora and Catra, are reflected in the show by a few major settings. And in this essay I will -

To understand settings in She-Ra, you need to understand that writing is rarely a cause-and-effect endeavor. Writing decisions and choices don’t just happen because something is the most likely to happen in the world of the story; things happen because the author writes them. So when something takes place in the Whispering Woods, it’s important to remember that was a deliberate decision for some event to happen there, not just because it’s a logical outcome. Following this, I will make a guess that She-Ra’s major settings are like an extended metaphor for the thoughts and feelings of its two major characters, Adora and Catra.

What tipped me off to this was a recent rewatch, when Adora and Catra confront each other at the end of Season 3. And it occurred to me just how often they confronted each other in the Whispering Woods. Seems odd, right? Another thing is that Adora goes on her own Hero’s Journey. The Hero goes into the Unknown, a supernatural place, and encounters challenges, only to grow past them and emerge a changed person, and returns to their life. Adora definitely changes; she literally transforms into She-Ra for the rest of the series, and She-Ra even changes again when Adora gets a new transformation.The Whispering Woods can certainly be defined as the Unknown, in a literal sense; even the princesses and native Etherians treat it with caution and confusion, because it’s so ancient and mystical. The Woods also exist as a boundary between the Horde and Brightmoon, a middle ground. If Adora’s journey begins in the Horde and ends in Brightmoon, she has to go through the Woods, the Unknown, in order to complete it. Adora’s journey is centered around her inner thoughts and feelings as much, or even more, as it is about winning a war. And these challenges to her thoughts and feelings usually take place in the Whispering Woods, which is a metaphor for her sense of self. Or else, they take place in First One’s ruins, which are in the Woods, and represent Adora going deeper into her thoughts.

No post of mine is complete without numerous examples, so let’s take it from the top. Adora and Catra leave the Horde, their home, to enter the Woods, and Adora encounters something strange and new there. Adora goes back, and Catra stays behind, metaphorically because Catra isn’t ready to start her own journey yet. Glimmer and Bow enter the ruins with Adora, and she slowly learns to let them into her life and they become her close friends. Adora gets to Brightmoon but enters the Woods again when she is unsure of what to do, and gets advice from Razz. (Which is really advice from herself: “You’re a smart girl. What do you think?”) When Adora next encounters a problem she can’t handle, healing Glimmer, she retreats to the Woods again in search of answers. She goes deeper and finds Catra in the ruins in Promise. After making the major decision to essentially cut Catra out of her life, to “let go,” the Woods end up destroyed in the process of the Battle of Brightmoon, much like how Adora’s own thoughts are conflicted.

The next major conflict in the Woods happens in the Season 3 finale, in the false world created by the portal. Adora confronts Catra yet again, not just once but twice, and firmly makes a decision: I can’t be friends with you anymore if you keep acting like this. We also get a nice look at Adora’s theme of destiny and how that relates to Glimmer and Bow leaving her alone, and Angella sacrificing herself when Adora initially believes that’s her destiny.

Our next major glimpse of the Woods comes from Mara, actually! Mara herself goes on a little brief journey, and learns new things from Razz in Hero, in where else? The Woods. Mara, being the She-Ra before Adora, as a predecessor figure, emphasizes that the Woods have some mystical connection to the mystical She-Ra - and the exposition for the audience doesn’t hurt here either. Season 4 ends with another major conflict between Adora and one of her parental figures, Light Hope. We go as deep as we’ve been yet into the First Ones’ ruins, and it ends with Adora rejecting the concept of her destiny.

Finally, in Season 5, when Adora gets back to Etheria, she retreats from Prime to, where else, but the deepest part of the Whispering Woods. However, much like how Prime’s chips can take over a person’s thoughts, so too do the chipped people take over that camp, corrupting a safe haven for Adora. Shadow Weaver worms her way into the new camp in the Whispering Woods, and in the next episodes, Adora starts letting Shadow Weaver’s incorrect arguments about repressing her thoughts and feelings worm their way into her head. But then Adora goes as deep into the ruins as she’s ever been, the literal center of the planet. Glimmer and Bow turn back and trust Catra to go deeper, with Shadow Weaver. It’s in the tunnels where Adora rejects Shadow Weaver one last time, and Shadow Weaver dies, and Adora can start to get closure on that chapter in her life. And then Adora accepts her love for Catra. How cool is it that this place is called the Heart? Not just a heart, as in the center of Adora’s self, but a heart as in the symbol for feelings and wants. And how it’s both of those, suggesting that feelings and wants are the strongest and most central part of her mind and self. (If you’re familiar with my other ramblings, insert the “magic, especially She-Ra’s magic, is love” metaphor here.)

As an aside, the two parts of her mind, the First Ones and the natural Whispering Woods, can be read as an extension of this metaphor; she’s torn between two groups. While Adora is technically adopted, based on the themes of the show, this isn’t so much about literal feelings about adoption as it is “found family vs birth family.” So the First Ones don’t represent adoption in a negative light, as much as they represent some of our birth or immediate families. And how the family Adora found and chose, is so much better for her than the families that were chosen for her (either Light Hope as a representation of the First Ones, or Shadow Weaver as someone who takes her in).

Whew, ok. How about Catra? Catra’s self is reflected much like Adora’s. Catra’s major setting is the Fright Zone. She wins most of her major victories there. She defeats Shadow Weaver, and she defeats Hordak. But she also loses her friends. She stuns Entrapta. The two pivotal moments of Scorpia leaving her happen in the Horde: when she confirms she would destroy Emily, and Scorpia calls her a bad friend; and when she discovers the note Scorpia left behind. Double Trouble confronts her in the Fright Zone after she fights Hordak. Unlike Adora, the Fright Zone is portrayed as an unhealthy place.

Catra only starts her own journey when she enters her version of the Unknown. If Adora’s version is the Woods, then Catra’s supernatural place where she doesn’t feel at home is Horde Prime’s ship. She tries her games again, to make her way up the ranks, but it’s clear Prime isn’t falling for them. She confronts her inner thoughts and feelings: “Adora means something to you.” She sees what she’s always known deep down, in an irrefutable way: the Horde, and Prime, is super unhealthy. She makes her pivotal decision to change when she rescues Glimmer. And let’s talk about that, because there’s something super neat about Adora’s reflection of her deepest thoughts, the ruins, and Catra’s reflection of her deepest thoughts, the Velvet Glove. These are the only two places where there are diegetic flashbacks, and only for Catra and Adora. (Diegetic means “in the world of the story.” Characters can see or hear a diegetic thing. So background soundtracks are for the audience only, that is non-diegetic music; Sea Hawk’s shanties can be heard by the characters and the audience, that is diegetic music.) There is an explanation in the world for Adora’s: it’s tech, either by Light Hope, or a leftover. But there is absolutely no reason that Catra can see the exact same style of flashback aboard the Velvet Glove, in Corridors. Why only these two places, that just so happen to be the two places that reflect each of their deepest feelings? Speaking of Corridors, it’s an exceptional episode for all its imagery and it’s here that the setting reflects Catra the most. It’s here when Catra reaffirms her deepest fears. “All I do is hurt people. There’s no one left in the entire universe who cares about me.”

But she’s wrong! Because although Adora and Catra are each reflected in their settings, they are also deeply intertwined with each other. We see this in Save the Cat, when Adora goes into the Velvet Glove without even being able to turn into She-Ra, ready to make the worst tactical decision ever, of all time, to try and save Catra. We see this in Promise, when the two deeply confront each other about their innermost feelings, and the settings become intertwined: we’re in the ruins for Adora, and at the same time in a simulation of the Horde for Catra. We see this in the Woods in Season 3’s finale, when they confront each other yet again. We see this in the tunnels in Heart, Part 1 and Part 2, when Adora sees Catra in simulations and Catra makes her way into the deepest part of the Heart to save her. Think about the number of times they have been alone with just each other in any of these settings. Think about who gets to be in these settings with them, and how that usually or always reflects who has the most influence on these two as characters. (Remember Prime isn’t so much about who he is, as what kinds of thinking he represents.)

The settings in She-Ra not only reflect the two main characters visually, but also metaphorically. Adora is the Woods and the ruins. Catra is the Fright Zone and the Velvet Glove. The characters enter each other’s settings many times, and they argue and fight. But, throughout all that time, they’ve still held the other near to their heart. As Catra says to Adora: “I love you. I always have.”

#she ra spoilers #She Ra

48 notes · View notes

wweassets · 2 years

Note

Logan Paul needs to have an initiation where his hands are tied behind his back and he's stripped down naked while everyone surrounds him and jerks off, so they can unload stripes of cum across his face and chest before he's accepted onto the Monday Raw Roster. And if he decides to open his mouth, maybe someone will fill it for him and give him what he's been craving. Who needs a gag when there's big heavy dicks right there?

He's not allowed to come either, and has to wear a cock ring while his body is placed on display before the other wrestler who watch. He's not allowed to come, not only because it's a privilege he has to earn, but also because he has to get into the correct headspace for his WrestleMania match, and will allow him to be as aggressive as necessary.

The Miz on the other hand will be busy, because Logan is unaware that his partner for Mania is the biggest locker room slut, and that he unknowingly also chose to be the locker room slut #2. Someone had to fill in Morrison's place. So while Logan is just there to be a cum dump, Miz will also be put to use, offering his empty holes, always happy to please. He knows what he has to do to stay in favor- no one keeps around a heel as annoying as Miz, someone who's crossed the entire rooster, unless they're getting something out of it

Who the fuck cares if he's a boxer? He's over in WWE now, and things are different there, and issues are settled a different way and Raw is named Raw for a reason...

Logan will be sure to find out soon 😉

As for my sub top Logan and power bottom Miz agenda, let me remind you gentlemen that Logan has been coming off very inexperienced in his Raw appearances as of late, and you can see him eagerly and at times anxiously eyeing Miz, his mentor before speaking or acting. The man needs guidance and Miz being needed isn't something you come across a lot but I'm pretty sure it must be a heady feeling for the Miz.

Having a young, attractive man wanting to learn his ways, learn his wrestling moves, his method of delivering promos? It must make Miz wonder what else he can teach Logan and what else Logan is willing to learn...

He must've noticed how Logan follows him around like a lost puppy dog. Maybe its time for the Miz to make a move. Meet Logan at his gym under the pretense of some late night training, which isn't exactly a lie. And then, sell him the pitch.

"Being a heel isn't something that is easy to accomplish. The difference in how do many people approach being a heel is wrong because they think that it's all about getting the audience to hate you; it's not. You want the audience to love hating you," the Miz instructs and Logan nods.

"And how can I do that?" Logan haltingly asks and Miz sighs.

"Don't be a try hard. When you're out there, delivering your promo, remember you're out there for you, serving your intentions, putting your plans in motion." Miz's eyes flicker over Logan's body.

"when was the last time you've done something for yourself?" He asks and Logan looks up at him, startled.

"I don't know."

"let's fix that." The Miz steps closer and hears Logan's breath hitch.

"don't worry, you're in good hands."

oh my

GOD

i hate how HOT this is pls🥴 the first part with them being the bottom whores and logan becoming #2 without knowing.. whew

and the sub top stuff too omfg

#ask

6 notes · View notes

johnkrrasinski · 3 years

Text

i want your midnights;

full masterlist

Pairings: Bucky Barnes x female!reader

Word count: 1,749

Warning: fluff!! pure feelings

Summary: this one’s written for the @mypoisonedvine‘s festive writing challenge with the prompt “kissing at the new year’s eve count down.” there was only one person that you wanted to celebrate new years with and it was bucky barnes, the love of your life.

a/n: not my best work but eh, i needed some holiday fluff with bucky. comment and reblog if you like!

⭒☆━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━☆⭒

You straightened the skirt of your dress, trying to make yourself look presentable as you took a deep breath. To say you were nervous would be an outrageous understatement. You haven't played for a big crowd, let alone a crowd in awhile. The last time you were standing with identical emotions swirling through your stomach was when you were in your adolescent years. It wasn't because you grew bored of it, it was simply because you grew up and life had its funny way of surprising you. This occupation wasn't merely a job, it was a lifestyle. And this lifestyle didn't allow you to think that you'd ever have the chance to revisit this forgotten passion.

But here you were. About to perform one of your favourite songs on the grand instrument placed in the centre of the room and you feel like your stomach was sinking. You were good and you were adored. Suck it up and don't be a coward!

The ticking clock shows that it was three hours away from midnight. And the party was in full swing because it's New Year's Eve and Tony Stark was a man of flamboyant parties. And may God help you if he discovered your hidden talent.

"You should sing on New Year's Eve! Entertain the guests before midnight. What's better than live music at a party?"

"I don't know, Tony... I haven't sung in so long."

"You literally just did two minutes ago!"

"Okay first, that was in my room where no one was watching and second, you weren't supposed to see that!"

Tony walked up to the mini stage with a microphone in one hand and a glass of Champagne in the other. "Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention? I shouldn't be asking, after all, you were invited to my party." The elicited a few chuckles from the guests. "Let me start by thanking all of you for coming here tonight..."

Tony's speech was muffled by the grasp around your waist by a familiar pair of arms. "Nervous?"

"Extremely." You smiled despite the averment.

"Baby, don't worry. I've heard you sing and you have one of the loveliest voices in the world."

"You're just saying that cause you're my boyfriend, Bucky..."

"That's true, but the latter is also true."

You turned around in his arms and threw yours around his neck. "Thank you for the encouraging words. I feel a bit lighter knowing that you'll be in the crowd."

"My pleasure, darling." He kissed you with his hands still on your waist, holding you close but Tony's words disrupted your moment.

"We have a special and exclusive performance tonight. Please welcome, my friend, ____ ____!“

The soft claps welcomed you and it was your turn to take the stage.

"Good evening, everybody. I'm y/n and I hope you enjoy my performance tonight."

A sprightly "whew!" was heard and you instantly recognized Clint's voice.

Your fingers pushed the first few notes of the intro and the sound immediately changed the atmosphere in the room.

"There's glitter on the floor after the party, girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby..." You sang to the microphone. "Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor, you and me from the night before but..."

"Don't read the last page but I stay when you're lost and I'm scared and you're turning away, I want your midnights but I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on new year's day." You still hadn't dared to gaze at the audience so you focused on looking down on the black and white keys.

"You squeezed my hand three times in the back of the taxi, I can tell that it's gonna be a long road. I'll be there if you're the toast of the town babe," you didn't know why but your heart drove your gaze to the crowd and you instantly found the person you were singing for. "...Or if you strike out and you're crawling home..."

"Don't read the last page but I stay when it's hard or it's wrong or we're making mistakes..." You didn't look away. You couldn't. Not when the love of your life was staring right back at you with those warm steel blue eyes. "I want your midnights, but I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day." You meant every word.

"Hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you, hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you, hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you." This time your eyes wandered to the crowd, familiar and strange faces staring back at you with contented looks and you hoped these words would cling to them.

"...And I will hold on to you." Because they did to you and you did to the man standing a few feet away from you but your hearts and your minds remained connected.

"Please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere, please don't ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere..." A brief flashback played in your mind; the lovers turned strangers, the friends turned enemies, the loved ones turned ghosts. You barely heard from them anymore these days, but you could still remember their laughters, an epitome of the good memories. You hoped that this dynamic ragtag group of vigilantes would never turn into one of those tragedies. Another buried name that goes up to the monument.

"There's glitter on the floor after the party, girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby, candle wax and polaroids on the hardwood floor," your heartbeat hummed the euphonious melody, "...You and me forevermore." There he was. Smiling at you. Always smiling because you were the light of his life and his simpers were genuine and frequent now.

"Don't read the last page, but I stay when it's hard or it's wrong or we're making mistakes, I want your midnights, but I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day, hold on to the memories, they will hold on to you, and I will hold on to you." You chanted the closing lyrics and when the last note resonated, the guests' claps were louder this time, invigorating your confidence.

Everyone returned to their own things; catching up with their friends, laughing on the couch and drinking by the bar and Natasha was even standing behind it like a professional part-time bartender. Some were slow dancing and the others are already a little too drunk.

"That was beautiful, doll."

"You think so?"

"I know so. You got a gift, you shouldn't hide it from the world."

"I'm not trying to hide it, Bucky. I just... I didn't have the time with the world-saving and all. And music makes people happy, but it doesn't save lives."

"Well, if I don't know when I'll see you play again, then I'm glad at least we got tonight. And you're wrong, doll. You certainly saved me."

"Your words will be the death of me, Barnes."

Everyone gathered around, watching the big screen displaying the countdown to midnight. As the numbers go down, the more energized people become. Your arms were tangled with Bucky's, not wanting to be far away from the person you loved the most seconds before the year finalizes its chapter.

For a moment there, you felt happy. You looked around to see your teammates with smiles on their faces, stress-free and humans. This job hadn't allowed you to be just a human living a normal life. But tonight was one of the rare moments where all of you could just be normal people celebrating holidays.

And then there was Bucky, the man who had lived for a century, whose entire life was stolen away from him, and the man that your heart chose to fall in love with, and you were lucky enough that he chose you too. You had spent two Christmases together, and now you were entering another new chapter together, and there was no one else you'd rather wake up with an awful hangover with. There was no one else who would be there to give you Advil in the morning and deal with your mess.

5,4,3,2,1...

"Happy New Year!"

You and Bucky kiss, as all the cheers and noises, faded into the background. Bucky grabbed you close by the waist, and you had your arms around his neck trying to hold onto his lips as long as possible. You ran your fingers through his hair, feeling all the overwhelming affection you had for him. Bucky felt it too deep in his bones, who would've thought that despite all the atrocities his hands had to commit, someone as beautiful and wonderful as you would love him despite it all? Would kiss him on New Year's Eve and would stick with him through another year?

"Happy new year, darling."

"Happy new year." You couldn't fake the smile forming on your face. “I can’t believe it’s our second New Year’s together.”

“There’s no one else I’d rather spend the rest of my New Years with.”

“Are you saying you’re willing to spend the rest of your New Years dealing with my cranky hangover moods and pulling my hair back when I throw up?”

“As long as it’s you, I’m ready for pretty much anything. You’ve had my back and picked up my mess when I was at my worst, doll and I didn’t deserve it, but you did so without asking for anything, and I’m willing to do the same for you.”

You nearly teared up at his words, the past two years hadn’t always been the smoothest road with rainbows and butterflies for you two. You stuck with Bucky through his nightmares, panic attacks and his therapy sessions and you loved him despite all his open wounds and permanent scars, and Bucky had never felt luckier to have fallen in love with you too along the way. It began with a friendship and bloomed into something deeper, and the last two New Years that you had spent together reminded you that you could walk through every hurricane that life threw at you as long as you were together.

“You always knew how to calm down my fears and lift up my spirit and I’m eternally grateful for that.”

“Guess we’re just perfectly imperfect for each other, huh?”

“Guess we are.” He kissed you again with a huge smile on his face and zest for writing the first page of 365 pages with you.

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fluff #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan fanfic #sebastian stan fic #sebastian stan one shot #sebastian stan fluff #bucky barnes au #myfestivevine

94 notes · View notes

commentaryvorg · 3 years

Text

Digimon Data Squad Dub Comparison Episode 3 - The Return of Thomas!

This is a companion to my commentary on the original Japanese Digimon Savers! Reading my commentary on the original version of this episode (which you can find here) is recommended before reading this dub comparison.

Original name ~ Dubbed name

Masaru Daimon ~ Marcus Damon

Yoshino Fujieda ~ Yoshino “Yoshi” Fujieda

Tohma H. Norstein ~ Thomas H. Norstein

Sayuri Daimon ~ Sarah Damon

Chika Daimon ~ Kristy Damon

Captain Rentarou Satsuma ~ Commander Richard Sampson

PetitMeramon ~ DemiMeramon

[Since several characters share the same name between the original and the dub, quotes from the dub will always be in italics, while quotes from the original will not, in order to distinguish them.]

In the original, Masaru’s VA is always the one reading out the title card, but the dub mixes it up with different characters depending on the episode. This time, we get Miki and Megumi reading it, complete with fangirl squealing over Thomas. Uh, thanks, dub.

Sarah: “I think Agumon has been a really good influence!”

Marcus & Agumon: “More, please!”

Sarah: “See, he even says ‘please’ now.”

Agumon giving Marcus a reason to wake up early on a non-school day, that makes sense, but Agumon giving him a reason to be more polite? I dunno.

As you can see, there is no dub equivalent of “Agu-chan”. This is understandable and not the dubbers’ fault since English lends itself a lot less to casual terms of endearment like that, but it is a shame.

Marcus: “You served him first?! What did you do, adopt him while I wasn’t looking?”

Marcus says this like it’s not exactly what she’s literally done, and also like it’s not what he’d want. Don’t you want Agumon to be your new little brother, Marcus?

Sarah: “Keep it up, tough guy, and I’ll give your portion to him, too.”

Her affectionate ribbing calling him “tough guy” is cute.

Sarah: “After all, Agumon is a growing boy.”

A neat little nod to the time Agumon said that about himself in episode 1 (even if it didn’t make sense for him to have known that human phrase, but).

Agumon: “I won’t hand over the last of Sayuri’s fried eggs, not even to you!”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Boss, the only way to get this last fried egg is to take it out of my belly.”

Alas, since dub-Agumon is only referring to this particular last fried egg, we lose the future relevance the original line will have. The dub is not watching ahead to be able to pick up on these things.

Chika: “What a child…”

~~~~~

Kristy: “What a doof.”

Similar snark – he definitely is a doof – but there’s something I like about Chika calling her older brother a “child” that isn’t quite there when all she’s calling him is a doof.

Most of Thomas’s shower scene is cut. I will grant the dub that one improvement it consistently makes is doing its best to remove all the unnecessary fanservice bits.

[as Agumon tumbles from the bike basket]

Kristy: “…Doof Two.”

Agumon: [sighing] “I guess…”

What do you mean, Agumon admits and agrees that he is a doof (and implicitly agrees that his boss is one as well). Original-Agumon would not have nearly enough self-awareness to acknowledge that.

Marcus: “Why can’t you travel in the Digivice like all the other Digimon?”

Agumon: “Those other Digimon just show up when they’re called, but you’re lucky. You have me all the time, Boss!”

Unlike in the original, Marcus does actually bring up how Agumon ought to be in the Digivice. But Agumon doesn’t protest with “but I don’t like it in there”, despite him having made even more of a point of not liking cramped spaces in the previous dub episode than he did in the original. If the dub was going to have them discuss this onscreen, it would have been better to take the claustrophobia angle and show Marcus respecting Agumon’s wishes than to make it seem like Agumon’s just being contrary for the heck of it.

Marcus: “This one? No? Oh, just press everything!”

I enjoy the dub being even more obvious about how Marcus figures out which button on his earpiece is the right one to press.

Street punk #2: “Nothing’s going on at all…”

PetitMeramon: “Nothing at all!”

~~~~~

Street punk #2: “Nothing ever goes on around here any more…”

DemiMeramon: “I agree!”

This is significantly different – here, the DemiMeramon isn’t just parroting the dude’s words, it’s definitely expressing its own opinion about things. The implication here is therefore that it starts setting things on fire because of its own boredom, and these dudes here who happen to also be bored have nothing to do with it. That is categorically not how this is supposed to work.

Masaru: “Let’s fight!”

PetitMeramon: “Fight…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “There it is! Fightin’ time again!”

DemiMeramon: “Oh yeah?!”

Again, it’s not parroting his words; it’s responding on its own terms like it’s lucid and thinking for itself. Not how this should work.

Masaru: “You’re not solid enough, damn it! If I could just hit you once, I could get Agumon to evolve!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “It’s not solid enough to land a blow! But I’ve gotta punch it to start the DNA Charge! Otherwise, Agumon can’t Digivolve!”

The original version of this line sounds reasonably naturally like Masaru is just expressing his frustration at the PetitMeramon. But in the dub, it reads a lot more like awkwardly stilted exposition just to make sure the audience understands why this is a problem.

Marcus: “Stop setting things on fire! I just got these shoes!”

This is one of those dub additions for comedy, but I’m not sure I like the resulting impression that Marcus is somebody who cares that much about what he wears, because Masaru definitely never seems to be that kind of person.

Agumon: “Now be a nice fireball and let us punch you!”

Pfft. This episode in a nutshell. More of that dub-Agumon trait of saying things that would be snarky if it didn’t sound like he obliviously means them completely seriously.

Gaomon: “Yes, Master!”

~~~~~

Gaomon: “Sir, yes sir!”

“Yes, Master!” (spoken in English) is Gaomon’s catchphrase in the Japanese, and… I have no idea why the dub couldn’t just keep it exactly as-is. “Master” is a perfectly reasonable thing for him to call Tohma (especially since he’s a dog!), and it even comes already translated.

Instead, he calls Thomas “sir”, which on its own is… fine, I guess. But in particular, the “sir, yes sir!” catchphrase just makes dub-Gaomon come across as some kind of army grunt, rather than as the very good and loyal dog that he is.

Masaru: “Damn it… That thing pissed me off…”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Urghh… I am exhausted. Whew!”

Masaru here is complaining that he didn’t win, but Marcus is basically just neutrally expressing being exhausted without any sense that he’s specifically frustrated at the DemiMeramon for getting away from him. Since the entire ensuing several scenes are supposed to be a lot about Masaru’s frustration that he’s not good enough, the dub is not starting this off on the right note.

Yoshino: “Well, I didn’t think it would go easily for you from the start.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Don’t worry, Marcus, you didn’t let us down! No-one here at DATS actually thought you could do it anyway!”

Yikes, that’s some way more backhanded reassurance than she gave originally. And also, why does she even feels she needs to “reassure” him? Marcus was not expressing any sort of notion that he felt like he’d failed in the first place.

Agumon: “Hi there, pal.”

[Gaomon ignores Agumon and walks past him]

Agumon: “Hmph! No birthday present for that guy!”

How does Agumon even know about birthdays, and birthday presents, and the concept of giving birthday presents to people you’re on friendly terms with? These are not things he should reasonably have learned about yet when he’s only been with humans for like a week.

Masaru: “You bastard! You took away my prey!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hey, you! When we talk, you listen!”

It makes perfectly reasonable Masaru-ish sense for him to be mad about Tohma winning what was supposed to be his fight. But Marcus? Isn’t even thinking about the fight, apparently, and is instead just being a jerk.

So far, all Thomas and Gaomon have ignored is Agumon’s greeting and a brief “who are you, blondie?” from Marcus (the “blondie” part is dub-only, unsurprisingly), which is a little rude but not really warranting this response already. Heck, “when we talk, you listen” implies Thomas has been ignoring something substantial that Marcus has been trying to say to him, rather than just a question and a greeting.

There’s a record scratch in the BGM as Thomas ignores Marcus’s attempt to challenge him to a fight and just walks past him. I liked the comedic record scratch they had in episode 1, but this one feels a little cheesy and unnecessary.

Megumi: “His stern-looking profile is so wonderful!”

Miki: “It really is!”

~~~~~

Megumi: “He’s so on top of things!”

Miki: “He so is!”

I appreciate the dub changing the topic of Megumi and Miki’s fawning into admiring Thomas’s work ethic, rather than the original admiring of his appearance. (He is fourteen, you are adults, please stop.)

Tohma: “…it seems rather peculiar that there are a large number of Digimon detected in this country lately.”

…

Satsuma: “Is the frequency not as high in EU?”

Tohma: “No. It must be because it has a larger area.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “It seems there have been an unusually large number of Digimon appearances lately.”

…

Sampson: “Hmm. So do you think these numbers could eventually overwhelm the Data Squad?”

Thomas: “No. But of course, that all depends on having the right team in place.”

Seems the dub is ditching the fact that it’s specifically this country that’s been getting so many more Digimon appearances. Instead, Thomas just takes the opportunity to be a passive-aggressive jerk about Marcus sooner than in the original.

Satsuma: “Oh, let me introduce you. This is…”

[Tohma barely even glances at Masaru; Masaru gets angry]

Masaru: “Hey! I don’t care if you’re called Tohma or Tonma… but around here, I’m your senpai! I’ve only been here for three days, but make sure to call me ‘Daimon-san’ or ‘Daimon-senpai’!”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Oh. Go ahead and introduce yourself, Marcus.”

[Thomas barely even glances at Marcus. Marcus gets angry]

Marcus: “Say what?! Why doesn’t *he* introduce himself to *me*?! I’m the one with seniority, even if it’s only three days.”

This reads a lot less like Marcus getting angry has anything to do with the way Thomas just barely even looked at him, and more that he’s mad at Sampson for thinking he ought to introduce himself first. In that vein, it’s somewhat more reasonable for him to go ranting about seniority, I suppose. However, I liked the way that Masaru suddenly ranting about that with no real provocation was unreasonable and was very transparently him trying to assert some kind of superiority, not really about the appropriate-honorific-respect that he tried to insist was the point.

Marcus: “Who does he think he is, anyway? Look, kid! Agumon and I are the top fighters around here, and don’t you forget it!”

Meanwhile in the dub, the lines specifically asking for honorifics have no English equivalent, so we get this to fill the gap. I guess it has a reasonably similar effect and is a similarly uncalled-for assertion of superiority.

(I do like the “kid”, trying to make Thomas seem beneath him despite their equal age.)

Satsuma: “Already blazing down the warpath, eh?”

~~~~~

Sampson: “You are completely out of line.”

Satsuma was being reasonably tolerant of Masaru’s argumentative nature, accepting that this is just how Masaru is and he’ll hopefully be able to rein it in if he just understands the situation better. But Sampson is simply having none of it.

Sampson: “Marcus, Thomas is *your* superior. Deal.”

I guess it’s a lip-flap issue, but Sampson just telling Marcus to “deal” sounds weirdly colloquial for him. Also, “superior” is not quite the same thing as having seniority in terms of just having more experience. This implies that Thomas is going to have the right to give Marcus orders and Marcus will be obligated to follow them, which is not quite it.

Marcus: “You mean I have to take orders from him?”

…Okay, apparently that literally is what the dub wants us to think, even though this is not how things are actually going to work here.

(This is in place of the line establishing that Masaru and Tohma are the same age, but that will be a fact that gets mentioned in a later dub episode.)

Satsuma: “Be sure to get along with each other, as you are colleagues.”

~~~~~

Sampson: “Unlike some teams, *they* have got discipline.”

Satsuma was trying to mediate between the two, but instead Sampson is very clearly taking Thomas’s side, which he really ought to know is only going to rile Marcus up more.

(If Marcus and Agumon’s lack of discipline is really such a big dealbreaker for you, Sampson, why did you even want to recruit him in the first place?)

Tohma: “I think it will be futile to do so, Captain Satsuma. There is not a chance that this person could benefit DATS.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Commander, please allow me to say a few words about the new recruit. Based on my first impression, I feel he could never benefit DATS in any way.”

Thomas is being a lot less out of line here, asking politely to speak his opinion and qualifying it as being only based on a first impression. This is also not him pointedly refusing to even try and get along like Tohma was, since Sampson didn’t ask him to. The blame in the dub version of this argument is a lot more heaped onto Marcus’s side rather than equally with both of them, and Sampson obviously siding with Thomas doesn’t help matters.

Masaru: “Say that to my face! Look into a person’s eyes when they’re talking!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Say that to my face! Look me in the eye! If you have the guts!”

There’s slightly less emphasis on Marcus caring about people looking him in the eye when they’re talking to him, since he turns it into a general jab about Thomas not having any guts, but I do appreciate that it’s pretty much still here and unchanged.

Marcus: “What fighting skills does Your Highness possess, you royal jerk?!”

Ehh, I don’t really like Marcus bringing in jabs about the nobility thing at this point. Thomas has just insulted his fighting strength, and in that particular fighting context, Masaru would not care about anything except his opponent’s strength and would not make uncalled-for jabs at something unrelated.

Yoshino: “This is the worst… Go ahead, do whatever you want.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Oh well… Good luck. Protect yourself.”

This is after Marcus refuses to put on his headgear in the boxing ring. Yoshino sounds like she’s just exasperatedly washing her hands of his self-destructive recklessness, because hey, at least she tried. But Yoshi still seems to be genuinely trying to help him, even as the “protect yourself” falls kinda flat because he literally just refused to do so. (It doesn’t sound especially sarcastic – the “good luck” at least sounds very genuine.)

Tohma: “Why did you join DATS?”

Masaru: “Huh?! It was so I could win, obviously!”

Tohma: “Against who?”

Masaru: “Against strong guys!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “What made you join DATS in the first place?”

Marcus: “Huh? It was so I could meet guys like *you*!”

Thomas: “Seriously?”

Yoshi: “He means, he wanted to fight. Strong guys, like you.”

Marcus: “Not him…”

I think what the dub is trying to get at with “guys like you” is similar to a change they made last episode, in which Marcus apparently specifically wants to beat up bad guys, and Thomas is totally one of those, right. I guess props to the dub for at least trying to keep that vaguely consistent? Even though it’s a change that I very much do not like.

I presume the “not him” after Yoshi just said “strong guys like [Thomas]” is Marcus wanting to insist that Thomas isn’t strong, because it otherwise wouldn’t make any sense for him to deny the thing that he literally just said himself.

But, hey, notice something else here? Yoshino doesn’t have a line here in the original. They edited the footage to take away Marcus explaining his own goals and put those words into Yoshi’s mouth instead. Why? Why would you do that. I’d say that maybe they only did so to remove some of the punching from the fight because oh no violence (there will be some Issues the dub has with removing punching from this anime which is very heavily about punching), except they still keep the bit where Thomas punches Marcus in the stomach, so that can’t be it. They actually keep all the punches in this fight uncut, which is Rare for the dub.

Tohma: (He’s beyond help.)

~~~~~

Thomas: (I’m getting tired of this.)

Thomas’s thought is a lot less unreasonable than Tohma’s. Thomas is still coming across as significantly more in the right than Marcus in the dub, rather than them being equally as bad as each other.

Masaru: “A fight doesn’t end until one side admits defeat!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Sorry ‘bout that. Why don’t you run along and catch up with Sampson. Maybe you can read a report together.”

Ughhh, I really, really don’t like this. The dub has apparently decided that, since Marcus is A Jock™, he must be disdainful of Nerds™ like Thomas and make jabs about that. Masaru doesn’t frigging care! He does not give a damn in the slightest how book-smart and workaholic Tohma is; the only thing that would ever matter to Masaru is how he fares in a fight.

And we get this instead of that fun line showing Masaru’s philosophy about street fights, giving more insight into why he insisted on getting up and continuing the fight even after the “match” had ended.

I also don’t like Marcus’s “apology”. He is very obviously not sorry for deliberately punching Thomas, and trying to act like he is when he obviously isn’t is such an insincere dick thing to do that would never even cross Masaru’s mind.

Yoshino: “Tohma’s beaten Olympic champions in the past.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “I’ve seen Thomas routinely beat Olympic champions in that very ring!”

…What, in that ring in the gym that’s presumably at DATS? Even if this is the dub assuming it’s not at DATS and is just some gym somewhere nearby in town, you’d have thought that if Tohma had fought champions, he’d have gone to them to do so, rather than inviting them to him. To them, he’s just some random rich kid; why would they go that far out of their way for him?

The “routinely” also serves to make Thomas’s talent sound even more ridiculously over-the-top than it already was.

Yoshino: “Really, the only things worthy of a gold medal around here are your pride and your competitive attitude.”

~~~~~

Yoshi: “Marcus, I’m not impressed by your bragging, and Thomas isn’t even in the room!”

I miss the snark. A lot of characters the dub makes snarkier, but Yoshi kinda becomes a bit less so, it seems.

Kudamon: “If even a small flame from PetitMeramon’s body remains, it has the ability to develop and multiply in a short time. It should have been prevented from doing so earlier.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “A DemiMeramon can regenerate itself over and over again, multiplying a hundred times in as little as half an hour. Apparently, the area wasn’t sealed off earlier.”

The dub manages to completely leave out the part where this is Masaru’s fault because embers from the PetitMeramon were scattered everywhere from his failed attempts to punch it and then he ran off and left things on fire for new PetitMeramon to regenerate themselves from.

Instead, apparently DemiMeramon can just multiply… whenever? It doesn’t do so from the flames it leaves behind, it just copies itself? Except, if Thomas secured the single DemiMeramon that there was to begin with, it literally should not have been able to do so. Sealing off the area would have been irrelevant once it had been safely turned into an egg. The only way it could have multiplied itself like this is if it did so before Thomas neutralised it – but it clearly didn’t do that in front of Marcus, so this is hardly his fault.

Marcus has the same flashback to punching the DemiMeramon and the same thought that this is his fault, but this makes absolutely no sense with the information the dub has given us. Great job there, dubbers.

Sampson: “And now, the DemiMeramon has been left on its own to multiply at will!”

Um, dub? Do you not remember the part where Thomas brought in the DemiMeramon’s egg? It was not left anywhere. That is not how this happened and not why this is (supposed to be) Marcus’s fault.

Masaru: “Wait! Those fireballs are ours to beat!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Hey! Hold on a second, that’s our case!”

They really are watering down any sense that Marcus sees this as being about finishing his fight. Instead he’s apparently invested because this is a case, like he ever really cared about the official DATS investigation side of things.

Masaru: “Damn right! We’ll pull it off somehow using our spirits!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “You bet! And we’ll do it with style, too!”

I miss the “somehow”, making it clear that Masaru has absolutely no idea how he’s going to do this and is willing to basically admit that, yet still wants to throw himself into it anyway.

Marcus: “You two can’t handle that many alone! We’ll help!”

The “we’ll help” is a dub addition, but I am surprised by the notion that Marcus sounds willing to just help Thomas, essentially working together with him. That definitely shouldn’t be something he’d want to do right now. (Suddenly the dub is making Marcus come across as more reasonable and less of a jerk than it’s been doing the entire time, because what is consistency.)

Megumi: “His lightning-fast techniques look great!”

~~~~~

Megumi: “His reflexes are lightning fast! And he’s cute!”

Okay, never mind what I said earlier, I guess the dub is still keeping the idea that the computer ladies think Thomas is cute, adding in a reference to that where there wasn’t even one originally.

Agumon: “Wow…”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Cute?”

And because of that, we also lose Agumon being in awe of Tohma and Gaomon’s performance and accidentally making Masaru feel worse, in place of him simply irrelevantly questioning Megumi’s comment.

Kudamon: “Aren’t you going to stop him?”

Satsuma: “Leave him alone.”

~~~~~

Kudamon: “You’re not going to say anything?”

Sampson: “Not yet.”

So apparently, Sampson is planning to give Marcus some kind of talking-to about this at some point probably fairly soon. We’re really losing that sense from Satsuma that he understands that Masaru will be Masaru and is being patient and giving him space to sort his issues with Tohma out on his own, which I enjoyed and am sad to lose.

Agumon: “Aniki… Why are you angry?”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Don’t be upset, Boss! Just because Thomas is better than you!”

Originally Agumon didn’t really understand what was going on in Masaru’s head. Meanwhile, dub-Agumon seems to have Marcus figured out perfectly – and yet is also tactless enough to outright say the thing he’s already realised is upsetting him.

Agumon: “Well, I think Tohma and Gaomon are nasty guys too, but…”

~~~~~

Agumon: “Boss, I’m sorry I said that about Thomas. You’re better than him.”

At least dub-Agumon realises this and apologises after Marcus is clearly not thrilled by it, but his “you’re better than him” reads as pretty empty reassurance when he just said the exact opposite.

(Meanwhile, original-Agumon still didn’t realise this had anything to do with who’s better than who and just thought it had to be about Tohma being kind of a dick, while still being confused at how that would make Aniki this upset…?)

Masaru: “No… It’s myself that I’m mad at, not them.”

~~~~~

Marcus: ��No, I’m not. I’m just pig-headed and I let my pride get in my way.”

Marcus, like Masaru, is capable of realising that the problem is himself here… but he goes way further than Masaru does as to why that supposedly is.

And the thing is, this isn’t actually supposed to be the problem in the original! Originally, Masaru’s issue was that Tohma is “better” than him simply in the sense that he’s a stronger and more capable fighter, making Masaru face the fact that he might not be as strong a fighter as he thought he was. But here in the dub, apparently the problem is that Thomas is “better” than Marcus because of Marcus’s personality, because Thomas is supposedly just a better person than some pig-headed arrogant jerk like Marcus.

Which is not the point! Masaru can be reckless and prideful sometimes, but it’s never in a way that makes him a bad fighter or a bad person. He’s been a bit of argumentative jerk in this episode in particular with regards to Tohma, but Tohma himself has been equally bad in that regard in his own very different way. The original was great in having both Masaru and Tohma be equally the problem in this clash between them, in very parallel ways.

Yet apparently the dub wants us to think that, no, Thomas is a perfectly reasonable guy and the problem really is that Marcus is such an arrogant jerk compared to him. Which I guess is somewhat consistent with some of the small changes they’ve been making to the rest of the episode to make Marcus slightly more of a jerk and Thomas slightly less of one, and having Sampson clearly come down on Thomas’s side, to make it look like Marcus’s attitude alone is the problem.

But, urgh! I hate that the dub is doing this to Masaru’s character, presenting Marcus as more of a jerk and as if this is his biggest character flaw, when that has nothing to do with what’s going on with Masaru and just makes Marcus significantly less likeable! Why would you ever think this was a good thing to do with the story’s main protagonist, seriously.

Masaru: “Damn it! What am I doing? Really… what the hell am I doing?”

~~~~~

Marcus: “It’s time I realised it. I still have a lot to learn. Face it. I’m not the ultimate fighter.”

And now, while originally Masaru was unable to properly articulate what it actually was that was frustrating him about himself, Marcus has just fully completed this 100% self-aware reflection. From this, what you’d assume it’d lead into would be, presumably, Marcus trying to be less “pig-headed and prideful” and more like Thomas, since apparently Thomas’s way of doing things obviously makes him better than Marcus as both a fighter and a person?

Yeah, raincheck on that supposed character development. I’m sure you can already tell that’s not what’s going to happen here, since it isn’t in the original, because it doesn’t freaking need to be.

Also, remember how I made a point of how the original changed Masaru’s “already the number one street fighter” into Marcus’s “trying to be the ultimate fighter” in episode 1? That’s becoming extremely relevant right here.

This whole episode is a bit of a wake-up call for Masaru in terms of realising for the first time that maybe he’s not actually the greatest fighter like he thought and there’s still more growing he can do. But Marcus? He’s supposed to have already known that. “Face it, I’m not the ultimate fighter”? You literally never said you were in the first place. You were supposed to already know you had a lot to learn, so why is it only just now “time I realised it”?

There wouldn’t necessarily be anything inherently wrong with the dubbers changing Marcus’s ultimate fighter thing into this if they’d made sure to follow through on it and also change every character moment he gets to be consistent with the new version. Buuut they’re not doing that. I don’t think they realised how meaningful of a change it even was to make in the first place.

Old man: “It’s hard lighting up a fire… The sparks go out easily whenever the wind gets a little too strong.”

Masaru: “Well, obviously!”

~~~~~

Old man: “I’m having trouble starting a fire, though. Y’see, the flames keep dying out on me because the wind’s too strong and it keeps blowing it out.”

Marcus: “Yeah, that’s happened to me, too.”

Unlike Masaru, who was just expressing exasperation at this old guy telling him something obvious like he didn’t already know that the wind blows out flames, Marcus appears to be… getting the metaphor? His own experience that he’s referring to could just be his literal problem of not being able to punch fire, but based on what he’s just been reflecting on a moment ago and also judging from his tone of voice, that doesn’t seem to be it.

Which makes me sad! Masaru is a ridiculously straightforward doofus who wouldn’t know a metaphor if it punched him in the face, and I am disappointed to see the dub water down that delightful part of his character and make Marcus into some kind of regular person who can actually recognise that kind of thing.

Old man: “But… once I get a larger flame going, it burns strongly no matter how much the wind blows. Fire is an interesting thing, isn’t it?”

Masaru: “…This is…”

~~~~~

Old man: “Well… If you learn to use the wind instead of fighting it, you can make the fire burn brighter than ever before. Harness power, don’t extinguish it.”

Marcus: “…He’s right!”

But then, the dub’s version of the metaphor becomes something quite different. Instead of saying that Masaru’s “flame” will soon get so strong that no wind can blow it out, he’s saying that Marcus should harness the “wind” to make his “flame” stronger.

Originally, the metaphor was basically meant to be a reassurance to Masaru that he’s already doing fine – that he just needs to keep going as he has been and continue to grow and soon enough nothing will be able to stop him. But here in the dub, the metaphor appears to be prompting him to take new action of some sort, warning him that his flame will keep getting blown out if he doesn’t do whatever “harnessing the wind” is supposed to mean.

It’s ambiguous exactly what the “wind” could represent here. If it’s something that was getting in Marcus’s way until now, is it meant to be his “pig-headed pride” that he was just thinking was his big problem? Is the point of this supposed to be the old man telling Marcus through metaphor that actually he should keep being exactly the way he is and should just do that harder?

On the one hand I’d be okay with that because hey, guess what, newsflash, there is actually nothing wrong with Masaru being the way he is, and the dub is wrong to try and act like his personality is the issue and to distort his personality into being more of a jerk to make it an issue. But then that just serves to completely undermine the supposed realisation that Marcus had back in the tunnel and set him back on the track of not trying to change at all. (Which, yeah, again, spoilers, he’s not going to; of course he’s not going to be actively trying to make himself more like Thomas, because that’s not something that Masaru would ever do. Masaru has very strong convictions in who he is and wouldn’t change that for anyone.)

And somehow, despite this metaphor being a lot more metaphorical and ambiguous than it was in the original, and despite this being Marcus, he appears to completely understand what the old man is trying to say to him and take those words to heart. Whatever those words actually are. Somehow.

…I suppose it’s possible that actually the “wind” in the metaphor is supposed to represent Thomas, and that this metaphor is trying to encourage Marcus and Thomas to work together to make each other stronger. This would sort of make sense, since GeoGreymon uses fire-based attacks while Gaogamon uses wind-based attacks, and we’ll actually be seeing some metaphorical stuff being done with those attacks of theirs in the next couple of episodes. Still, if that’s the case, it’s nonetheless definitely not what Marcus gets from this metaphor right here.

But you know what else this dub version of the metaphor very much isn’t? It is not remotely useful literal advice about how to punch fire. At no point does it explain the part where a stronger flame won’t be blown out by anything (and will therefore be punchable). So whatever Marcus is getting from the old man’s words here, it isn’t that. This is kind of important for what’s about to happen next.

As Marcus hears about the trouble at the gas tanks and rushes off, the old man has an added line that’s just silence in the original:

Old man: “See what good fire does?”

…which makes even more of a point that this is definitely only meant to be some kind of metaphor. Though, wasn’t he trying to say that the wind would do Marcus good? Marcus already is the fire in this metaphor, so stressing that fire is good seems besides the point. I’m getting increasingly convinced that the dubbers just didn’t have an actual meaning in mind for their version of the metaphor at all and were half-assing this entire conversation. (Yet they somehow still felt they knew better than the original writers enough to change it at all.)

Thomas: “There’s no chance he can secure the DemiMeramon. There’s too many!”

[cut to precisely *three* DemiMeramon flying around]

Yep, sure, three of them is totally too many. Originally the “too many” comment wasn’t there, and Tohma thought Masaru couldn’t do this simply because he hadn’t shown he could handle any PetitMeramon at all. Numbers are not supposed to be the issue here, or at least not the primary one like Thomas is making it sound like it is.

Masaru: “Fire sparks easily go out whenever the wind blows on them. But… Once they burst into flame…!”

[Masaru leaps to punch the Meramon quite solidly in the face and lands with his Digisoul flaring]

Masaru: “They won’t be extinguished so easily!”

~~~~~

Marcus: “Just like the old man said, a fire can be blown out by the wind. Then again… you know what I always say…!”

[Marcus leaps to punch the Meramon quite solidly in the face and lands with his DNA flaring]

Marcus: “You gotta fight fire with fire!”

So… yeah. In the dub, the old man’s words were not actually advice on how to solve this problem, and Marcus’s decision to deliberately make the DemiMeramon stronger had nothing to do with what the old man told him. He had no reason to believe this would work. He really was just being dangerously rash and hot-headed with no sense of actual plan or strategy, and it really did only work out of sheer luck.

(I mean, okay, maybe he could have just figured on his own that making the fire stronger would make it punchable. But Masaru is definitely not supposed to be the kind of person who could figure that out without being nudged in the right direction by someone else. And if Marcus really is perfectly capable of figuring that out on his own, why did he not do so the first time?)

Thomas: “Marcus made Meramon Digivolve on purpose so he could activate his DNA…”

It is very debatable that this was on purpose here, Thomas.

Megumi: “Not bad!”

~~~~~

Megumi: “Marcus proved he could do it!”

Thanks, dub, we needed it made obvious that this fight was about Marcus proving himself, because we couldn’t figure that out on our own.

Thomas: “Don’t get cocky. You just got lucky this time, that’s all.”

This line is basically unchanged, but guess what? Thomas is right to say this, where Tohma wasn’t.

Tohma: “Don’t be absurd. You don’t come up with any strategy or tactics. Do you think using force all the time will let you win at everything?”

Masaru: “Hah, sounds like a sore loser to me.”

~~~~~

Thomas: “Just as I thought, you had no plan and no tactics, just raw power.”

Marcus: “Hah. For a genius, you’re a real sore loser.”

Still basically the same, but again, Thomas is right this time, not being a sore loser. In fact, the added “just as I thought” (and this line comes after the cut back to HQ, so there was conversation prior to it that we didn’t hear) suggests that Thomas has just heard from Marcus himself that, yes, he really did just recklessly charge in with no plan.

I mean, sure, in a sense Thomas is still being a sore loser because Marcus’s raw power still worked. But the point of the sore loser line in the original was that Tohma insisting that Masaru used no tactics in and of itself was him sorely refusing to admit that maybe Masaru actually did have some idea what he was doing after all.

Tohma: “What did you say?”

Masaru: “Wanna make somethin’ of it? I’ll knock you out with one hit to the face this time!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “What did you say?”

Marcus: “Oh, just this: I’ll take my raw power over your tactics any day!”

Granted, outright saying he’d prefer raw power over tactics is definitely something Masaru might also say (of course he would; look at how he never tried to point out that he actually did have a strategy because he doesn’t care about that). But this is a bit of a different way for the dub to show Marcus having his confidence back, since his “conflict” this episode was apparently about “oh no what if raw power is bad and I should be more like Thomas”.

(…Did the dub actually deliberately remove the part where the metaphor was literal advice about punching fire so that Marcus could win through nothing but raw power in order to facilitate this complete backpedal in what briefly appeared to be some ill-advised character development? Ugh, but even if that was on purpose, it’s so much more interesting to show that Masaru actually can do strategy sometimes, and it’s just that his strategies are a lot more risky and head-on than Tohma’s!)

Tohma: “You want me… to act alongside him?”

Masaru: “You’re joking! I’ll never accept him as my partner!”

~~~~~

Thomas: “But sir, he’s completely undisciplined!”

Marcus: “This clown?! I’ll never be his partner – he’s way too annoying!”

Thomas and Marcus get given specific reasons to object to working together in the dub – and while Thomas’s complaint of “undisciplined” is perfectly reasonable, Marcus’s complaint of “annoying” seems rather beside the point. Too pompous, too uptight, (too makes-him-feel-like-maybe-strategy-and-not-just-raw-power-might-be-useful); something like that would be more relevant to Marcus. Is this supposed to be another Marcus Just Hates Nerds™ thing? Because ugh.

Overall differences

Oh boy. There’s a lot going on in terms of changes in this episode, and basically all of it is bad.

Rather than Masaru and Tohma both being presented as equally out-of-line for their own reasons in their initial arguments, the narrative firmly comes down on Thomas’s side by making Thomas less unreasonably harsh in his comments and by having Sampson clearly taking Thomas’s side.

The bit where they explain how DemiMeramon multiplied makes no sense and certainly doesn’t logically leave it as being Marcus’s fault at all, yet he still claims it is for no reason and we’re just expected to believe that.

Then there’s Marcus’s whole, ahem, “character arc” for the episode, if it can even be called that. Rather than some delightful subtle exploration of how Masaru deals with the realisation that he’s not necessarily the strongest fighter out there like he professes to be, it becomes this heavy-handed thing about how Marcus’s whole problem is that he’s Such A Big Arrogant Jerk. Marcus is way more self-aware about his supposed exact problem than someone like him really ought to be (including admitting he’s not the ultimate fighter when he never said he was), and for a moment it seems like his character development is going to be about him learning to be less of a jerk and more like Thomas. Except it won’t, because this won’t happen in the original, because this is not remotely Masaru’s problem in the original.

Then there’s the old man’s metaphor. Originally he was effectively saying that Masaru is doing fine the way he is and just needs to keep growing and getting stronger like this. Here, the metaphor is changed to imply that Marcus needs to take some kind of new action, except what new action is extremely unclear and is not actually going to happen, because, again, not how it went originally. Marcus apparently somehow gets this metaphor, which is ridiculous because I’m not even sure what it was on about, never mind that Marcus should be the last person who’s any good with metaphors, just like Masaru is.

And then there’s the part where the old man’s changed metaphor had nothing to do with teaching Marcus how he could literally punch fire and defeat the DemiMeramon. So his victory in the climactic fight really was complete boneheaded reckless luck without a semblance of strategy, and Thomas was right to call it that.

This entire dub version of the episode firmly wants you to come down on Thomas’s side and agree that Marcus is a huge dumb arrogant jerk whose personality is the entire problem here, and, urgh. I hate it. I hate it so much. I hate that the dub writers consciously chose to do this to Masaru’s character. Masaru does not deserve this.

(You’re probably starting to see why I’m actually quite glad that Masaru has a different name in the dub. Marcus may be a somewhat different character that the dub is insistently making worse, but at least Masaru will always be untainted and separate from the dub’s nonsense.)

#digimon #digimon savers #digimon data squad

8 notes · View notes

opalsiren · 3 years

Text

not to winx club dub discourse in 2021 but i decided to watch the ep where we meet musa's dad in the rai dub instead for a change and... whew do i have some thoughts

first off, i understand that the rai dub is closest to the original italian version and is considered more ‘authentic’ and therefore better. doesn’t change the fact that, at least based on this one episode alone, the 4kids dub is superior. please don’t take this too seriously lol

so i'd never watched the rai dub before but in this version musa's dad writes a song for musa's mom which she... doesn't like, they go broke trying to get famous and can't pay their medical bills, resulting in the death of musa’s mom. whereas in the 4kids dub her mom instantly falls in love with her dad's song, she gives up her classical training and he gives up his royal status to be with her, they're pretty successful and take time off to have musa, then musa's mom passes

like... there's a message in the 4kids dub, that you can go against tradition to do what you love and be with the person you love. which directly parallels musa's relationship with riven since he's somewhat of a social outcast but she loves him and wants to be with him anyway. what is the message of the rai dub? don't follow your dreams or you'll die broke? make it make sense!

i think that the message that musa needs to keep making music, even if it is painful for her dad who is having a hard time getting over his partner’s death, is just more coherent. it centers the conflict around musa’s family and the importance of keeping her mother’s memory alive, rather than ‘you will go broke and die if you pursue your passion also i don’t like riven for arbitrary reasons’

as for musa’s dad not vibing with riven... what was the point of that? we are told that they have met offscreen, so musa’s father’s reasons for disliking him seem silly and contrived. how are we supposed to be invested when we don’t see this meeting firsthand? further to that, there is a very subtle implication in the 4kids dub that riven and musa’s relationship parallels her parents’ enduring love, in that they rebelled against society together. this implication is compounded by the fact that the concert at red fountain takes place a few episodes after the whole jared fiasco where all of musa’s friends are essentially telling her to dump riven and date jared instead

also, musa’s parents both had to change for one another and make sacrifices to be together. later on in the series, musa earns her charmix by finally telling riven outright that she likes him, showing enormous growth from the early season one musa who always tried to ‘play it cool.’ later, riven makes the ultimate sacrifice for musa by taking a death blow from darkar intended for her. the parallels are subtle, sure, but it almost seems like the rai dub is trying to tell us that all the change and growth musa’s parents went through together was in vain? again, there is a lack of clarity around what the actual message of this episode is

at least based on this one episode, the rai dub suffers from a very telling structuring issue. don’t get me wrong, the 4kids dub has its problems, but the narration employed in the rai dub meant that we were told rather than shown the evens of the episode. also the dialogue is just... stilted, and weird, and off in so many places. i understand that the 4kids voice acting is critiqued as goofy and silly, but the rai dub voices are boring and lacklustre to the point where i could barely distinguish one character from the next. there is so little variation even in accent, tone, or the use of slang or verbiage. yes, british!tecna, musa’s use of early 2000s slang, and stella’s over-reliance on phrases such as ‘fabulous’ and ‘dawling’ are a little gauche, but these quirks breathe life into the voice acting and show the passion behind the project as a whole

one thing i did like about the rai dub is that the red fountain gig is supposed to be musa’s ‘musical debut’ which does add to the stakes. when you watch the 4kids’ answer to this episode it’s very easy to be like ‘she could just... not perform at this one concert, and then keep her music from her dad till graduation.’ that said, at least in the 4kids dub, she had spent the summer before season two touring with some music group and also performed at the back to school dance in season one. is there something about a musical debut i’m not understanding?

that all being said, all of this is based on one (1) episode. i know that the 4kids dub changed a ton from the original canon, including re-writing more ‘mature’ plot points, in an attempt to make the show more suitable for younger, american audiences. i can totally understand why people who are familiar with the og dub can’t stand the 4kids iteration. i think must of us tend to gravitate towards the dub we grew up with. i also am going to try sit down and watch the rai dub up to season three, whenever i finish my season three 4kids rewatch

again, if you can’t stand the 4kids dub, please don’t take these presumptions criticisms based on my viewing of one episode too seriously. honestly? i am starting to consider 4kids as an entirely separate iteration of winx canon entirely. for me the winx canon ends at season three, since that’s when the 4kids license expired, and an entirely new canon had been established by the 4kids writers. none of these writers were the same writers as that of the rai dub, so why should we consider it within the same canon?

#.txt #winx club #4kids #rai #rainbow #rai dub #4kids dub #anyway this became a fucking dissertation very quickly. and also a treatise on why you should ship riven with musa lol. but i can't talk #about winx club without talking about them apparently #i know that these points have probably been made thousands of times before and i regret to dredge up the dubbing wars again but i seriously #didn't think the rai rub was going to be... like that.#again please don't take this too seriously!!#although. if you are rai dub supremacist. i would strongly recommend sitting down and watching the 4kids dub from start to finish

35 notes · View notes

newagesispage · 3 years

Text

OCTOBER 2021

THE RIB PAGE

*****

We miss U Charlie Watts!!

*****

The Stones performed at a private party for Patriots owner Robert Kraft of all people. The test run looked like just that. Shark jumped. I am becoming disillusioned.

*****

SNL is back with Owen Wilson as first host of season 47. Kacey Musgraves is the musical guest. Episode 2 will have a ridic choice for host. Halsey will sing. I suppose $ is power with the Kardashians. I could think of about 10 million other people to host but more and more Lorne goes for the shiny object , what he THINKS people want instead of taking risk. Beck Bennett is out.

*****

Is everybody watching the Amber Ruffin Show?? I loved her before but now… I learn so much from her show. Sometimes it takes a comic to get to the real serious shit. For example: Have you heard of drowning towns? Towns like Oscarville, Kowaliga, York hill, Seneca Village, Prentiss and countless other black towns that were drowned out to make lakes for the local whites. Central Park was also made after a black community was erased from history. Development displacement? Alleyway dwelling authority? Even those rabid for history can find out new things everyday. Thanks Amber!!

*****

Bob Woodward and Robert Costa are finally giving us Peril !!!!!! I’ve been waiting!!** I was in political nerd heaven on Sept. 24 when Yamiche hosted Robert, Bob and Weijia Jang on Washington Week. All of my favorite pundits all together at one table, my dream team!!

*****

Iman looked great at the Met Gala!! Other great looks belonged to AOC, Tessa Thompson, Maluma, Helen Lasichanb and Pharrell Williams. Gigi Hadid, Kiki Layne, Ashton Sanders, Hailee Steinfeld, Kehlani, Zoe Kravitz, Michaela Cole, Lili Reinhart, Kate Hudson and Shai Gilgeous- Alexander were great. Whoopi Goldberg seemed a bit off.

*****

Jason Isbell is back with his latest offering, Georgia Blue.

*****

I see a lot of Title Max type establishment are closing down. Are they a thing of the past? Let’s hope.

*****

Law and Order is coming back to NBC for season 21. Dick Wolf will own 2 entire nights of television. Some of the old cast is reported to be returning.

*****

Britney Spears Father was suspended as her conservator.

*****

Timothy Chalamet, Rowan Atkinson, Sally Hawkins and Olivia Coleman will star in Wonka.

*****

The 2022 Super Bowl halftime show will bring us Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre and Kendrick Lamar.

*****

People are doing test runs for school board positions to see if their political ideas will play well for the big leagues. If they don’t seem to work, at least they can sometimes change the rules in their own area.

*****

Joe Rogan got Covid.

*****

Lake Michigan beaches were closed down thanks to a US Steel plant chemical leak.

*****

Is this country the master of endless administrative work? None of us should have been surprised at the red tape that the slowed down the end of the war in Afghanistan.** Uber donated 50k for rides and meals to the Afghans when they arrive.**And why do so many waste taxpayer $ on useless recounts and recalls when people need real help with food and healthcare? They must really hate humanity.

*****

R. Kelly was found guilty of 8 counts of sex trafficking and 1 count of racketeering.

*****

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

*****

Texas has put a law into effect to allow most Texans to carry open without permit or training.

*****

Texas has banned abortion at about 6 weeks. Uber and Lyft will pay drivers legal fees if sued under Texas abortion law. Lyft donated $1mil to Planned Parenthood. ** Look for the ruling in the Mississippi law over Roe V. Wade in June 2022.**Hear us roar!** BTW.. Go Jen Psaki!!!!!!!

*****

They seriously banned plastic straws and abortion before assault rifles? – Eden Dranger

*****

Please stop banning abortions, the last thing the world needs is more Americans. –Sarah Beattie

*****

Women don’t inseminate themselves. Vasectomies are reversible. Should every man have one until he’s deemed financially and emotionally fit to be a Father? – Bradley Whitford

*****

90 year old William Shatner will go to space for Blue Origin.

*****

The Q Anon Shaman pled guilty to a felony for obstructing the Electoral College proceedings. I say 20 years and a $250K fine.** 600 others have been indicted.

*****

Days Alert: The Beyond Salem thing was ridic but it was so great to see some old characters. Days is so great at visiting old family. Who can resist Shane, Austin and Carrie, Billie and the old Kristen? I do wish that Peacock would get their kinks out!! Back to the real Days: Are we smelling an Emmy for Susan Seaforth Hayes and Bill?? ** Good to have Abigail back. It is always fun to wonder which actress and or personality it will be. ** Deidre Hall got her star on the walk of fame.**And just in time for Halloween, the Devil is making a comeback. The end of the year in Salem is always the best!! It is so brave to give the 96 year old man the old switcheroo into the Dark Lord. It was fun to see the grandkids discover Grandma Marlena’s story. Delicious!! Hail Satan!!** It is past time for Tate and Teresa to come back to town. Brady needs to be put in his place. And thanks for the Philip and Chloe flashbacks!!

*****

The breakdown of the vaccinated: 90% of Atheists, 86% Hispanic Catholic, 84% Agnostic, 79% White Catholic, 73% White mainline protestant, 70% Black mainline protestant, 57% white evangelical. 1 in 500 Americans have died of Covid.

*****

So Mike Lindell and Jim Baker have teamed up to sell children’s Bible pillows.** Piers Morgan has returned to the Murdoch organization by joining Fox. That sounds about right.

*****

Please stop saying the vaccine does not have severe side effects, I took my shots and now I’m alive and have to keep working. –Mohand Eishieky

*****

In theatres Oct. 22: The French Dispatch.** October also brings us a new season of Curb your enthusiasm and Oct. 17 will catch us up on Succession. Whew!!!

*****

So people under conservatorship are not free to marry who they want? What?

*****

46% of Americans believe in ghosts.

*****

Simone Biles, Mckayla Maroney and Aly Rasiman testified at the Senate judiciary hearing about the FBI’s handling of accusations against Larry Nassar and it was eye opening!

*****

We wanted a no -nonsense Dem who pushes on and does not puss out. I am a bit surprised to see we have it. There are so many pressing issues that I hope Biden works a bit more on Haiti though.

*****

The National Police Act was passed to celebrate cops. Still no police reform.

*****

John Mulaney and Olivia Munn are going to have a baby.

*****

The Emmy’s were a little different this year with more of a Golden Globe look. Cedric the Entertainer hosted with Reggie Watts as DJ. Lots of minority noms but barely a win. It was a white people night. Ted Lasso had a great night. Mare of Eastown took home a few with Evan Peters, Julianne Nicholson and Kate Winslet. Now, Kate is great but how did Anya Taylor- Joy not walk away with that? Queens Gambit did win a couple and gave the longest speech with the seemingly arrogant director Scott Frank who opened up 2 page acceptance. Categories were tough but I was routing for Renee Elise Goldberry and Bowen Yang but perhaps next year. The people in England who had their own party for all the statues that the Crown won seemed to be having more fun! Hacks won for writing and directing and Jean Smart!! It was nice to see the Norm Macdonald love which was barely mentioned by Lorne but celebrated by John Oliver. Colbert ‘s election night special won as did JB Smoove. Hamilton won and Debbie Allen got the big one. I do not understand why real singers and or musicians have to be there for the in Memoriam. It takes me out of it a bit and concentrates the focus on them. Do they think that people will pay attention more? Do they want to keep the home audience or live audience from the bathroom? My best dressed were Anya Taylor-Joy, Michaela Cole who won for I may destroy you, Jean Smart, Josh O’Connor, Kathryn Hahn, Billy Porter, MJ Rodriguez, Keenan Thonpson, Leslie Odom Jr., Catherine O’Hara, Trevor Noah, Eugene Levy, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, Bowen Yang, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Grossman, Amber Ruffin, Allyson Felix, Renee Elise Goldberry, Samira Wiley and Rege- Jean Page. My worst were Sarah Paulson, Gillian Anderson, Beanie Feldstein, Elizabeth Olsen and Aidy Bryant. To me the best part of the show was the enthusiasm of Conan and the way he injected himself into much of the evening .He was the show. Go Conan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****

Next year there must be some Emmys for Sarah Paulson and Cobie Smulders in Impeachment!!!!!

*****

Oh Boy!! The Eyes of Tammy Faye!!

*****

Looking forward to the Electric Life of Louis Wain with Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy.

*****

Abba has a new album!!

*****

Shang Chi is the biggest Labor Day opening with a $71.4 mil opening.

*****

Sen. Amy Klobuchar has announced she has breast cancer.

*****

Is it the 70’s? A streaker ran past the studio of the Today show.

*****

Rascal Flatts Joe Don Rooney was arrested for DUI.** Nicholas Cage was thrown out of a prime rib pace in Vegas after being drunk and disorderly.

*****

Jennifer Eckhart has filed a lawsuit against former Fox news anchor Ed Henry for rape and retaliation after allegedly being handcuffed and beaten.

*****

Scarlett Johansson has settled her Disney lawsuit.

*****

Pete Buttigieg and Chasten had twins they named Penelope Rose and Joseph August.

*****

I noticed a commercial for Dancing with the Stars. Are we onto the E list because I have heard of hardly any of these people. ‘Stars’is really stretching it. And as I post this I see there are some covid issues there as well.

*****

Virgin River was renewed for 2 more seasons.

*****

Trevor Noah is right? Why do they stop giving lollipops to adults at the doctor?

*****

Jon Stewart is back on Apple tv with ‘The problem with Jon Stewart.

*****

Brooklyn 99 had about the best finale (other than Newhart) that I can recall. I had my fingers crossed that Chelsea would be back. Will they honor us like they did in the show and come back for a special about once a year? That would be fucking awesome!!

*****

Don’t expect compliments from an insecure person.- Mr. Pickles

*****

Thousands and thousands of people are in need. Haitian refugees and other immigrants have seen nothing like this what with assassination, a hurricane and earthquake. The Southern border is a mess.** Why does Fox news keep telling refugees the border is open as they sit back and laugh at Biden’s predicament. Spreading false info to intentionally hurt poor, distressed people has no end for them.

*****

Do companies know how fucked up their employment websites are? It is true that some people do not want to work. It is true that people schedule interviews and don’t show up. It is also true that companies have made it so hard to apply that many can’t. I suppose it is easier for them but the poor who may really want to work have a hard time. Paper applications are almost completely gone. The old fashioned way of walking into low paying job sites and finding a connection with a manager rarely exist. Some places only accept texts or have long ridiculous psych tests that a working Mother may not have time for. A Father working many hours already, may not be able to go to the library to get online if they cannot afford a computer. Many websites tell you that there no positions available in your area while there is a huge sign in front of the establishment. Can’t find people to work.. Gee I wonder why?? And treat people with respect once you find them, how about that?

*****

Keep your head up in failure, and your head down in success. –Jerry Seinfeld

*****

Hey.. There was a van air B’n B biz going that got busted. Hey.. The poor need vaca’s too. It is wrong but If they are willing to sleep in a van, why not. I truly think that many do not understand how much people are struggling.

*****

Free coffee day came and went but only a few places really gave you free coffee without rules to govern the promo. Some places wanted to sell you something else and some made you belong to their club. Starbucks held that customers had to come inside for the free cup of Joe, handicapped or not.

*****

One would think the Republicans would run out of $ for recounts but they have deep pockets. Just think how much good they could do for the huddled masses with that scratch.

*****

Sad to lose Mick Brigden, protégé of Bill Graham who managed The Stones and worked with Frampton, Dylan and Santana.** And the comics were very vocal about the loss of Norm Macdonald. He was one of a kind and he will be missed!

*****

R.I.P. Ruth Marx, Lee Scratch Perry, Willard Scott, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Isadore Bleckman, George Wein, Michael K. William,George Holliday, Anthony Johnson, Basil Hoffman, Al Harrington,Willie Garson, Mick Brigden, Tommy Kirk and Norm Macdonald.

3 notes · View notes

fandomlurker · 3 years

Text

A Ponderous Rewatch: Bubba Bo Bob Brain and Cameo

Can I just say that I think I’m somehow getting worse at keeping the screenshot count down?

Neither the cameo nor the main episode in this post are animated by TMS, so that’s not the reason for the surprisingly high screenshot count. However, the regular episode is animated by Wang Film Production, who are the same folks that animated the very first PatB segment and have done most of the episodes I’ve covered so far, including the previous one. I can tell they’ve gotten a better handle at animating our main duo in the skit we’re looking at today, especially Brain. Wang Film Production is no TMS, but they’ve gotten very, very good at expressions. They’ve also seemed to settle into a rounded and soft design for Brain, something that they’re kind of known for among fans if I recall correctly. Pinky can still be a little…off at this point in time, though.

Moving on, the cameo that we’re starting with is animated by Akom Film Productions. They’re the folks who usually do the animation for the Chicken Boo and Goodfeathers episodes, and they usually do a pretty good job with those characters. As far as our mouse duo go, though, Akom has only done “Opportunity Knox” so far. You know, the one with the oddly nightmarish Brain close-ups. Thankfully we get none of that since it’s only a short bit.

So yes, onto the cameo in “Noah’s Lark”!

So this is actually a Hip Hippos episode, but luckily we don’t have to deal with them at all right now. The premise is the story of Noah’s Ark, obviously, but the character of Noah is done as a parody of the stand-up comedian Richard Lewis, who was somewhat popular in the 80s. The most modern and notable media he’s been involved in that people on Tumblr might know him from (or at least, what I think folks here might recognize, it can be a little hard to gauge that since both millennials and gen z folks are the main demographic of this site) are Robin Hood: Men in Tights where he played Prince John, and Curb Your Enthusiasm where he plays himself.

Noah is rounding up two of every animal to go onto the ark (which is a popular depiction of how the story goes, but is actually false: it’s supposed to be seven male and female pairs of “clean” animals of each species and one pair of “unclean” animals of the same species, but that’s as far as I’m going into that topic). He’s nearly finished the list and has just been mauled by the wolverine pair, and…

“Lab mice?...”

The fact that he’s specifically asking for a pair of lab mice raises a lot of questions that I don’t think we have time to unpack.

The pair of lab mice that he gets is, of course, Pinky and the Brain.

And Pinky is, for the very first time in the series, crossdressing, presumably to pass as a female mouse so he and Brain can survive the great flood by boarding the ark.

…This is also a lot to unpack.

“Check!” they both exclaim, although Pinky does it in a very deep voice for some reason.

Wow, look at the surprise and then hostile suspicion on Noah’s face there!

Their outfits are very 1950s, with Brain even carrying a suitcase. Anachronisms aside, these two really went all out for the “we are a normal, heterosexual pair” ruse, didn’t they? Not only is Pinky in a dress and a blonde wig, but Brain even put on a little bowler hat. Why did he feel the need to do that? Did he feel left out of dressing up otherwise? Was he afraid he wouldn’t look “manly” and hetero enough without it? I have so many questions…

“Whew! These pantyhose are killing me, Brain!”

Wow, for once it’s Pinky physically hurting Brain, even if it’s a relatively minor tug on the ear.

“I think I prefer knee-highs…”

…Pinky, you’re not even wearing pantyhose. What the hell are you talking about?

Assuming that this is just the result of an animation oversight (which, honestly, I’m certain it was), we now know that his disguise went so over-the-top as to include pantyhose which Noah wouldn’t normally see…and also it’s a type of pantyhose that Pinky doesn’t even like wearing, which implies to me that this is something Brain acquired for him.

There is just so much going on in cameos like these if you think about them for even a few seconds.

Also, I agree with Pinky. Knee-high pantyhose are much less uncomfortable to wear.

BONK!

So the mice are allowed to board and the audience is left to think that their little ruse worked, but immediately after the two run off and are out of listening range Noah rolls his eyes and says

“Who am I to judge?”

Heavily implying Noah completely saw through it and let them on anyway. Wow.

That’s the end of their cameo. Who’d have thought that this little scene would be the precursor to Brain having Pinky crossdress to disguise him as Brain’s wife so many times in the series? And who’d have thought that this very first time wouldn’t fool anyone at all?

But now let’s move on to the meat of this rewatch post:

We open to Acme Labs at night, as usual, though I’ve never noticed until now how lonely and eerie the place seems if you ignore our mouse duo.

“Pinky… I believe I have conceived my most brilliant plan to date!”

Oh boy, we have another first for today! Brain is very much a fan of using temporary mind control for his plans. It’s the method he falls back on the most, which is very interesting when you consider his various psychological issues involving having control taken away from him all his life.

“I shall use subliminal mind control to take over the world!”

“…Pinky?”

The hand-on-hip pose here is great.

“Today’s inside story is country mega-star Willie Ray Cypress!”

Uh, Pinky? Considering that this is pretty much the expression you had while looking at Pharfignewton, I am very, very worried about you looking at the Billy Ray Cyrus parody the same way.

“Don’t tell my head, my empty hollow head!~”

“You know I wouldn’t understand!~”

Same, Brain. Same. It’s just like Pinky to enjoy a song as earworm-y as this (not to mention how relevant this parody is to his everyday experience with Brain’s plans), but lord was the real song this is making fun of annoying as hell back in the day. Like, I was a small child at the time this song came out, and I still hated how often this would be played on the radio.

Luckily, Brain pounces on the remote’s off button and puts an end to the nonsense.

But oh, the look of sad betrayal on Pinky’s face is heartbreaking! I’m sorry, sweetie!

“It must be inordinately taxing to be such a boob.”

Heh, Brain said “boob”. /inner six year old

“You have no idea…”

“Pinky, do you know what a subliminal message is?”

“Something you leave on a subliminal telephone answering machine?”

Nice try, Pinky.

“No. It is a recorded message perceived only by the subconscious human mind.”

Two things here:

This diagram bothers me because my mind always interprets the way they’ve drawn the bottom of the cerebellum as the person shutting their eyes extremely tightly.

Brain using his own tail as a pointing stick is very, very cute and I love this detail.

“I have recorded such a message.”

He’s still holding his tail, aaaa!~

“Citizens of the world, you are under my control. You will do whatever I say…”

“Nice mix, but it’s not exactly danceable, is it?”

Oh, Pinky. Only you would sincerely compliment Brain’s incredibly dry mind control message and then immediately point out a flaw that has nothing to do with its purpose. Bless you, you stupid and wonderful little mouse.

I like how Pinky’s interjection startles the hell outta Brain for a moment, too.

“If people heard this message enough times, they would succumb to my control and we could take over the world!”

Notice that despite Pinky being a minor annoyance and despite the fact that Brain claims that everyone will be under his control, yet again it’s still both of them taking over the world.

“What do you think, Pinky?”

And he still wants Pinky’s input. It’s small and scattered and very, very subtle, but in my opinion this is Brain’s most frequent way of showing that he cares about Pinky. Brain likely isn’t even aware that he does it. Pinky might not be aware, either.

“I think I’m getting dizzy and I rather like it! Ahahahahahoo!~”

“Sometimes you hurt my head, Pinky…”

And yet, Brain. And yet…

“The only problem: How to get this message repeated worldwide airplay…?”

Offscreen, Pinky turns the TV back on and startles Brain again, but only for a moment.

Another great pose and expression here: Mildly annoyed, but interested and on the verge of an idea.

“I just adore Willie Ray!”

“I listen to his song twenty times a day!”

I…really don’t know why they chose to have this shot done with Brain walking over the “camera” towards the TV so we get a brief close-up of Brain’s mousey behind. It made me laugh, though, so I thought I’d share.

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

I’m also kind of obsessed with this brief expression of Pinky’s I unintentionally managed to capture. It’s a bit of a smug, knowing, and yet endeared look. I’m sure it’s completely unintentional on the animators’ part, but I love the idea it gives me of Pinky knowing exactly what Brain’s thinking but purposefully saying something entirely unrelated to playfully tease him.

“Well, I think so, Brain, but burlap chafes me so.”

To be fair, Pinky, I think burlap chafes everyone. And were you thinking about doing a potato sack race? That’s the only connection to burlap I can think of that would be in any way relevant...

“Country music, Pinky. I will go to Nashville and become the biggest country music star of all time! Everyone will hear my record and my subliminal message and I will take over the world!”

In all honesty, that would probably be easier to do in the early 90s when this takes place since country music wasn’t such a…well, “dead” is a bit of an exaggeration, but country music as a genre is incredibly unpopular nowadays with the occasional notable exception. In the early 90s? Not so much.

“Egad, Brain!”

This is the most enthusiastic swoon I’ve seen and heard from you yet, Pinky.

“Oh! But no, no… It takes people years of hard work to become famous, Brain.”

Well, that or they’re born into a famous family. Or they’re just rich.

“Why, take Kathie Lee Gifford for example: She did community theatre, and—“

I actually can’t find anything via Googling about Kathie Lee doing community theatre before she became famous. She seems to have studied music and drama in university, and had a folk music group in high school, but the only reference to theatre I can find is professional musical theatre in the late 90s.

It’s possible Pinky’s right, though.

BONK!

BRAIN! …Wait, where did you even get that tiny club?

“Stop talking, Pinky, I must think.”

You… Brain, I think I’m starting to see why some fans believe you may be as neurodivergent as Pinky is, but in a different way. I can’t in good faith elaborate on that myself, since I haven’t been diagnosed as such and it would be completely disrespectful of me to do so, but if anyone wants a good little theory on that, try here.

“I have calculated every ingredient necessary to become a country music mega-star. Read me the list, Pinky!”

He’s typing by hopping from one key to another, aww!

Eeeh, the lettering work on that computer is pretty bad, though.

“A cowboy hat.”

“Check!”

“A southern dialect.”

“Check, ya’ll!”

“Nice, Brain.”

The way Pinky says “nice” here reminds me of this meme. Also, aww, Pinky’s always ready with the compliments.

“Working class values…”

“I enjoy beef jerky and the comedy stylings of Gallagher. Check.”

His visible cringe at having to say he enjoys Gallagher is wonderful. I first heard about Gallagher through My Brother, My Brother and Me, but for anyone that doesn’t know, Gallagher is a frankly terrible prop comedian whose most famous act was smashing things on stage (usually fruits of increasing size) with a large mallet that he called the “Sledge-O-Matic”, ending with smashing a watermelon. It was apparently a mildly popular bit of comedy in the south. Does that sound entertaining? No? Yeah, that’s…that’s why Brain is cringing so hard.

“A song.”

“Check!”

A song titled “A Song”. Brain, sweetheart, I think you’re going to need to put in a little more effort than that.

“A name consisting of not less than three words.”

“From now on, I shall be ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’. Check.”

I would make fun of him for this name, but honestly it’s kind of genius in its bland simplicity.

“And…a height of at least six feet!”

“Aaa--guebuh…”

Whoops. Forgot about that one, huh?

“Drat!”

“There must be some way for me to increase my height…”

Gee, if only you had a fully operational mechanical human suit just laying around.

“Hmm, let me think…”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Pinky.”

He is trying his best!

“Faster, Pinky! Faster!”

…Why does Pinky have to spin the thread? The whole point of sewing machines like this is that they’re powered electrically, Brain. Are you just making him do this so Pinky feels included?

Oh. Oh no…

Brain’s “WTF?” face is great. He’s surprised and yet not at the same time, because things like this just happen when you have Pinky around.

“You amaze me, Pinky.”

“I do my best…”

A very cute exchange.

So instead of using the mechanical human suit they usually fall back on in times like these (maybe it’s under six feet tall?), the mice instead come up with…this.

“Proceed, Pinky.”

I have to give them some credit, regardless of how ridiculous this is, as sewing denim to make a very bizarrely thin and tall pair of jeans must have been an absolute nightmare.

“Ki-yi-yippee-yi-yo. How do I look?”

I’m getting flashbacks to the similarly deadpan singing of “Camptown Races” from last episode. Brain’s really on a western kick lately, isn’t he?

“Oh, very nice, Brain!”

Your finger-framing may be focused on the back of Brain’s head for some reason, Pinky, but your pupils are definitely pointed a bit…lower.

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’.”

“You are my manager, Colonel Pinky.”

This is a reference to Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, who was honestly quite the bungler when it came to managing Elvis’ career. I honestly don’t think Brain’s making a subtle jab at Pinky’s competency here for once because Brain’s grasp of pop culture he’s not already interested in is surface level at best most of the time.

“You discovered me playing the guitar on the front porch of my humble pig farm. Any questions?”

“Oh, just one: When you farm humble pigs, how far apart do you have to plant them?”

“…If I could reach you, I would hurt you.”

Hey now, you’re the one that asked, Brain.

“But for now, on to Nashville!”

“On to Nashville!”

BONK!

“This is a pain that is going to linger…”

That’s what you get for rolling your eyes at Pinky’s enthusiasm.

No perilous car trips this time! Instead, the boys are getting bus tickets to Nashville.

“Two tickets to Nashville, please.”

“Ooh-wee!~ You’re a tall drink a’ water, aint’cha, darlin’?”

…Ma’am? Excuse me, ma’am? Ma’am, are you flirting with The Brain?

Like, sorry, that “tall drink of water” saying is not just to point out that someone’s tall. It’s specifically for flirting with someone who is tall and gorgeous and a refreshing sight to see, like a tall glass of water on a hot summer day.

This lady is flirting with a mouse on stilt legs.

I know that Brain’s disguises are prone to inexplicably work even when by all rights they shouldn’t, but…

“Actually, I am a lab mouse on stilts.”

Brain does his usual bold and plain truth shtick and I’m a little surprised that he didn’t react to what she said beyond that. Then again, this is Brain and he’s quite terrible when talking to women in general, so maybe we dodged a bullet here.

“…At least he didn’t ask me to pull his finger.”

I’ve worked in retail and food service for years, ma’am, and if that’s the extent of your experience with unpleasant men, consider yourself lucky.

“EGAD, Bibby-boo-bop-Brain! Round trips are so exciting!”

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’, Pinky.”

“Right! Sorry. Zort!”

Honestly, Pinky’s version is much cuter.

“Concentrate, Pinky, concentrate!”

BONK!

“YES! This pain will definitely be with me a while.”

Brain out here looking like a bad Minecraft texture.

Hello again, Warner Siblings! Gosh, that little fringed western skirt on Dot is cute.

“’The Rowdy Ranch Nightclub’… What are we doing here, Boobie-baa-baa-Brain?”

I checked the official subtitles for this and yes, that is exactly what he mistakenly calls Brain here. We have had both of these two call each other “boob” or some permutation of it this episode.

Pinky and the Brain sure is a show that exists.

“…It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob’ Brain. And according to statistics, and inordinate number of country western superstars have gotten their start at this very establishment.”

You probably didn’t need me to tell you this, but there’s no Rowdy Ranch Nightclub in real life. There is, however, “The Rowdy Ranch”, uh, ranch in Texas.

“Egad! [gasp] Do you suppose Minnie Pearl performed here?”

“One can only hope…”

Man, Brain, you are really laying the sarcasm on thick this episode. Come to think of it, he’s been slightly more sassy towards Pinky than usual this episode as well. I suppose he’s still sore about the end of the last one. You know, for reasons.

BONK!

At least he’s getting some karmic punishment for it, I guess.

“I am a telephone repairman from this area!~”

This little ditty this man is singing has bugged the hell out of me for quite a while, as it certainly sounds like it’s a reference to something but I never knew exactly what it was referring to until just now thanks to an old Animaniacs Usenet group from way back in the day: It’s a parody of the song “Whichita Lineman” by Glenn Campbell. The writers are really giving it their all with the pop culture references this time.

“When I give the signal, play the subliminal message tape.”

“Right-o, Bippie Bebop Balloola!”

“…Sometimes you frighten me, Pinky.”

Why, though?! Despite it being a mistake it’s honestly a goddamn adorable one. Why must you fear affectionate, innocent, unknowing malapropisms, Brain? Pinky’s still going to do what you told him to.

Anyway, Brain is ushered onto the stage as a newcomer and he’s…not exactly any more eloquent than Pinky was just now.

“Howdy, you all. Here’s a little…ditty I wrote. Hope you enjoy it…you all.”

Here’s the thing: Brain’s not one to get stage fright, and while he’s not the best actor he’s still usually better than this. He was saying “ya’ll” and getting the country-isms perfectly fine beforehand, although he was still doing it in his deadpan Brain way.

Now, suddenly, after hearing Pinky cutely screw up his fake name and going on stage he’s starting to mess up. It’s like Pinky’s error is still in the back of his mind and flustering him enough to throw him off for a bit.

He gets back into the swing of things when he starts singing his song, though.

“I am a lab mouse, I escaped from my cage

Never had a job, never earned minimum wage.~”

“He ain’t half bad.”

“Ain’t half good, either.”

OUCH. That’s a little harsh. Sure, the lyrics are kinda blah but he’s a decent singer here. Really, it’s just not a genre of music that his voice fits very well.

Also, lady? You’ve got a suspiciously busty doppleganger in the back there. That’s got to be a bad omen for you.

“But you will respect me, YES, once my plan is unfurled!~

You will call me your leader, I’ll be king of the world!~”

Careful, Brain. Your complicated emotional complex is starting to show in those lyrics.

There’s some more nice facial expressions here too. I can’t really capture it with still images, but Brain’s got a very tender demeanor when he sings about being king of the world.

“Now, Pinky!”

…I just noticed that Pinky’s wearing a completely different outfit here at the nightclub than he was when boarding the bus to get to Nashville. He was previously in an all-white colonel outfit and now he’s in a more generic yet very sweet cowboy get-up. Did you make yourself an entire wardrobe, Pinky?

Another minor detail is that while Pinky’s cowboy hat is a generic tan colour (although before, it was white), Brain’s hat is completely black, which as per western film traditions marks him as a clear villain.

You and I know he’s not really a villain and is, at worst, an anti-villain…but I thought this was worth pointing out anyway.

“Citizens of the world, you are under my control. You will do whatever I say.”

I love how he does this completely unneeded strum on his guitar in the middle of his subliminal message. It's for the drama!

“Buy my record and listen to it twenty times a day.”

Corporations be like…

Who am I kidding? Corporations nowadays would have you pay a fee monthly to have a song on your phone playlist and you would never really own a copy.

“Let’s buy his record…”

“And listen to it twenty times a day…”

Lady, that doppleganger is still over there. Do you need a distraction while you sneak out the back?

This smug lil’ jerk. Gotta love him, though.

And so Brain’s cassette tapes fly off the shelves at record speed.

Man. Cassette tapes. I feel so fuckin’ old…

“I don’t know ‘bout ya’ll, but I can’t get enough of Bubba Bo Bob Brain. Let’s hear it again!”

JFC, that spittoon. Blegh! And just what do you need that rope for?!?

“Well, he’s the hottest thing to hit Nashville since my mama’s jalapeno grits! Here’s Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

Having just recently learned what exactly “grits” is, I am very disturbed by the idea of jalapeno grits.

“I’m your biggest fan! What d’you say to that?”

Hi, Dolly Parton! I’ve gotta say that the animators nailed the caricature of 90s Dolly here pretty well. She’s instantly recognizable, unlike some other celebrity parodies Animaniacs does. It’s not just because of Dolly’s, uh…most renowned physical characteristics, either. That’s a very Dolly Parton smiling face.

Not much to say here other than that Dolly’s a sweetheart of a woman, from what I know about her, especially for a celebrity. She’s a staunch supporter of Covid relief and Black Lives Matter as well.

That said, she’s sadly—both in the 90s and now—most well known for…

“I’d say puberty was inordinately kind to you.”

BRAIN!

Well, yeah. That.

I guess now you can see what I mean about Brain not being very good at talking to women. Like, he’s definitely not ogling her here. In fact he’s just kind of…stating something he’s noticed and looking absolutely done with this whole celebrity thing. But Brain you don’t just make a joke like that about a woman’s bust size no matter how deadpan you do it, you ass!

“Haha, go on.”

She takes it well, though, just like Dolly seems to in reality.

Still, though! Brain, you retroactively deserved all those run-ins with doorframes.

Continuing on the buxom southern women thing this episode has decided to run with (seriously, what’s going on here?), we now have a brief parody of a Hee Haw skit.

“Hahahahaha!”

“Hey, Bubba Bo Bob Brain, I just got back from France!”

“How’d you find it?”

“I used a map.~”

“Hahahahaha!”

Yeah, that’s an accurate depiction of Hee Haw style humour.

“And the Country Tune Award for best male vocal goes to…”

“Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

Here we have Garth Brooks and Crystal Gayle emceeing this awards ceremony. I had to look up who these two were supposed to be, though, since the caricatures are pretty vague this time.

“EGAD! YIPPEE! Narf! Ah hahahahahaha!”

Aww, he’s so happy for Brain! And oh, is that yet another outfit I see? And a much more appropriately sunshine-y yellow and flamboyant one at that! Pinky really went all-out for this.

Again with the tongue hanging out too, except this time it’s more understandable.

“You’re embarrassing me, Pinky.”

And you’re continuing to be a jerk, wow. Someone needs a nap or something.

“Pardon my effervescence, but your accolade is more than any bucolic mouse merits.”

“What’s he sayin’?”

“I don’t know.”

Yes, Brain just used the word “effervescence”, much like in that one Tumblr Twilight meme. To those reeling from the fact that this compares Edward to Brain via their shared pretentiousness: You’re welcome.

Also, a Brain-to-common English translation: “Pardon my bubbly enthusiasm, but your award is more than any countryside mouse deserves.” Would that have been so hard to say, Brain?

“…I’d like to thank my mama and Elvis.”

I wouldn’t thank Elvis. He was an asshole. But that’s probably not wise to say at a 90s country music award show, so I guess it’s understandable.

“Oh, how nice!”

“Well isn’t that nice!”

“I’m outside the Grand Ol’ Opry, where tonight’s concert featuring country music sensation ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’ is being televised worldwide.”

“In two words: Bubba is hot!”

I… That’s twice in this episode where a human woman thinks a tiny, big-headed mouse on stilts is hot.

Furries, come get these poor, confused women.

“You gotta know how to cut ‘em

Know how to shuffle

Know how to deal the cards, before you play Fish with me.~”

Hello, Kenny Rogers. I only know the song parodied here, “The Gambler”, again through “My Brother, My Brother and Me” and the long and hilarious conversation about it.

It’s kind of weird to have a song that was made famous by Rogers in 1978 sung like it’s a recent hit in an early 90s awards show, but ehh. Maybe the shelf life of hit country songs is a lot longer than songs of other genres.

And then you die in your sleep~

“Do you realize what will happen if the world hears my song just one more time?”

“An angel will get its wings?!”

If only, Pinky.

“NO, Pinky!”

I think all this country stuff is really getting on Brain’s nerves. He’s being snappy and irritable and lashing out an abnormal amount ever since arriving in Nashville, and there’s not a lot of joy in the minor successes he’s had so far. Like, compare Brain smiling and praising Pinky for his work during the alien encounter spoof they did together, the last episode with Brain cheerfully singing to himself when he was certain he’d win the race…to now where he’s yelling at Pinky for minor mistakes that no one but himself is aware of and being joyless and faking pleasantries and rolling his eyes at the country stars he’s surrounded by. This mouse is crabby as all hell, and I don’t think it’s just because he finds the whole country western thing stupid and below him. This is a mouse who’s done and will continue to do degrading things to achieve his goal of world domination without this much jerkishness.

I think he’s still fuming about the whole Pharfignewton and Pinky thing, and the current plan being a very rural, country-focused plan like the last one with the Kentucky Derby is just exacerbating it by reminding him of it. Like, you don’t even have to take it in the gay way I am and instead take it in a “how dare that goddamn horse take the complete attention of my friend/world domination partner away from me and my plans, this sucks and I can’t believe Pinky’s just being his usual dumbass self like everything is fine and the same” sort of way.

But the gay way makes way more sense, fight me.

…Okay, don’t fight me, I’m tired and old and I really don’t want to get in internet fights about cartoon mice.

“My subliminal message will take permanent hold, and the world will be under my control!”

Ooof! We’re back down to “my” control and not “our”. Jeez, Brain. You really are spiraling right now, aren’t you? Your attitude has quickly devolved from the beginning of this episode...

“Oh, that.”

And dang, even Pinky’s enthusiasm is starting to get deflated.

“Now, do you remember what you have to do?”

“Yes. I need to make a dental appointment. I have horrible plaque buildup!”

Pinky, you do realize that unlike a regular, non-sapient mouse you can just brush your teeth, right?

“The tape, Pinky, the TAPE!”

“Oooh, right! When you give the signal, I play the tape.”

“And now, I’d like to introduce…”

“This is it, I’m on.”

“Good luck, Booba Bip Bop Brain!”

Folks, I swear to you that I tried to get a decent screencap of Pinky slapping Brain to figure out if he slapped his back or his ass and for the life of me I could not get it. The slap goes by just that fast and I’d honestly have to go frame by frame if I wanted to get it, but my video player will not go that slow.

Either way, Brain is certainly startled by the contact but is fixated more on the continued mangling of his fake name.

“How many times do I have to tell you, my name is--!”

Uhh, Brain? Getting a liiiittle close there.

“—Bubba Bo Bob Brain!” exclaims Kenny Rogers. And oh boy are these screencaps exploitable. Again, you’re welcome.

“Yee-haw! Let’s start this hootenanny!”

Better than last time you came out on stage to sing at a show, at least.

This time the crowd even sings along with him, and they’re not even hypnotized yet. Much better.

“Now, Pinky!”

“You are under my control, you will do whatever I say…”

“I will do whatever he says… Whatever he says… Whatever he says… Whatever he says…”

A confusingly consistent detail here: Every woman in the crowd has swirly red hypnotized eyes and every man in the crowd has swirly green hypnotized eyes. Why? Who knows!

“Way to go, Blubber Boo Bean Brain. Narf!”

Heh, that hand flip.

It looks like Pinky is trying hard to suppress his verbal tic here for some reason? Or maybe he’s just realized that he’s messed up the name again and is cringing in anticipation of Brain yelling at him? Either way, poor guy… You really don’t deserve any of what’s coming.

And what’s coming? Well, given Brain’s heightened pissy attitude and his mental issues with not having things go exactly the way he wants them to, plus his obsessive need this episode to correct Pinky on this one thing that doesn’t need to even be addressed because no one else hears it, plus other repressed emotions…

“Do me a favour and forget my name. While you’re at it, forget you ever knew me!”

Holy shit.

…Now you fucked up, Brain. Now you fucked up.

Man, I hate the one thick facial hair on the dude in the middle. It’s so unsettling.

“Hey, who’s that skinny guy on stage?”

“Who is he?”

“Get him off!”

“Boo!”

“We wanna see someone famous!”

Yup. Look at what you did. You messed this up all because you were having a temper tantrum about Pinky messing up your stupid false name. You hang that head in shame. And you apologize to Pinky.

Later...

“Tonight’s inside story: A complete unknown somehow made it on to the stage at the Grand Ol’ Opry.”

“…Turn that off, Pinky.”

You know what? Keep it on for a bit, Pinky. Let Brain wallow in this humiliation just a bit more. He needs to have the lesson set in.

“I’m trying to concentrate on a better plan for tomorrow night.”

“Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“Same thing we do every night, Pinky:”

“Try to take over the world!”

Hey wait just a minute! You can’t just reuse this excellent ending from “Win Big” on this episode! Brain doesn’t yet deserve to get back to being cocky and determined after being such an ass!

Ahh well. He does get better, folks, I promise. This is just a rough patch. Brain is… He’s going through some things, I think. He’s not processing his emotions in a healthy way and it’s really coming back to bite him.

Listen, I understand this whole thing with Brain being extra grumpy and hostile after the whole Pinky dating Pharfignewton thing is largely coincidence. We don’t actually know what order these episodes were made in, after all, and the Animaniacs writers were not big on continuity.

Here’s the thing, though: I still find it fascinating that these episodes were aired one after the other…especially with a random cameo with Pinky and Brain disguised as a married couple in between. It makes for the beginning of a strange sort of arc that occasionally reminds us that, hey, these two mice are a duo and something is amiss when that duo is broken up or there is a strain put on that relationship.

I’ve read that after a while, network executives at the time tried to push for these mice to settle down and have families and for the skits and the eventual spin-off to largely abandon the whole world domination thing. They wanted it to be more sitcom-like to rival and imitate shows like The Simpsons.

That obviously doesn’t work. It can’t work. The writers, especially Peter Hastings, very much pushed back against the idea. When you have a duo of characters who fit together and play off one another so well, when the basic premise of a story is of a pair of characters working together to achieve a goal, and when those characters just mesh so perfectly and basically complete one another…trying to add another main character just puts the entire story completely out of wack and/or changes it into something unrecognizable. You can add reoccurring characters off to the side, sure. You can have a nemesis or two pop up and return every now and again. But with something like Pinky and the Brain where the main story is a small pair against incredible odds working towards a singular goal, disrupting that core relationship is going to cause a domino effect that will ruin the whole thing.

All this to say that I like this approach that’s going on here much more, even if it was completely unintended by the creative team: There is the element added of Pinky, off-screen, dating someone. It’s not something that’s brought up a lot and whenever it is brought up, Brain is irritated. We’ve seen at the end of the last episode where this development was introduced that Brain is unusually snappy, and now in the next episode he continues to be angry more often than he was before. It’s a more subtle and smooth way of seeing how these characters react if something or someone threatens to come between them, in a way that doesn’t immediately break the entire premise to pieces. Of course, it helps that Pharfignewton is…largely absent for all this and is only brought up every now and again. It’s not a perfect way to explore this kind of thing, but it’s preferable when compared to something like Pinky, Elymra, and The Brain.

However, after this episode Brain’s temper begins to de-escalate, and we won’t pick back up on this accidental “arc” for a few episodes. So to folks who are maybe a little bit bummed out about his behaviour here: don’t worry. We’re getting quite the breather next time with a very odd alternate universe skit courtesy of the Warner Siblings messing around with character placement, as well as an entire Animaniacs episode devoted to a Pinky and the Brain skit…fantasy style!

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Bubba Bo Bob Brain

16 notes · View notes

embracethecringeside · 4 years

Note

OK, here's one: do you think that there's any genuine good in Rick? I can't make up my mind about that one. I don't think he's evil or a sociopath (a lot of fans called him that in the early days, that term is so misused), but his intense self-hatred seems to be the only redeeming thing about him. He must have some sense of morality because he knows he's done horrible things, but he makes zero effort to stop doing horrible things unless it benefits him somehow.

My short answer is yes, Rick has genuine good wrapped up in there but my full answer is a bunch of examples from the show that I would like to call Soft Sanchez moments, where Rick either does something good/says something real and genuine/or his goodness is talked about in some fashion.

Meeseeks and Destroy

Morty: Look, I want to leave now. You win the bet, okay? (Searches Rick's lab coat for the portal gun) Just give me the portal gun and let's go, please!

(Rick sees the badly beaten Mr. Jelly Bean walk out of the bathroom and pieces together what happened)

Morty: Please, I just want to... go h-home. (Tears up and holds onto Rick)

Rick: Okay. Listen, Morty. I just won a bunch of shmeckels. Why don't we use 25 of them to pay slippery stair here for a ride back to the village, and then we'll give the rest of the shmeckels to the villagers, huh?

Morty: Really?

Rick: Sure, Morty. Yeah. You know, a good adventure needs a good ending.

Rick: Good job, Morty. Looks like you won the bet.

Morty: Thanks, Rick, but I don't know if I should. You know, you were right about the universe. It's a crazy and chaotic place.

Rick: Well, you know, maybe that's why it could use a little cleaning up every now and then, you know. This one's wrapped up neat and clean because we did it Morty style.

(They portal away, but Rick makes another portal back and sticks an energy pistol through it and shoots Mr. Jelly Bean, splattering him all over the screaming villagers)

A Rickle In Time

(Puts his own collar on Morty, who disappears)

Rick: I'm okay with this. Be good Morty. Be better than me. Holy shit, the other collar! I'm not okay with this! I am not okay with this! Oh, sweet Jesus please let me live. Oh, my God I—I've gotta fix this thing, please God in Heaven, please, God, oh Lord, hear my prayers. Yes! Fuck you God! Not today, bitch.

Mortynight Run

Rick: Screw this. I’m out.

(Rick forms a portal and leaves through it. Morty tries to start the car as a Gromflomite approaches, but it stalls.)

Morty: Oooh…! Come on, come on!

Gromflomite: Get out of the vehicle made of garbage or we will open fire!

Morty: *still trying to start the car* Oh no no no!

Gromflomite: Open fire!

(A portal appears directly above the guards and water pours out of it, flooding the room. Another portal appears on the floor, and the water and Gromflomites are sucked into it. A third portal then appears and Rick emerges through it, walking up to the car.)

Rick: Stupid-ass fart-saving carpet-store motherfucker! *shoves Morty out of the driver’s seat and takes the wheel* Move!

Auto Erotic Assimilation

Rick: You got that right. But... baby, listen. Y-you're talking about taking over planets and galaxies, you gotta... you gotta just... remember to let go sometimes, you know.

Unity (Administrator): I can let go! Hey, look! You see that town across the river? Watch this.

(Planes fly past and bomb the town, blowing it all up)

Rick: Whoa!

Unity (Administrator): Ha ha! Woot!

Rick: Whoa! That's not what I meant!

Unity (Administrator): [laughing] It's okay! It's okay, I evacuated! I evacuated the town, look!

Unity (Townspeople): Hey! Right here! We’re fine!

Rick: (laughing) Oh, that was awesome! My grandkids weren't in that town, right? A-are my grandkids alive? ... H-hey, my drink is empty

Get Swifty

Rick: Take it from me, Ice. *burp* You can’t just *burp* float around space not caring about stuff forever.

Morty: Tammy… gross. Birdperson, you always stick up for Rick, but he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He doesn’t think about the consequences of anything he does.

Birdperson: And as a result, he has the power to save or destroy entire worlds. And he is the reason you and I know each other. And the reason I’m alive at all.

Look Who’s Purging Now

Arthrisha: Wait, stop! Please, don't kill me! I-I never intended to harm you, I swear. I am trying to end the festival. W-w-what do you mean? I was going to use your ship to destroy the rich assholes that run our society and save my people from the horrors of this yearly festival.

Rick: I'm not here to judge. I'm just a guy from another planet. But this girl is one of your poor people, and I guess you guys felt like it was okay to subject her to inhuman conditions because there was no chance of it ever hurting you. It's sort of the socio-political equivalent of, say, a suit of power armor around you. But now things are evened out, so, Arthrisha?

Morty: I can't help but feel ashamed about what I did back there, Rick. I guess you were right. I've got a lot of repressed stuff. I need to deal with.

Rick: Don't worry about it, Morty.Remember those candy bars earlier that we got in the first act?

Morty: Yeah, what about them?

Rick: Turns out they have a chemical in them called purgenol that amplifies all your violent tendencies.

Morty: Oh, boy. Whew! Thank goodness for that, huh? That's a relief.

Rick: Yep. Don't even sweat. You're still the same old Morty. Your character's totally protected. (camera pans out to reveal the label on the chocolate bars reads “now purgenol-free”)

The Wedding Squanchers

BirdPerson: The guest list at this wedding includes 17 of the federation's most wanted. We have committed numerous atrocities in the name of freedom.

Rick: But... but... Here's the thing. Birdperson is my best friend, and if he loves Tammy, well, then I love Tammy, too. (Cheers and applause) To friendship, to love, and to my greatest adventure yet... opening myself up to others.

The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy

Rick: And you know what? I’ll cop to it. I put a lot of strain on your marriage. It wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.

Jerry: What?!

Rick: I didn’t respect your marriage. I certainly didn’t do it any favors. And for what it’s worth, I’ll apologize to Beth for it when we get home. Whoo! Whirly Dirly! Yeah!

Pickle Rick

I’m trying to let the scripts show all the ways Rick is good before I jumped in but since this is really weird without just watching the episode I’ll just explain that Rick doesn’t kill Jaguar after he finds out he has a daughter and then they work together to escape.

The Old Man and The Seat

Tony: Can I look at a photo of my wife while you kill me?

Rick: Sure, but I'm doing her a favor. She either has terrible taste, or she's trapped in a marriage to a toilet thief.

Tony: She's dead. And I don't mind joining her. Life has been hollow since I lost her. Using your toilet was nice, though. I'm a bit of a shy pooper. I'm ready when you are.

Rick: Stay there. (goes through a portal, comes back with another Tony) Tell him what you told me.

Other Tony: What is this? What's happening?

Rick: Tell him what you told me.

Other Tony: My wife's still alive. Sh... sh... she went into remission 10 years ago.

Rick: And what did you do today?

Other Tony: Oh, I, uh, pooped on a really awesome toilet I found... Oh, ow, ow, ow, ow, oh! (Rick shoves him back through the portal)

Rick”: Don't use your dead wife as an excuse. You ( Bleep ) on my toilet because you don't know your place, and your place is nothing. So next time you stumble onto a toilet that feels too good for your ass, trust me, it is.

Tony: You're not gonna kill me?

Rick: Don’t tell me what to do!

Tony: You can make a perfectly-realized, toilet-filled simulation of heaven, but you can't share a toilet?

Rick: Don't insult my craft. The chemical is Globaflyn. It connects the whatever-you-want section of your brain to the whatever-you-have section. If your heaven is toilets, that's on you.

Tony: All of these people...

Rick: Are living their wildest, meaningless dreams and leaving me out of them.

Tony: People you refuse to kill and refuse to let into your life.

Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerry

(Rick reveals he has saved what he could of PhoenixPerson)

Okay and on to the big one where I am actually going to talk instead of just letting the script go off Rest and Ricklaxation. We see two sides of Rick, Healthy Rick and Toxic Rick. After Healthy Morty slaps Healthy Rick, and he slaps him back, he discovers the machine doesn’t actually know the difference between what is truly healthy and whats actually toxic, it goes by each person’s individual definition. Shortly after we as the audience learn that Healthy Rick? Is actually apathetic. He doesn’t care about others. All the caring and emotions are wrapped up in Toxic Rick. Everything Healthy Rick did and said is all stuff he believes are good, he apologies, he takes responsibility for his actions, he’s polite, he’s trusting, and he doesn’t try to control others, but he is doing all of this simply because he thinks he should. So it is completely selfless when he makes the bargain so Toxic Rick will merge with him, because, and he even says it, he hates having what he considers his toxins inside of him, but it’s the right thing to do.

Then of course Healthy Rick calls Toxic Rick out, knowing that he is the one with all his, “irrational attachments” as he puts it, and as much as Toxic Rick no longer wishes to be a part of Healthy Rick, he merges with him under the pretence that he will then be able to save Toxic Morty. Both act selflessly for different reasons, Healthy Rick believing it is the right thing to do, while Toxic Rick does it for Morty.

So do I believe that there is good in Rick?? Heck yes!! Good is stored in the garbage grandpa!

#rick sanchez #rick and morty #this took forever im sorry #ellie answers #long post #rnm #ram #rick sanchez has morals and a heart y'all #ellie's answers #love my awful grandpa

105 notes · View notes

four-loose-screws · 3 years

Note

I have a another question about localization since you say all of the FE localizations are good but then there's the localization I hear about of FE fates a localize game that I hear so many Nintendo and FE fans say really bad things about it such as a lot of Mistranslations, Big Script changes, Memes being add in, etc also there was some censorship that got some of them really mad and with some of them saying that it's the wrost localize game of all time is it really that bad as they say?

Whew, this ask has been sitting in my inbox for actual months! Sorry for taking so long to respond! It’s probably unsurprising, but there’s so much to unpack here, and just deciding what to write had me going in circles for a long time.

I’m not entirely satisfied with this answer, but if I tried to discuss everything I have in mind about the Fates localization at once, I’d never be done. So I stuck to 5 topics to give a basic summary. If anyone wants to follow up on one particular issue for more info, or know more about something I didn’t discuss here, please do! I’d love to round out my argument.

First off - a little history just to get our minds situated into the history of localization. Bad localization has always existed, in fact that’s pretty much all we had in the 80’s and somewhat into the 90’s until it became clear that video games were going to become very complex in story and text going forward. Even a surface look into old localizations like this one tells a very long story. We have to remember that “bad” localization is everywhere, and it’s just always going to exist, even now that we have professional teams dedicated to localization, so long as humans aren’t perfect, time crunch is standard in the gaming industry, and we all have our own definition of “good”.

Next, here’s the short answer to the question:

When I say “overall” good, I do stress that pretty heavily, because of course there are plenty of changes that each individual player of the game will have their own take on. The Fire Emblem games simply have so much text in them that even a hundred small mistranslations or changes are just a drop in the bucket.

But I do agree that Fates is one of the worst of the FE localizations, if your terms are in number of changes from the Japanese. Awakening’s is up there too.

Yeah, Awakening’s localization has a lot of questionable moments too. I know this take isn’t a surprise to all fans. But ever since Fates came out, I’ve seen people praising Awakening’s localization, and saying that 8-4 (an outside studio often hired by Nintendo, they localized Awakening) is an amazing localization team and Treehouse (Nintendo’s own team, did Fates) is garbage. TBH… They both did a job that has huge ups and downs. Are people really doomed to always forget the flaws that the previous installment in a series had as soon as something new comes out? Ha ha.

I think it’s common knowledge at this point that localizations are not made for the people who want a more direct-to-the-Japanese version. And that sucks, and the feelings of anger, disappointment, etc. in those who wanted a more direct translation are perfectly valid and entirely understandable.

But we really, really need to understand and accept that localizations are made for the target audience/culture as a whole, and to sell to the most people possible. By getting angry and rejecting the entire game’s script as “total changes,” “butchering,” “changing the games to fit the localization team’s motives,” and all sorts of other toxic nonsense, we miss out on all of the nuance that actually exists. We rob ourselves of the fun that could be had analyzing whether or not the localizers did their job of adapting the game to the target audience, and how they might have done it better. And we can’t notice and appreciate all of the times the team did do a great or good job.

In the vast majority of cases, localizers only want those who play their games and read their scripts to have fun! To imply anything else is just wrong.

What I feel I can do here, to define if “the localization is as bad as they say,” is debunk these “all or nothing” arguments, and show that the changes aren’t usually anywhere near as drastic or simple as people make them sound.

Now let’s goooooo!

I read these two articles to prepare myself to write this, link here, and link here, which I got off a quick Google search. They are from the time of Fates’ release, and report on how a lot of people generally felt back then, so I found them to be good references to put myself back in time with the thoughts people had then.

Character Changes

These often tend to be the biggest topics of conversation. Hisame will be my topic of more detailed discussion today, but I’ll bring other characters up for a hot second too.

I can never stress this enough, but Hisame made pickles in the Japanese. He was always talking about them in the Japanese, too. (Fates loves supports revolving around food in general, really.) I think people generally know this to be true? But I did read some comments saying that the pickle love was totally made up in the localization, you can see the proof above, so I had to point it out.

I don’t think a lot of people who have talked about his character picked up on this - admittedly, I didn’t until someone close to me explained it - but the main gag of Hisame’s character is that he’s young, but already acting like an old man. He lectures his own father on how to behave, etc., and makes pickles. And the “acting like an old man” is not totally lost in translation, with him still acting serious and lecturing his father. But the making pickles trait… I’d never pin that as an “old man” stereotype as a US American. Well, now I would, because I know Japanese culture well enough… but anyway.

And this is where the cultural differences come in. The number of people farming and making traditional foods from scratch is dwindling fast in Japan. In just five years there, I watched countless rice paddies and other small produce fields be turned into houses or apartment buildings. The elderly farmers are becoming too old to care for their crops, and their kids choose to pursue other careers, so the family sells off the farmland. Following along this trend is traditional pickle making. You can just buy them ready to eat in the supermarket, so why make your own? Most people don’t even have the space to be making them if they wanted to. And so, pickle making has come to be seen as something old people do. It fits in with Hisame’s “old man” character perfectly.

But again, as an American, I never would have figured that out without knowledge about Japan. Of course you could argue that the localizers didn’t need to change anything about him. The making pickles was quirky and unique, and would give you a chuckle as is. But there was space to make him funnier, so they did. That is, after all, was what the Japanese intended, for it to be funny. It’s not funny in the same way… but sometimes it’s impossible to be.

And that is what is most important in localization between two wildly different languages like Japanese and English - not retaining the same words, but the same intention or mood. The same words can convey a totally different meaning or mood, or make no sense, because of cultural differences. So localizers need to achieve the same mood, not the same words. I have come to see people understand this much better as the years go on, and the general gaming population becomes more learned about what localization is.

Of course, that’s a pretty simplified way of looking at it. But that’s how I summarize localization as a whole, in an easy way to understand. You might not agree with exactly how the localizers did what they did, but I think we might all be able to agree that they were trying to do their job and had no malicious intent to butcher the Japanese original or something absurd like that.

One more thing that’s relevant to this - Japanese people don’t care about repetition so much. The same character tropes are repeated over and over, the same lines are repeated over and over… In the US, we don’t like that! It’s boring and dull! This cultural difference is a constant struggle in localization. A lot of the people who think they want a direct translation don’t realize that it will be boring to them… So localizations alter and add details and lines here and there to give some more variation. This also helps to explain Hisame’s changes to talk even more about pickles.

And I’ve seen many a comment from people saying they liked Hisame in the localization. They found his exaggerated pickle lines fun, and enjoyed many good laughs. How can we call his new characterization outright bad when it worked for some? When they like it more than a straight Japanese translation? He’s still essentially the same guy… just some of the things he says are different. That’s not much of a change at all.

...And back to that original screenshot I showed. Isn’t Hisame still serious in the localization? His lines are funny, but I’m under the impression that he himself is still dead serious. ...Anyway. That’s about all I have to say about Hisame.

Many characters have changed lines. There’s no disputing that. But something to always question is how far do these changes go? Did the localizers completely change the intent or tone of the original? Or are they playing up certain character traits the characters always had in the Japanese? Or is something else going on?

This is also a prime example of how shallow some articles or “analysis” into the Fates localization are. You can’t look at one line change and make a sweeping conclusion about an entire character. Always be suspect of stuff like this. Kana ALWAYS acted like a little kid. That’s their entire schtick. They are your cute little mama/papa loving kid. That one line may have changed that scene significantly, but Kana’s whole character? No, not at all.

Even Kana’s S support changes aren’t as simple as it seems. They aren’t all changed. The 2nd gen characters that Kana is close in age to retain their romantic endings, such as Midori. Only those considerably older than Kana turned platonic.

And Effie, another character commonly cited as changed? She wasn’t radically changed from some deep character to a one-note workout buff. If only a conclusion could be that easy to reach. Overall, on this specific aspect of Effie, the localization simply added in extra strength or workout jokes when the opportunity arose. Some workout jokes were in the Japanese! She was always an extremely devoted retainer who was always working out and training to get stronger so she could better fulfill her duties.

What is MUCH more interesting in my opinion is the issue of her femininity. In the Japanese, her speech nearly always trailed off with ellipses, and she had feminine voice acting. Whereas in the English, all of that femininity is stripped away with a deep voice, and virtually no ellipses. How refreshing it would have felt in English for Effie to have retained that femininity! Women can bench press trees and be feminine! It would be unique to see a female character like that. ...Or so a US American might think.

But from what I understand, strong female characters in Japanese entertainment are nearly always very feminine. They send a clear message: “You can be whatever you want in private, so long as you still fit the girly-girl mold in public and fulfill society's expectations for you!!” In the Japanese, Effie is fitting their stereotype.

So in one way of looking at it, Effie wasn’t really changed, because in both Japanese and English, she paints a stereotypical and the most socially accepted image of a physically powerful female in each culture. ...That’s an interpretation of mine, anyway. I’m not sure how many people would agree with it.

...See what I mean, that the answer of “changed or unchanged” really isn’t as straightforward as “are the lines translated directly?”

Looking into the deeper details creates a much more interesting picture! You come to paint a picture in your mind, without even thinking about it, of what the localizers intended to do, and you can at least understand what they were thinking. This forms a much more accurate conclusion on whether or not the team achieved a good localization, and whether or not that sacrificed the intent of the original.

So as you can see, few issues are as bad as they’ve been blown up to be. None of the characters are completely different from their Japanese counterparts, or anything so extreme. They were just localized. Whether or not they were localized well, is up to each person’s opinion.

...I do want to write about Soleil, as an example of someone who I think could have been localized better, but I’ll save that for another day. It’s gonna get long. If anyone is interested in seeing this post, just remind me every couple of months or so until I find the time and write it, thanks in advance.

Memes

Since I mentioned Kana’s dragon speak in the last section, this is a perfect time to transition into my feelings about memes, aka context-specific humor. I agree with the most commonly shared opinion: memes don’t belong in localization. Though it’s not just because of a simple “change from the Japanese is bad!!!!” approach. In my opinion, the best localizations will be as timeless as possible. I want my future self and everyone else who will play the game in the years to come to enjoy the game as much as possible.

Memes come in and out of fashion so quickly that they’re almost guaranteed to be out of date by the time they release. And only the most popular of popular stories will be widely-known enough for most everyone to get the reference. Of course, it’s pretty difficult to know what expressions and such people will remember and use 10, 20, or 30 years down the line. Some language you think will be timeless will fall out of style. But using memes and references that are not likely to appeal to as many people as possible… that’s one of the few things I can almost universally call “bad localization.”

Unless, of course, the game was intended in the Japanese to be a product of its time, and used a lot of references. That’s a whole different ball game.

Accurate translation, much less full localization, requires creative thinking to recreate the tone and intent of the original.

Here’s another example that showcases another couple of things I find really important to localization.

Number 1: The writer of the article said “The American localization … gives her silly lines that aren’t in the original.” But does it really “give” her anything new at all? I’d argue not. Tottemo is commonly translated as ‘really’ or something like that… but doesn’t ‘super-dupity’ convey the same meaning as ‘really’? Just because an English word isn’t given as a common definition for a Japanese word, doesn’t mean it can’t be a definition. Sometimes… a word we don’t commonly think of as a translation for the Japanese, can still be a perfectly valid translation. This is not an addition. Just an uncommon translation of the Japanese word.

Number 2: Japanese has a wide range of “I” and “you” pronouns, sentence endings, and other little things that define character age, personality, gender, and more, that simply don’t exist in English. To not use similar features of English when localizers find opportunities to do so, would just take away that sense of nuance the Japanese had in utilizing their language’s own unique features.

Of course it’s one possibility that Sophie uses kiddy words. She’s not a little kid, but she’s still pretty young! To have everyone use the same word choice, because that’s how the words translate into English, is not only inaccurate to how real people talk, but also inaccurate to how the original Japanese was used. Since many equivalents for Japanese word and grammar choice that define personality do not exist in English, the localizers have to use what does exist in English in new places. I think that makes sense, and creates a much closer script to the Japanese than just translating the words.

Again, it’s all about how we look at the lines!

I see a lot of people define “translation” as “one-to-one recreation of the Japanese words.” To reinforce what I said in the first section, I do not think this is true. To me, translating is recreating the same tone, mood, meaning, and message of the original. You CANNOT achieve that just by translating the words and grammar alone.

Different words conveying the same overall meaning.

This section is really just a continuation of the previous one. But reinforcing central arguments over and over again is the core of good essay writing.

So this is one of my strategies for deciding whether or not a script is a good or bad translation/localization: “Does the script convey the same basic meaning?” (or tone, etc.)

Changes, adding detail to what the Japanese said, and “playing-up,” are all wildly different things.

So first, I break down the bit of dialogue into as few words as possible.

-Nohr royals inherit dragon blood.

-So they have superhuman power.

...And then I look to see if the localization conveyed that same basic meaning. Which, in this case, I think it did. Your mileage may vary, but I think I’ve made my point at least.

I wanted this scene to be one of the five I addressed because I think it exemplifies yet another of the fascinating differences between Japanese and English. Japanese is a language that likes to be vague, and leave out context that is already established. Speech can seem super boring as few characters say anything unique. (At least… that’s how us English speakers see it! Japanese people think they are just being normal, and not vague or boring at all!) ...English, not so much. So much as leaving out the subject of the sentence is chastised as incorrect grammar. And we like unique dialogue and prose more than most other languages.

I saw one person in the comments of the article I got this visual from argue that the tone is totally different, that the Japanese was more of a history lesson, but the localization is trying to pump Corrin and Leo up for battle, but… eh, I just don’t see it. The English also just feels like he is describing the powers of their bloodline to me. Again, that’s why this is so complex and fascinating, because everyone has their own viewpoints they are coming from.

The “direct translation” and “localization” reach the same message. This isn’t a big change in my opinion at all.

Sometimes mistakes happen...

These interpretations of Saizo and Beruka’s C Support have always boggled my mind. Coming up with all these explanations as to why the omission was done on purpose to completely erase the support when… it just seems… obvious to me… that the localization team never wrote or programmed a translation and shipped the game with the placeholder?

After all, if the localization team felt they had to remove or change content that might be questionable for the target audience, wouldn’t they alter or rewrite the conversation, like they have with Soleil’s supports, for example? This very game has multiple examples of proof that the localizers will rewrite entire chunks of script if they feel it makes the scene better fit what the target audience be more comfortable with.

Mistakes happen. That’s all I think Saizo and Beruka’s C Support is. We probably never got an update just because Nintendo doesn’t have a track record of being the best with those.

Of course, I may be wrong. Nintendo and Treehouse keep pretty much all of their processes a secret. But I never, ever would have imagined on my own that Saizo and Beruka’s support was omitted on purpose. Citing this as a reason why we need to be up in arms about bad localization is so absurd to me.

Mistakes happen. It’s not like the Japanese creators didn’t have embarrassing moments with underdeveloped content in this game either… they didn’t even name the continent in this game!

Sometimes, “bad” localization is just human error. It’s something we can’t eliminate entirely, and will just have to accept.

Final thoughts:

I realize that this analysis, for as long as it is, is very short, and still leaves out so much that could be talked about.

But what I hope that it did was not really help convince readers that the Fates localization is actually good, exactly… but helped to create some more balance in how we look at the Fates localization and localizations as a whole. All localization changes have a reason and nuance to how they ended up happening, and it’s important to be thinking from that perspective when we discuss them!

Since I know I may have created more questions than answers, again, feel free to keep the conversation going through more asks! I’ll answer them in time!

#fire emblem #fe #fe14 #fates #fe fates #nintendo #2ds #3ds #nintendo 2ds #nintendo 3ds #japan #japanese #translation #localization

14 notes · View notes