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snarktheater · 3 years

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Ready Player Two — Opening Cutscene & Chapter 0

Hello again.

It’s been a while. I haven’t been active on this blog since, fittingly enough, Ready Player One. I was going to do this sooner—even had an alarm set up and everything—but then, it turns out, I’m feeling so much negativity about the world in general that a book just pales in comparison.

Seriously, I had to scrap this post’s entire intro because it’s not even 2020 anymore as I write this. And you know, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not really in the mood for doom and gloom and bitching anymore. I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a while back, I’ve been doing good at my daily writing sprints, my biggest fanfic project concluded on a positive note from people I didn’t even realize had been following it for years.

So I don’t know what this is going to be like. My commentary, I mean; I’ve heard echoes of what the book is like, so I’m not expecting a surprise there.

The book opens right after the end of Ready Player One, in a “Cutscene” where Wade recounts to us what happened after he won Halliday’s contest. It also assumes you remember exactly who the main characters of the book are, which is a bold move for a sequel that came out almost a decade after the original.

Technically, I could just look up the details I’m fuzzy about. But also, I think it’s more authentic if I don’t. I trust my memory enough that if I’m wrong, it’ll be in subtle enough ways that it’ll almost be a private jokes between all of us. An “if you know, you know” sort of error system. And I don’t think there’s anything more true to the spirit of this book than that.

Shoto had flown back home to Japan to take over operations at GSS’s Hokkaido division.

So Wade starts his tenure with nepotism. Wasn’t Shoto really young? Why is he qualified to run anything?

Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there.

You know what, I’m not touching “send the token black character back to Africa.” This isn’t my lane.

And Samantha had flown back to Vancouver to pack up her belongings and say goodbye to her grandmother, Evelyn.

Why is she saying goodbye? Why, she’s moving to Columbus to be with Wade, of course! It’s not like there was anything else in her life. Was there? And why isn’t she referred to as Art3mis? I’m pretty sure Wade found out all of their offline names in the last book, and the inconsistency mildly bothers me.

These three sentences are back to back, by the way. Someone—I forget who—once described Ready Player One as a book that’s fun to write a wiki about, because it’s got fun concepts to summarize about until you realize that all the emotional connective tissue you need to turn a list of things into a story is missing, and that’s roughly how this first page feels.

Hell, the first line of the book is Wade telling us he remained offline for nine whole days after winning the contest, but by the end of the second paragraph we’re already to him logging back into the OASIS to "distract himself from [his and Samantha’s] reunion.

I’ll give Ernest Cline one thing: it feels like he wrote this opening nine days after the first book and did about as much maturing as a teenage boy would do between the two books.

Way more time is spent describing Wade’s OASIS rig, or the in-game planet where the climax of the last book happened, than anything else in this introduction. He is immediately greeted by a crowd of adoring fans who have been waiting over a week for him to come back in the game, because they’re all grateful that our protagonist and his friends restored their avatars after they were annihilated by the Sixers.

You’d think the adoring fans would serve some kind of purpose, or that something would happen, but no. Wade immediately goes “ew, people” and teleports away, since he essentially has ultimate powers within the game. With a caveat: the powers are actually coming from the Robes of Anorak he’s wearing, and I’m mentioning that in the hopes that it will pay off sometime in the book’s future, assuming Cline at least learned to do that. But still, let’s not skip too fast the fact that we introduced that crowd of adoring fans for no other purpose than to tell us they’re out there, because it fits right in with the last book’s attempts at saying as little as humanly possible in as many words as possible.

Anyway, Wade went back into Anorak’s study, where he arbitrarily checks out the Easter Egg he got at the end of the last book, and finds an inscription on it. I was dreading another riddle, but no, it’s just straight-up instructions to a vault in the GSS archives, so Wade logs off and goes to check it out.

Of course Halliday had put [the archives] [on the 13th floor]. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

I’m equally shocked that it took two whole pages (on my ereader) to get to the first slew of references, and that one of these references is from 1999. I didn’t know we were allowed to think of anything that isn’t the 80s. Speaking of which, I’ll spare you the whole paragraph, but the book does feel the need to explain why it’s vault 42.

Inside the vault, there’s another egg containing a super-fancy and advanced OASIS headset. The egg also has a video monitor that plays a video message from James Halliday shortly before his death.

But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.

That oh-so-important message? An infodump about the headset’s working. He called it an OASIS Neural Interface, ONI for short. It basically lets you experience the OASIS through all your senses with sensory input just like the real thing, you know, that thing Wade had to get a fancy suit and massive rig to do in the first book. And yes, Wade does spend a paragraph or two comparing it to other works of science fiction. Of course he does.

More importantly, it also records all the sensory input into a separate file, which can then be replayed over to re-experience said sensations, or live someone else’s experiences. Halliday tries to frame it as a tool to generate communication and empathy, seemingly all without acknowledging the potential creepiness of that. But hey. Who knows. Maybe that’s because this is the setup stage, and it’ll pay off eventually.

I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

Add “reducing Japan to anime” to the list of things the book has failed to improve upon. By the way, the narration insisted on spelling out ONI letter by letter earlier, so it’s weird to make that link now. It’s also just kind of inelegant to just tell us “this is the symbolism behind the name”, but that’s just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from this book.

Anyway, the reason Halliday kept this for his successor to find is he wants Wade to test out the technology and decide if humanity is ready for it. Why Halliday thinks the most glorified pop culture trivia / video game competition qualifies you for such a decision should be a problem, but sadly, a lot of billionaires have said and done a lot of dumb and eerily similar things in the past few years since I read Ready Player One, so actually, I can’t fault the book for that one. Tragically, our fates really are in the hands of people who should rightfully be cartoon villains.

To his credit, Wade does question Halliday’s motives in keeping this under wraps at all rather than releasing it himself. So hey, maybe it really is setting something up.

Wade goes back to his office with the ONI, and we’re treated with this lovely piece of narration:

I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)

There’s a lot to unpack about the implications this has for their relationship, but it’s way too early in the book for me to editorialize when one character hasn’t even been on the page yet. So I’ll just leave it here for the record. Hopefully you see the problem without me needing to point it out anyway. If not, feel free to hit my inbox.

So Wade, confident in the fact that Halliday would have warned him if there were any risks to using the ONI, decides to try it out. Even though he immediately follows up that statement with this:

According to the ONI documentation, forcibly removing the headset while it was in operation could severely damage the wearer’s brain and/or leave them in a permanent coma. So the titanium-reinforced safety bands made certain this couldn’t happen. I found this little detail comforting instead of unsettling. Riding in an automobile was risky, too, if you didn’t wear your seatbelt…

Wade. My dude. What the fuck is this simile. And why don’t you see that maybe a machine where you’re forcibly trapping yourself inside a virtual reality might be dangerous? Hell, when I said this was setting something up, I was expecting something vaguely interesting about the potential breach of privacy, or how you don’t need to literally walk in someone’s shoes to feel empathy for them, or anything substantial, but now I’m worried it’ll just end up as “man, sometimes science fiction machines will scramble your brain, isn’t that weird”?

Like, I don’t know, to me “it will put you in a coma” sounds like a good reason for Halliday not to release the ONI. Maybe we can still make it into a commentary on how corporations will sell stuff they know is directly harmful if it can make them a profit. Who knows.

The book waffles on about more risks, and the mechanics of how the ONI activates, and the warning disclaimer when it does turn on. Specifically, there’s a time limit of twelve consecutive hours, after which you’ll be automatically logged out, because yes, using the thing for too long can also cause brain damage.

Gregarious Simulation Systems will not be held responsible for any injuries caused by improper use of the OASIS Neural Interface.

See, now there’s the sort of thing that could be a source for commentary, but no, instead it’s thrown in there like it’s nothing and Wade glosses over the entire warning, and instead keep wondering why Halliday didn’t just release the ONI if even the safety disclaimers were in place.

By the way: this whole system has apparently gone through several independent human trials already, so I’m finding it hard to imagine that it’s actually a secret Halliday took to the grave as Wade says. Unless he also had everyone involved in those trials killed afterwards. Or maybe they all ended up with brain damage which rendered them incapable of talking about it.

And before you think I’m being unfair and maybe we’re supposed to understand that ourselves even if the protagonist doesn’t, I’ll remind you that the book didn’t trust its reader to know what the number 42 is a reference to, or what an oni is, even though I don’t think anyone in the target audience wouldn’t know about these two things.

There’s also the fact that, since this book came out, a video game did release with a scene intentionally designed to cause seizures, and it had countless fans flocking to defend it over that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not assuming this book’s stance on whether your video game console causes brain damage and possibly coma is actually a bad thing, or just an acceptable risk.

Wade certainly seems to think so, since he agrees to the terms of service.

As the timestamp faded away, it was replaced by a short message, just three words long—the last thing I would see before I left the real world and entered the virtual one. But they weren’t the three words I was used to seeing. I—like every other ONI user to come—was greeted by a new message Halliday had created, to welcome those visitors who had adopted his new technology: READY PLAYER TWO

Well now that’s just silly.

And that’s our opening cutscene. And while this post is already long enough, I feel like I have to go on to chapter 0, because it feels like barely anything has happened so far. We didn’t even introduce any new character motivation or conflict, or a mystery to set the plot into motion, unless I’m supposed to think “why didn’t Halliday release this?” counts.

So Wade is back into the OASIS, and tells us about how much more real it all feels thanks to the ONI. I especially have to question how he can smell or taste anything—both of which he tells us he can. Like, who coded that? Did Halliday implement every single smell and taste himself, without anyone noticing? I hope you don’t need me to tell you that’s not typically how features are added to a large-scale video game.

If it feels like I’m nitpicking at the logic of the book, even though I always say I’m not very interested in that and would rather talk themes, it’s because I am, because there isn’t much else to discuss so far. Wade is happy about tasting virtual fruit. That’s the scene.

He tests out if he can feel pain, but no, the ONI reduces pain (a gunshot is translated as “a hard pinch”). On one hand, good, it would be a nightmare otherwise. On the other hand, I sort of hope there’s a setting for that in there, because otherwise, you just lost an entire clientele of kinksters.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

Ah, now we have some juicy themes. Because if you think this is the inevitable final step in the evolution of video games, I invite you to look at literally any other art form, and what happened to them once hyperrealism became easy. Hint: they didn’t stop evolving, because it turns out realism isn’t the only goal one can achieve with art.

The realism discussion is not a new one in video games, mind you. In case you’re out of the loop: most of the big-budget blockbuster games (“AAA” as they’re known) are aiming for hyperrealism nowadays, and it results in development teams being forced to work in horrible conditions (known with the equally horrible euphemism of “crunch”). And, because it turns out that 1) humans working themselves to the bones isn’t healthy and 2) racing for realism with little to no vision besides it makes for poor creativity, a lot of these games come out as disappointments. Oh, there are hordes of Gamers™ who will defend them to the bitter end, but inevitably, in the months following release, the defense cools off while the criticism keeps on going, because the defense was a knee-jerk reaction born of a mix of people hyping themselves up for a game they hadn’t seen that much of yet, then attaching a part of their identity to liking that thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this throwaway line feels like it comes from someone who is so out of touch as to accidentally support a world view that has in fact resulted in the biggest part of the industry stagnating artistically while growing more toxic for the people working in it. All the while, more and more independent games come out every year, proving that that realism is nowhere near the most important thing to making a game good, and that you can achieve much better results with a small team.

What I’m trying to say is: watch Jim Sterling’s channel, they’ve been bleeding out subscribers since they came out as nonbinary and make much better commentary on this topic than I could, and play Hades.

Back to the book, which sadly hasn’t become any more interesting since I decided to go on a tangent. Wade tests the ONI functions some more, all the while musing on how he knows Samantha would disapprove but that he doesn’t care, because what loving relationship doesn’t consist of that?

Among the functions, he tries the ONI files, the aforementioned recordings of someone else’s experiences. Specifically, a woman, which Wade tells us by telling us he suddenly has breasts, I suppose because Ernest Cline saw that subreddit about men writing women and went “I want a piece of that”. Oh, and also, those sample files were recorded from real people, in the real world. And yes, this goes exactly where you think it does.

SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni

Look, I actually started writing a complaint about the boobs thing, and I deleted it, but now Cline is doing it on purpose. So, here goes: I saw a quote from this book on Twitter that looked like Cline attempting to make up for Wade’s casual transphobia in the first book. It wasn’t good, but it at least sounded like he was trying. So to immediately get this is…a lot? Let’s go for a lot.

I can almost excuse the use of “M” and “F”. You gotta name your files and you could excuse a non-exhaustive list. But…nonbinary? On one hand, I want to know what Cline means. On the other hand, I don’t think he can come up with an answer I’ll find satisfactory.

We are thankfully spared from finding out because Wade has just lost his virginity to Samantha a few days ago and he’s 1) not ready for this and 2) pretty sure this counts as cheating. You could make a case that this is more like porn, but I can see that this is more of a personal distinction anyway, and I can respect that one. Plus, you know. I don’t want to find out.

Wade logs off, and he can’t tell the difference between the OASIS with the ONI, and decides this will change the world. And then it’s back to the “how did he do it and keep it a secret”, even though Wade now finds out in the documentation that this had been in development for twenty-five years, basically since the OASIS launched. So it’s not really that it’s a secret, so much as there are a lot of people under very strict NDAs out there. Or, again, they’re all dead and/or otherwise incapacitated.

The ONI is the product of the Accessibility Research Lab, and Wade tells us about other stuff that the lab has produced using similar technology, mostly for medical purposes.

GSS patented each of the Accessibility Research Lab’s inventions, but Halliday never made any effort to profit from them. Instead, he set up a program to give these neuroprosthetic implants away, to any OASIS users who could benefit from them. GSS even subsidized the cost of their implant surgery.

Look, it’s nice that you want Halliday to be the good guy through and through, but it’s kind of hard to take any social commentary seriously when you think this is how a billionaire is made. Hell, even when he shut down the lab and fired its entire staff, he gave them a big enough severance package to set them for life. You know. Capitalism!

Hey, remember when Samantha said she was going to end world hunger if she won the contest, a thing billionaires right now could be doing, but aren’t, and she is now the co-owner of GSS? Yeah, I kind of hope the book remembers that too.

Speaking of the co-owners, the book just completely skips over the debate that our four main characters have over whether or not to release the ONI to the world. All we know is that they voted, and the vote goes in favor of releasing it. I mean, why have characters who could have opinions and feelings that could create a discussion? That might make us care about them! And who wants to care about characters in a story?

We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.

What exactly is “the lowest possible price” here? Your company literally owns money. Like, OASIS money is real money. There is literally nothing stopping you from giving them away, especially because what you’re giving away is access to the platform you’re already running for a profit.

It’s almost like, even trying to make “good billionaires” out of its protagonists, the book can’t stop and actually make them significantly good.

Oh, I should mention. If you thought my Ready Player One review was angry at capitalism, wait until you see what the past couple years have done to me.

Anyway, once they his 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a new riddle shows up on Halliday’s website. Because yep: our plot is apparently not about the implications of releasing the ONI, or any of the potential ideological discussions associated with that, it’s another riddle. Oh boy, do I wish I’d known that.

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role For each fragment my heir must pay a toll To once again make the Siren whole

I cannot wait to have the book give me just not enough information to solve the riddle until it’s solved by the book itself. That was so much fun the other…what was it, five times? Six times? Something like that. Wade already tells us the Siren might be Kira Morrow, because her alias was named after one of the sirens of Greek myth, so I can’t wait for that plot point to stick around. It was so fun to hear all about this man pining for another man’s wife the first time!

So this is the “Shard Riddle”. People are apparently convinced it was made by Wade and his crew as a publicity stunt, but of course, they know that that isn’t the case, and they also don’t know what that riddle is supposed to lead to. So, that’s great. We have a puzzle, and we also don’t know what the stakes are. All we know is that Wade wants to solve the puzzle essentially because it’s a challenge.

We skip over a year, and Wade tells us about how IOI collapses and gets absorbed by GSS because of the ONI’s launch. Remember IOI? They were the bad guys, so I guess we have to cheer?

GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform.To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.

On one hand: good for the slave. On the other hand: not gonna cheer for a monopoly, you guys.

Another year’s skip, and now 99% of the OASIS users are using the ONI, and yes, that includes trading their experiences with one another too. And I guess we’re still hand-waving any possible problems associated with that technology, because the technology is made so that all recordings must be shared and played through the OASIS.

This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users.

How? Do you know any of the problems associated with content moderations on the current platforms? I don’t know if I want to point to Youtube’s extremely faulty algorithm, Twitter’s complete apathy towards its Nazis, or Facebook doing moderation by making underpaid staff watch all potentially problematic content, which resulted in serious psychological damage to said staff.

You can’t just say that as if it solved everything. The chapter later says this is handled by an AI called “CenSoft”, and as an AI engineer myself, let me tell you: this is not going to work. Again: Youtube is the way it is for a reason.

It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.

And again, monopolies are totally a good thing as long as it’s in the right hands!

When I’m implying that the book does not care for any of these potential problems, I mean it. These enormous ethical issues are sidestepped in cold narratin, and we just keep going on introducing new slang that I hate, but have to quote so help you keep up.

“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.

There. You have been infodumped.

In the midst of all this (still extremely dry) exposition about how this changed media, we also get this tidbit:

You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences.

Now, I was going to rant about this, but then, a page later, this happens and spares me the trouble:

I’d struggled with OASIS addiction before the ONI was released. Now logging on to the simulation was like mainlining some sort of chemically engineered superheroin.

So, you are aware that addiction isn’t just possible, but extremely facilitated by this. But sure, no worries! It’s perfectly safe! Because our protagonists are good.

Also, remember how the last book ended on a weak attempt at having a moral that maybe the real world is good, actually? Yeah, Wade tells us the ONI helps poor people live enjoyable lives in the OASIS. So. Fuck that message, I guess. It only applies if you’re the literal wealthiest man on Earth.

And me? All my dreams had come true. I’d gotten stupidly rich and absurdly famous. I’d fallen in love with my dream girl and she had fallen in love with me. Surely I was happy, right? Not so much, as this account will show.

Aside from the aforementioned returning OASIS affiction, there’s the Shard riddle that Wade is now obsessed with, to the point of offering a billion-dollar reward to anyone with information about the riddle’s answer.

I announced this reward with a stylized short film that I modeled after Anorak’s Invitation. I hoped it would seem like a lighthearted play on Halliday’s contest instead of a desperate cry for help. It seemed to work.

On one hand: good, Wade finally has a character flaw that the book actually acknowledges as a character flaw. I can work with that. On the other hand: this is all told to me in such a dispassionate that I am dreading how the book will handle this character flaw. Which is to say, I’m not expecting it to be very good.

(For a brief time, some of the younger, more idealistic shard hunters referred to themselves as “shunters” to differentiate themselves from their elder counterparts. But when everyone began to call them “sharters” instead, they changed their minds and started to call themselves gunters too. The moniker still fit. The Seven Shards were Easter eggs hidden by Halliday, and we were all hunting for them.)

Especially when this is something the narration feels is more important to tell me about.

Anyway, skip another year, and a gunter finally leads Wade to the First Shard. Solved that riddle, I guess. And wait, wasn’t part of why IOI was ~evil~ in the first book that they were paying people to find the Easter Egg for them? How is this any different, Wade?

And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race. As one of the only eyewitnesses to these historic events, I feel obligated to give my own written account of what occurred. So that future generations—if there are any—will have all the facts at their disposal when they decide how to judge my actions.

And that is the end of our chapter 0. And can I just say: what a mess already. I don’t think my snark can properly convey how utterly devoid of emotion this book’s writing is, and that alone is honestly more of a turn-off than anything else in the book so far. Even, knowing that I railed about it in the first book, I still feel newly unprepared for it. And it’s not like this double-prologue is making me hopeful that the book will show an ounce more critical thinking—or decent fucking humanity towards marginalized groups—as its predecessor.

So, that’s a lot to look forward to! For the sake of my sanity and schedule, don’t expect me to do such big posts every time. I’ll probably do one chapter a week from now on, if that. We’re in for a long ride, but I hope it’s worth it, at least.

#ready player two #ernest cline #st: ready player two #book reviews

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anime-169 · 3 years

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How do you play Anime Games with Your Super Heroes

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The Pokemon anime series is based on the Pokemon videogame series that is part ดูการ์ตูนออนไลน์ of the umbrella Pokemon franchise. The first Japan-based broadcast of the Pokemon TV series aired only in Japan. However the show has also been aired across North America, Europe and Australia. The original show has been created by three other shows. In reality, the term "Pokemon", that is abbreviated ดูอนิเมะ to "Pocket Monsters" in Japanese refers อนิเมะ to the Japanese brand. Pokemon is a reference อนิเมะ to more than 500 fictional Pokemon creatures. Satoshi Tajiri One's love of childhood for insects was the inspiration of the Pokemon universe. The director of the franchise's executive Tajiri Oniw was a fan of collecting insects when he was a child.

5. Speed Racer

The adaptation was named after the anime show "Mach GoGoGo". Mach GoGoGo was made a series in the year. From 1967 to 1968, Speed Racer TV Series was a hit in the United States. Between 1967 and 1968, 52 episodes were created. In the 1990s, specific chapters from the Mach GoGoGo manga were published. In 2008, "Speed Racer", an American film, came out.

The music videos of anime feature incredible animation. They are full of action and usually depict the plot ดูการ์ตูนออนไลน์ of the song that you're listening to or show you're watching. They are accessible อนิเมะ on the internet in various formats. There are also DVDs available featuring a variety of music videos that are in the anime format. Wallpapers could feature anime characters like Naruto as well as Samurai Champloo. There are even your favorite characters from anime films in these wallpapers, like the ones from Full Metal Alchemist and Ninja Scroll. Wallpapers can be placed that feature characters from Manga comics on your desktop.

#anime #อนิเมะ #ดูอนิเมะ #ดูการ์ตูนออนไลน์

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varialibraria · 3 years

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Review: Sneeze: Naoki Urasawa Story Collection

by Urasawa Naoki; english translation by John Werry with touch-up & lettering by Steve Dutro, cover & interior design by Yukiko Whitley. Published by Viz Media

Song of choice: Urasawa Naoki — Bob Lennon Recommended meal: A cold bottle of soda pop fresh from the fridge at the store, the condensation on the outside of the bottle like the sweat dripping off you in the summer heat. Pair it with a crisp, cool apple of your favorite variety, the sort where biting into it reminds you of the oncoming chill of winter setting in during late autumn.

While I first became aware of Urasawa's work through his longform series like Monster, Billy Bat, and Pluto, I'd argue that it's this collection of short stories that shows his real talent. Like most manga creators, Urasawa's serves as both artist and writer (assistants are usually uncredited in the fast-paced and thankless manga industry; whether Sneeze features any additional creators in the original Japanese edition is not apparent).

Sneeze's collection is eclectic; the first two stories ("Damiyan!" and "Throw Toward the Moon!") could be described as crime drama built around psychic powers, while the following "The Old Guys" is an autobiographical work that jumps between scenes linked by Urasawa's observation of older men who share his love of music. "Henry and Charles" is a comedy in the vein of classic western cartoons, focused on the antics of a pair of mice avoiding a cat. The collection then returns to true-life stories of music, where "It's a Beautiful Day" is based on stories related to Urasaw by the late musician "Enken", AKA Kenji Endo; the following "Musica Nostra" is a short set of Urasawa's observations about guitarists, as well as his five-part "L.A. Music Travelogue". The following "Kaiju Kingdom" seems to link to Urasawa's interest in the genre as expressed in his ongoing series Asadora, but is focused on a French kaiju otaku who visits Japan to see the sites where giant monsters attacked. The final story, "Solo Mission" is a sci-fi short, but suffered in the digital format due to having been originally published as a French BD; its left-to-right reading order reverses it from the entire remaining text, and its twist ending is easily spoiled by readers who don't know to jump to the end of the book and read backwards after the previous story.

I mentioned that Urasawa is both an artist and author for a reason, because he's actually what you call a triple threat: he's a musician as well, as seen in the music of choice this time around. His passionate interest in world music including British and American rock shines in this collection, and it's interesting to see how the mood contrasts with and influences his fictional works. Endo's name was elsewhere lent to a fictional musician in Urasawa's "20th Century Boys"; I'd even hazard a guess that those interests broadened Urasawa's horizons; both Sneeze and his long-form works feature frequent inclusion of foreign characters and settings. There's drama, comedy, painful romance, and supernatural weirdness, but the global scope of the work still manages to feel very personal and human.

This all ties in Urasawa's ability as an illustrator; whether representing real people or envisioning fictional characters, his style has a strongly western-influenced touch that tends to feature diverse face shapes. Per stereotypes, white characters can mostly be picked out by comparatively oversized and detailed noses, but the more serious visual style of Urasawa's pencils makes each feel like a real and unique person. Faces are instantly recognizable even with strange expressions or different hairstyles; expressions are conveyed with passionate intensity, bodies are diverse and postures powerful.

Overall, Sneeze is a solid collection that shows much of the range of its creator's ability and interests. My only complaint is that the localization team didn't seem to make much of an effort to explain the contexts of some of the nonfiction bits; I had to look elsewhere to learn who Endo was.

#video #book review #naoki urasawa #urasawa naoki #sneeze

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redlerred7 · 3 years

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4, 11, and 30? Hope you're having a good day!

Well, this is a surprising ask from the person I reblogged that ask meme from. Give and take, I guess. I'm doing p well. Currently cooking a late breakfast/early lunch for myself before I try to get something creative done, likely writing related.

4. Have you been published or want to be published?

Unless you count the short story I wrote for my highschool newspaper back in the day, no I have not been published—and I go back and forth whether I want to be. The thing with traditionally published fiction, specifically novels, is that it typically has to be published all at once. I just don't have the right mindset to be able to sit on a finished chapter until every other chapter is finished as well. As a result, I tend to stick to fanfiction, where unfinished stories tend to be more accepted (though I do still try to poke at OC fiction from time to time)

11. Books/Authors that most influenced your works

Oof, this is a hard question. I've read quite a number of books from various authors but none of them really influence me as much as works in other mediums have. I think all of the ones I can name off the top of my head are writers who worked on Japanese cartoons.

Okada Mari is a screen writer known for writing stories that have deep emotional impact. The reason she's near the top of my list is because of how well many of her works captured the distinct anguish of being a teenager, which really struck me back when I first encountered her works. A lot of the dialogue she's written can be considered eye-roll worthy, with characters declaring their own emotions out loud in the most melodramatic ways possible, but as a teenager without the life experience to know better, that heavy-handed drama was exactly what I needed for the emotions to land. Her later works also have more mature, nuanced characters, but the the emotional bludgeon is the reason she's on the list.

Urobuchi Gen, also known as Gen the Butcher, is known for writing extremely dark and depressing stories about broken characters trying to live in a world without fairness. He writes about systems, and ideologies, and the sheer horror that would result in taking either to their logical extremes. He writes about morality, will power, and choice to do what one thinks is right, even in the face of unbelievable despair. He writes about humanity in the most raw and unpleasant way he can, and yet demands that you to not look away, asks you to accept it, dares you to still love it, because for as much evil is in the world, the good is still worth fighting for.

And finally, NISIOISIN, perhaps one of the most unconventional authors on this list. He writes completely obtuse and seemingly incomprehensible stories about people who cannot possibly be real. And yet, buried under the sheer absurdity of their personalities, actions, and circumstances, are characters who are still undeniably as real and human as fictional characters can be. Ultimately, the stories he tells are pretty simple, but buried under layer upon layer of abstraction, distraction, and alarmingly illegal actions. It constantly feels like it's style-over-substance, until you realize that the style is part of the substance. The uncanny structure and pacing. The deliberately asinine plots. The stupidity and goofiness and absolute yikes of everything. All of it equals to greater than the sum of its parts.

I can probably think of more but I'll keep it at three. This one question has already taken me longer than I expected.

30. Fav story idea you haven't started writing yet

Okay, so nearly all the OC fiction ideas I want to write about are technically ideas I haven't started writing yet, and I'm not sure which of those ideas are my favorites. But that's a copout answer so I'll at least explain the story idea that I think people will find most interesting.

My primary OC story is about a dream-world afterlife where characters who die too early get to live the rest of their lives in an absurdist megacity run by wacky, petty, and/or unknowable dream gods. The catch is that they have to occasionally fight monsters, many of which are the manifestations of their own trauma. It's supposed to be allegory for entering adulthood with a mental illness, though I'm unsure if I'll be able to pull it off.

Whoo boy that was a long one. Thanks for the ask! I don't get these often, especially not writing-related ones. Feels good to talk about my works with someone.

#replies #ettnawritesnstudies #text #post #redlerred7 writes

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superrobotmonkeyteamramblingsgo · 4 years

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7 PEOPLE I’D LIKE TO KNOW BETTER. rules: fill this up and then tag 7 people you’d like to know better!

one / ( alias / name ): Acara, though I have been called Rambler before two / ( date of birth ): May 29th three / ( zodiac sign ): Gemini Monkey four / ( height ): 5′ 9″ (actually more like 5′ 8 and 3/4″ but I round up lol) five / ( hobbies ): doodling, writing, reading, playing with pets, going for walks both outside and on wikis six / ( favorite color ): Yellow! seven / ( favorite books ): Hm, does manga count? Because it would be probably be Dream Saga by Megumi Tachikawa. This series holds a close place to my heart, as I managed to get all volumes of it back in the early 2000s, before it went out of print. When I was in middle-school and reading all the manga I could get my hands on, this one stood out to me. While plenty of manga and anime have references and allusions to Japaneses mythology, this was the first one I read that came out and said ‘here is the creation myth of Japan and here is the myth of Susanoo rescuing the princess’, which kept it from going all over my kid head. It kind of became a starting off point for me to learn more about the mythology, and the art became a big influence on me. eight / ( last song listened to ): Hell or High Water by The Rescues nine / ( last film or show watched ): Other than SRMTHFG? Hm, probably was the Ducktales reboot. ten / ( story behind url ): I ramble, a lot. My main blog is randomramblingtidbits but here I am rambling about SRHMHG! eleven / ( inspiration for muse / talk about an oc ): Oh boy, you ready to see my rambling first hand? :D

So once upon a time I had this massive SRMTHG fanfic I began writing after season three wrapped up. Even back then I was of the opinion that adding more female characters to a show is always a good thing, and as I said before the backstory of the store is a sausage feast. So I began creating all these female lore characters, who more often than not also had a robot monkey friend. Then I began pruning them down as I grew up and my ideas matured, as well as incorporating stuff from season four. As it is, Pheena is a mesh of aspects from about three or four old OC’s.

The main idea was that there is a lot of unknown when it comes to the backstory of the Monkey Team. Somehow it was foreseen that there would be a Chosen One. Somehow the Alchemist had to stick around long enough to complete the team despite how advance his transformation appeared in Golden Age. Somehow Shuggazoom stayed protected between the time of Captain Shuggazoom and the Monkey Team. Somehow the Skeleton King was kept at bay and away from Shuggazoom until season one. Somehow the monkeys went to asleep after Mandarin.

It is just easy to replace all those ‘somehows’ with ‘someone’, and thus Pheena.

Similarly, Flora originated from several robot monkey OC’s, several of whom were the robot monkey companions to the same characters Pheena originated from. I use to have alot of RM OC’s because...I actually thought there were going to be more monkeys in the show? That might sound weird, but between Sokko, Mandarin (remember, I thought he was a random unrelated monkey who went Krinkle on the team), and the Robo-Apes, middle-school Acara was sure that there would be more monkey side characters. I was so sure that Shuggazoom was just going to be this place where monkeys lived alongside the humans, with morere characters like Jinmay who had a monkey companion, but who wasn’t actually weren’t like evil. So Pheena and Flora are kind of an exploration of that girl and her monkey idea that Jinmay and Sokko presented and their human-monkey relationship acting as a foil to Chiro and the team’s (but especially with Antauri).

And while Flora being a normal monkey came later, that further explores the idea of seeing how the robot monkeys would react to a regular monkey. As I mentioned before, she really fills in the role of bratty child that UltraForce!Chiro was suppose to be, as well as being something of a ‘little sister’ to the team’s dynamics. And when I was in fandom like Sonic the Hedgehog, Friendship is Magic, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I was floored by way fans used real world animal facts to enhance their stories, weaving in biology with fiction to make such interesting tales. I am a veterinary nurse, so seeing animal facts utilized is for anthros and cartoons animals always fascinated me. So Flora became a good way for me to try my hand at the same thing, integrating more real world monkey facts into the fan narrative I’m crafting. The Spottova twins are similar, being a way for me to utuizlie what I learned about cotton-top tamarins and family structures of monkeys.

...and this is why I’m called a rambler XD

AGGED BY: @sweetcircuits and @monkeyinaround! Thanks for the shoutout and sorry I took so long to respond! TAGGING: Hm, who in the SRMTHFG! fandom hasn’t been tagged? Let’s see, there is @ar-blackshaw, @iudormu, @obscuraperla and has fandom mom @netbug009 done it yet? IDK, help yourself, pools open feel free to jum pin.

#Tag games

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dustedmagazine · 4 years

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Listed: Patrick Shiroishi

Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American musician who lives and works in Los Angeles. He plays woodwinds, effects and keyboards, and his work has spanned ultra-complex prog rock with Upsilon Acrilux, cutting-edge jazz with musicians such as Alex Cline and Vinny Golia, and harder-to-situate improvisational efforts, which include a pair of cassettes by different trios on Astral Spirits. Early in 2020 Thin Wrist records released Descension, a harrowing contemplation of America’s heritage of ethnically antagonistic incarceration. Bill Meyer wrote of that effort, “it wants you to know something, and think about what you know.” Accordingly, Shiroishi’s list promulgates both musical and broader cultural knowledge.

Here are 10 books that are important/stayed with me over the years: 5 on music and 5 fiction.

Free Jazz in Japan: A Personal History by Teruto Soejima

I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the free jazz scene in Japan, but boy did this book open my eyes. Tons of great information in detail and I discovered a lot of albums I had no idea about. Highly recommended.

Steve Lacy: Conversations by Jason Weiss

35 interviews taking place from 1959-2004 presented in chronological order, I admired Steve before reading this and gained a whole new level of respect for him after. A true trailblazer.

A Wailing of a Town by Craig Ibarra

San Pedro birthed two of the most important punk bands ever (The Minutemen and Saccharine Trust). Reading about the scene in the late 70s and early 80s, the tours that both bands went on, to shows with Black Flag and Descendents, this book is just fuckin fun.

Confronting Silence by Toru Takemitsu

I absolutely love Takemitsu’s work but had no idea this book existed until Alex Cline told me about it. Collected are his writings on nature, music, art & composing... a brief but insightful look into Takemitsu’s mind.

Songs of the Unsung by Horace Tapscott

Horace is a legend and to me, still does not get all the love that he deserves. Not only did he write the Dark Tree and formed the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, but he did so much for the city of Los Angeles. An inspiration and hero.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

My favorite book by my favorite author. Murakami has a way of pulling you into his world within the first couple of pages whether it be the dystopia of 1Q84 or the cyberpunk Hardboiled Wonderland. This one just had some sort of charm that has stuck with me even to this day (one of my duos is named after one of the protagonists). KFC’s Colonel Sanders even makes an appearance, what more could you ask for?

Learning by Andrew Choate

A beautiful piece of work written by a dear friend, I practically read the entire thing in one sitting. Alternating between narratives of events leading up to and following his father’s death and original poetry, I felt for Andrew, laughed out loud and reflected on my own life. Seek this out!

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

This was (sadly) one of the few books outside of reading assignments I read during my high school career...it was during a summer where my family went fishing in the mountains. My mom couldn’t believe I was reading instead of playing on my Gameboy. I know there’s films and a manga with the same story, but I implore you to start here.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut is truly hilarious and someone I wish I could have hung out with even for a day. His recurring themes such as free will & man’s relation to technology appear here in addition to the threat of nuclear destruction which I’m sure was on everyone’s minds in 1963 when he was writing this. I also took inspiration from this book and named a group after the Bokonoist term for sun, “Borasisi.”

Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore

I’ve been into Swamp Thing ever since the cartoon was on TV when I was in elementary school. This is the story line written by Moore and he brings out the best of the characters in every way possible. One of my favorite comics hands down.

#dusted magazine #listed #patrick shiroishi #teruto soejima #steve lacy #jason weiss #craig ibarra #toru takemitsu #horace tapscott #haruki murakami #andrew choate #koushun takami #kurt vonnegut #swamp thing #alan moore

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dlkardenal · 4 years

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Sweet and deadly - The Hidden Badass trope

Hey there, travelers!

Today’s specimen is a controversial trope I have a love-hate relationship with. When done right, it can create wonders but when creators goof this up, oh boi… This one dooms generic shonen anime series and YA fantasy stories but has the potential to elevate basically every other trope there is-this is the hidden badass.

As the name suggests, the concept is fairly simple: take a shy, introverted and generally plain character and sprinkle on a twist where they show some secret and extremely flashy superpower that nobody knew they had to save the day. We first noticed this recurring element in Japanese cartoons where the titular badass was nearly always a teenage or even younger girl with a sunshine cupcake personality that spurred every viral male protagonist in a mile radius to protect her, just to take over the spotlight when the situation got really messy. Think about Lucy from Elfen Lied, Neliel from Bleach, or more recently Elizabeth from Seven Deadly Sins. At first, both Lory and I thought this to be an anime-only thing, but from that point on, we noticed this more and more in other works of fiction. How?

Well, there are a couple of ways creators utilize this trope, ranging from bad to amazing. The anime version sees them mostly as a plot device, a convenient in-world mechanism to solve problems when other options run out. This could happen when a hero is facing an enemy he can’t match for some reason, be it bravery, foolish boldness, or necessity. In these settings changing the story could deter either the protagonist’s character or the plot itself, so an external tool is needed to solve the situation. That doesn’t sound bad in itself, but you can mock this up really quickly.

The easiest way to annoy your reader with this is to stick to the tried out and tested formula without changing a thing. Just recreate the sprinkle cupcake with a war machine split personality, going from harmless to merciless, and push both character traits to their comic limits. You can earn bonus audience hate-points if the hidden badass has telekinetic powers or superhuman instincts and/or speed so they can massacre a military task force.

The second easiest way is to leave this trope hanging after the situation is resolved, assuring the readers that this was solely for convenience’s sake. If you want to avoid these yuckups, you need to integrate the badassery into your world. If a little girl suddenly goes berserk and evaporates an entire city, there will be consequences. Other characters yet unaware of this power will have opinions, their perspective will change and if they aren’t the holy paladin-type, some might even try and make use of this nuclear warhead hidden inside a tiny body. Also, please for the love of God, leave telekinesis out, it’s been done a zillion times. Be creative!

Another reason for this trope is more about the heroes than the titular hidden badass. If this trope character is particularly vulnerable before the great fuck-everything-up moment, the hero might form a sort of defensive personality towards them. You know, the knight in shining armor. Then when the badassery happens they can move on to a power couple situation now on equal footing. This way the start of their relationship is more alike to many young adult romance plots (or at least the older titles in this genre), but it can grow out of the damsel-defender setting. This can be really good if handled carefully.

The main thing here in my opinion is the power balance and consistency. If the titular badass ridiculously outshines the hero it’s just a switch between roles (which can be a great story know that I think of it, just different from our original aim). Also, if the badassery is once-in-a-lifetime, then it falls into the same category as the previous paragraph where it’s painfully obvious it’s just a plot device.

As I mentioned, this trope can amazingly complement a lot of others like it does in many western popular media. My favorite is the coupling of the hidden badass and the outcast tropes in Freeform’s Siren. (Yay, finally!)

For those of you who missed this amazing show, Siren is set in America’s west coast in the fictional town of Bristol Cove, a tourist attraction known as the mermaid capital of the world. However, the local legends get a little too real when a mysterious young girl named Ryn appears in search of her older sister allegedly captured by the humans.

Ryn is a perfect example of how to handle the outcast-badass mix. She’s a mermaid with unnatural physical strength and mesmerizing voice magic that can fry anyone’s brain making the into a lovestruck drooling idiot. Also, because of the clever choice in casting, she looks tiny, adorable, and defenseless. So far nothing deviates too much about the trope, but the show’s brilliance is realism. Ryn as a mermaid knows jack shit about human society, and although she’s a quick study because of her more advanced brain functions, it takes a long ass time until she figures out to wear clothes, why not to kill anyone and how her siren song affects the humans around them. Without the help of marine biologist and lovestruck drooling idiot Ben, she couldn’t step outside and walk for a minute before killing someone and getting herself discovered and hunted like her sister. She is terrifying and powerful, but she needs humans to navigate her through society and eventually reach her goal. This element stays with her throughout the 4 seasons of this show (as of now). Her dissimilarity always and forever means certain benefits but handicaps as well, which creates a feeling that it’s an organic part of the show’s world and not just a plot element to sometimes cause trouble.

There are a lot of other tropes the hidden badass mixes with, like the sexy bad guy or the chosen one, but I think I rambled on for long enough for now. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have a favorite hidden badass, feel free to share it! Also, what did you think of Siren?I’ll see you next week, stay sharp, travelers! Cheers,Dar

#trope #writing trope #writing #writerblr #wrtiteblr #book #series #siren #ryn #bookblr

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loopy777 · 4 years

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You've got me curious now as to what anime youve seen, enjoyed and why.

Oof, I don’t track that type of thing. I’ve been asked about anime I like previously, and I feel like I always forget something. I suppose I should start a MyAnimeList one of these days, just for reference.

So let’s list everything I can remember, as well as a pithy reaction.

Baccano!This one is just so much fun. It’s violent and crass in a classy way, it’s funny in a weird way, and it’s a great example of a non-linear narrative. I love it.

Code Geass (Season 1)Ugh, I only watched this one because people solicited my opinion on it. Well, my opinion is that it’s not as smart as it wants to be, there’s too much contrived melodrama (and considering the wild premise, that’s saying something), and Kallen would be a wonderful and interesting character if she wasn’t always being demeaned for fan-service. I quit when the first season finale kicked off, because I felt things were just getting too contrived. I hear it really fell apart in the second season.

Cowboy BebopI found this a bit pretentious. It had good episodes and bad episodes. The production quality is good. But I'm not sure why it's legendary. Still, I liked its sense of humor, and enjoyed it when it wasn’t trying to be super serious. My favorite character is Ed.

Demon SlayerI'm mainly watching this because my brother wanted to give it a try on Toonami, but I kind of checked out when it unceremoniously removed everything difficult about the sister being a demon and made her into an order-following sidekick that fits in a suitcase. Now the latest episode introduced a loud annoying side character, so we may quit. I have no idea why this one is so popular.

Fullmetal AlchemistCovered

Gatchaman CrowdsI was asked to watch this one, as well, but it went a lot better than Code Geass. It’s a bit weird, and I think it's naively optimistic about the internet in many ways, but I still found it's exploration of Internet-age superheroes to be interesting, and it's the best, most mature take on the Power Rangers-style ‘sentai’ genre that I've seen. I don't know how well it matches up with its Gatchaman legacy, but as its own thing, it's pretty good.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (including 2nd Gig)This is another legendary one that I think is good but a bit over-rated. It's a good piece of modern Cyberpunk, but it's very talky, and very jargon-filled. I'm almost convinced that the viewer is not meant to follow half of the conversations, that they're just part of the ambiance. I tended to like the stand-alone episodes better than the storyline episodes. Still, it’s a very smart series, and probably the best thing in the franchise, from what I’ve heard.

Log Horizon (first season only)I’ll tell you what- I think it’s possible to make a good anime with the premise of people from the modern, real world entering a fantasy realm (either another dimension or a VR video game). Log Horizon did not end up being that ideal. The main character is a Gary Stu, his romances with girls who are either ten years old or just look like they’re ten years old are creepy, and it got boring seeing the protagonists’ plans always succeed without much of a hitch.

Lupin III (series 4 and 5)I like this franchise when it's being clever, when it's springing a twist while playing fair. Sometimes, though, it doesn't play fair with its twists, leaving me underwhelmed. And while the regular cast is amusing, they're fairly shallow characters; this isn't always a bad thing, as that allows them to slot into all kinds of genre fare, but does limit the storytelling ambitions. It’s fine.

Macross franchiseSuper Dimensional Fortress MacrossI still like the original, despite how dated it is. It's probably the best possible implementation of 'soap opera in space.'

Macross PlusI'm not sure why this one is so revered. I feel like it doesn't play fair with its mystery, despite being such a short story, and whole thing with the killer popstar AI just left me cold.

Macross 7I like the music, but the story really drags for the first half with a formula that’s repeated far too long, and then falls apart in the end. The love triangle isn’t resolved, and in fact I’m of the opinion that two of the participants didn’t even know they were in competition. The bad guys are allowed to sail off into the sunset, forgiven, despite still inhabiting the bodies of kidnapped humans. But this isn't a series you watch for the story; this is a series you watch because you like the idea of a rockstar flying into space in a transforming mecha, controlled by an electric guitar, to sing at alien invaders. Personally, I think the idea is dumb. Plus, this ruins the premise of the original series by adding in what is effectively magic.

Macross ZeroThis is pretty good and has the best dogfights in the series, but it has one of those weird arty endings that anime sometimes likes to do where no one can tell what actually happened and we need to find translated interviews with the creative team to get it explained.

Macross FrontierBy this point, I was wondering why everyone is so eager for the Macross franchise to get American distribution. It’s better than Macross 7, but feels like a first draft of the intended story, and the creative team lost track of their own subplots. The two AU movies do a more satisfying take on the same basic story, but sometimes they come across like an abridged recap of the series, so you really need to watch everything to get a satisfying experience. That said, the final experience was indeed fairly satisfying, making this the second best thing in the franchise for me. Still, I wouldn’t say it lives up to the original in any way.

Macross DeltaBoy, this one was dumb. Everything wrong with Frontier is worse here, with none of the good stuff.

The Melancholy of Haruhi SuzumiyaI still want an ending for this, despite nothing worthwhile coming from it since 2011. It wouldn't even be hard to pick it up again; set it in modern times, and explain the fact that everyone has smartphones now to be a result of some weird off-screen Haruhi antics.

Mobile Suit Gundam franchiseMobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded OrphansI've only ever experienced the Gundam franchise because my brother wants to get into it and he keeps trying to find a vector. This was my first experience with it, and I found it very 'teenage boy,' in both tone and story. I was underwhelmed.

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:0096Another case where the storytellers reached the end only to have forgotten the rest of the story. Why does that happen so often in anime? And I think it assumes the viewer is familiar with the whole rest of the franchise, because there was a lot that just went straight over my head but didn't seem like it was supposed to. Nice animation and art style, though.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin - Advent of the Red CometEverything I said about Unicorn, only more.

My Hero AcademiaCovered

NichijouThis thing is still hilarious, even after a rewatch. Stick with the sub, as the new dub's voice-acting doesn't have the same range and power of the original, losing a lot of the humor.

Outlaw Star I'm struggling to remember a lot of this one. it’s another I watched because my brother was interested in it. I do recall that it was a fairly standard Space Western that ends in a way that's more like serious science fiction, and that for some reason a Japanese swordswoman in classic clothing was part of the cast. Now I wonder if that was an homage to Lupin III. Or maybe Japan just really loves throwing classic samurai into everything, regardless of setting or genre.

Pokemon (part of first series)I was in high school when this franchise first came to America, and for some reason all the geeks in my high school thought it was the greatest thing. The games were good, yeah, but the anime? I don't think it's bad for a kiddie cartoon, but it obviously has no greater ambitions than pleasantly occupying the kids for 22 minutes. Personally, what I really want is a series about Team Rocket done in the style of Cowboy Bebop.

Princess TutuCo-owner of the Best Magical Girl designation. I forget who asked me to watch this, but I owe them.

Puella Magi Madoka MagicaCo-owner of the Best Magical Girl designation. I still haven't bothered with anything but the original series, and I continue to be happy with that choice.

Samurai ChamplooI liked this better than Cowboy Bebop, but only because its ambitions were lower. It leaned more into its genre, had fun with its style more even when being serious, and as a result became more enjoyable. I overall liked going on a journey with these rascals, but I think it ended at a good point. I don’t need more.

Spice & Wolf (first season)I watched this on someone's suggestion, and found it a little underwhelming. What I really appreciated were the two main characters, especially that they seem to be into each other, romantically and sexually, and aren't freaked out by it while at the same time not being in a hurry to become a couple. It was just a kind of, "Yeah, this could really be something if we ever find the time." It was so amazingly mature and real. Too bad the main Economics plotlines just wound up being tepid.

Tekkaman BladeMy thoughts haven't changed on this.

Tiger & BunnyI'm still fond of this one, and I'm actually kind of curious to revisit it in light of My Hero Academia.

Transformers ‘Unicron Trilogy’These three cartoons are true anime, produced by and for Japan. (The other cartoons in the franchise were written, and sometimes animated, in the west.) It's garbage that assumes its child audience are morons, and on top of that the first two series wound up with laughably bad dubs. How this trilogy revitalized the franchise, I have no idea, and thankfully I'll never have to worry about it.

Volton (original)Either this or Robotech/Macross was my first anime; I was too young to say which I discovered first. I'll admit that the original Voltron isn't good, despite the toy being neat, but I have a soft spot for it. I tried the Netflix reboot, watching the first three episodes, and found it to be vacuous junk. Maybe some day a version of this will come along that will do justice to the toy.

And I think that’s it. If I remember anything I left off, I’ll reblog with the addition.

#Anonymous

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Why "Bad" Dubs Are Good

When it comes to translating and adaptating anime, most people don't even know where the process begins or ends. Enter the world of dubbed anime. From the mid 1980s up to the early 2000s, dubbed anime experienced a transformative boom via the transition from video-only releases to cable syndication. Back in the day, you walked six miles in the snow to a sketchy video store to get your Neon Genesis Evangelion tapes supplied by only a handful of distributors.

Among these early birds were the dubs produced by licensor Manga Entertainment, which included the original VHS tape release of Oh! Production’s classic Devilman OVA dubs based off the popular horror manga by Go Nagai. Other notable early dub projects included Cyber City Oedo 808 which delivered perhaps the crowning achievement in anime dubbing history (warning: explicit language). All of these dubs have one thing in common: they deviate so much from their original scripts, they may actually be some of the best dubs ever made. They're so "bad" they redefine what we think of as good.

Devilman OVA (1995)

Let’s go back to 1995—Manga Entertainment had acquired the first Devilman OVA, The Birth, and had enlisted the voice talents of Alan D. Marriott as Akira Fudo and Adam Matalon as Ryo Asuka, two young men caught in the middle of some very angry and lewd demons. The dub was released on VHS tape and was definitely the sort of thing you wouldn’t see on front shelves at video stores.

This was a time before Pokémon, where anime was still a niche genre with a dedicated, but significantly smaller fanbase. For context, Fox Video had only just released My Neighbor Totoro’s English dub in 1993. Even earlier than that was the notorious 1985 home video release of Warriors of the Wind, a Frankenstein'd “adaptation” of Nausicaaä of the Valley of the Wind that promptly led to Studio Ghibli adopting a “no cuts” policy in future film dubs. Any future competent dubs were going to have to be better than that.

Artwork for Warriors of the Wind

The 1995 Devilman dub sat in-between this awkward era, a time where a “no cuts” was the established policy for Studio Ghibli movies, but adult-oriented anime was left to fend for itself. A story entirely about evil demons, horrification transformation, nudity, and heavy violence couldn’t be heavily edited or censored without destroying the final product. Hence, the 1995 Devilman dub is but a handful of dubs that take a wildly different approach to “adaptation” while still surprisingly remaining true to the source material’s intent. It remained true to the spirit of Devilman's intense themes and tone, but with its own truly biting twist.

Committing to the Bit

In the 1995 Devilman dub, as Akira and Ryo are being attacked by a demon crashing through a window, Matalon (Ryo) yells “f#%kin’ a run for it” in the less-than-impressed voice of a nineties young adult who just finished watching Clerks. While in the Japanese dub Ryo seems genuinely caught off guard, Matalon’s delivery of Ryo’s adapted lines sounds like something from The Evil Dead. The Devilman OVA dub did well enough to dovetail into a second volume, which continued this trend of believable yet totally different dialogue. Devilman’s awkward mid-nineties dub might be considered an early “gag dub” in the same way many consider the infamous story of Ghost Stories’ 2005 ADV release ten years later. When it comes to “committing to the bit,” this series adapted by Steven Foster truly challenged what it meant to be a “good” dub.

Ghost Stories

Despite being a commercial flop in Japan, the Ghost Stories dub found a much different audience with its definitely-not-for-broadcast adaptation. However, unlike the the Devilman dubs prior to it, cultural changes such as the rise of adult animation like South Park made potty-mouth cartoons slightly more acceptable. For example, Ghost Stories’ purple-haired schoolgirl Momoko is a reserved and quiet character in the original, but is transformed into a bizarre born again Evangelical Christian in the ADV adaptation. While this joke obviously wouldn’t make much sense in the original, the straight performance of the adapted script flies with these changes without pause. A dub that should be “bad” for the sake of technically being incorrect, in fact, excels in strange new ways that the original never could.

Although the Ghost Stories dub took full advantage of its artistic liberties, the spirit of the original characters and plot remain the same, albeit with a snarky bite maybe influenced from an era of MTV and Beavis and Butthead. For what’s now considered a “boom” in anime dubs and license acquisitions during the early 2000s, Ghost Stories took the risk of deviating from the norm and wildly succeeded. Like adapting a book to a movie or album to a musical, anime dubs too were finding their footing into a quickly growing market.

Broadcast Dubs and Donuts

As anime gained more mainstream acceptance (more notably with series like Pokémon and Sailor Moon meant for younger audiences,) this liberal use of colorful language drastically slowed down. However, the question of “how is anime accessible” still remained, resulting in a wide range of localization efforts from different licensors aiming for a demographic sweet spot. While many anime fans remember Brock’s strange description of “donuts” while obviously holding a rice ball, other less blunt localizations prevailed.

Broadcast dubs like Digimon notably changed little content, but made several script changes such as adding jokes and dialogue where there was once silence. While obviously different, these adaptations are still enjoyed as products of their time and lauded for the incredible hard work of the voice actors and script writers involved. These series, syndicated alongside the Americanized version of Super Sentai aka Power Rangers on Fox Kids, exemplify how much localization depends on the audience and the context in which they’re watching it. Digimon: The Movie—a Frankenstein combination of three different Digimon OVAs for theatrical release—even included a meta joke about the Power Rangers for good measure to drive the point home.

"Japanese donuts"

While not as crude as the pioneering dubs coming from licensors like Manga Entertainment, these 2000s dubbed television anime clearly took a page from their predecessor’s adaptation handbook. This is obviously how we ended up with an extended Big Lebowski reference in the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX English dub. Rather than argue over “subs versus dubs” maybe we should judge our anime dubs by the number of jokes about capitalism.

So Bad It’s Good

Why do dubs like Devilman and Ghost Stories work, versus botched projects like the Warriors of the Wind movie? Anime fandom in the west was far smaller compared to today and it was much more difficult to know if your dub was technically accurate. “Gag dubs” as they’re occasionally called, aren’t so much “bad dubs” as they are a method of adaptation and localization—a challenging task that most translators find difficult on their own without outside help.

Anime with strong visual cues, like ghosts and demons, can clearly tell a story without much exposition given a surface-level understanding of fiction tropes. This is how we get jokes about politics and Walmart in what was once a kid’s show about solving spooky mysteries. But much more often, the owners of the source material dictate the tone of any adaptations: funny, serious, or in the worst case scenario—losing the original scripts altogether (hello Samurai Pizza Cats).

“Oh sweet Pipimi, is this really what you wanted?” “OH YAAS QUEEN”

While most anime might not be fit for a drastically ambitious dub, dubs for recent anime such as Pop Team Epic continue this long tradition of changing the script for better comedic effect. Pop Team Epic throws in a healthy “yaas queen” from Pipimi (Luci Christian) and includes riffs that might’ve not worked in Japanese, but are a perfect fit for its loose and quirky dub. But the English dub stays true to the source material and is also recorded twice with different female and male voice actors.

A truly purist approach might not always get the best delivery from a voice actor—Japanese grammar structures are almost entirely inverted from English’s and a rough translation can make a smooth dub performance difficult. Simple techniques such as changing the tone of jokes and a line delivery can quickly make a series more approachable. Anime, after all, is for everyone no matter how familiar they are with the genre, Japanese culture, or obscure sentai references only your uncle understands.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about jelly-filled donuts anymore.

Do you have a favorite anime dub? Let us know in the comments!

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Blake P. is a writer who loves his cat. He likes old mecha anime, computer games, books, and black coffee. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more. His newsletter is Boy Toy Box.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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astral-space-dragon · 6 years

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My favorite Halloween films

I talked about my favorite Christmas films and thought I’d share my favorite Halloween films. Now keep in mind that these are in no particular order, just a list of Halloween films that I like. NOTE: I am excluding “Hocus Pocus”, “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, slasher films, and Stephen King films. That’d be too easy.

With that being said, here’s my favorite Halloween films.

1. Trick ‘r Treat

This 2009 film, takes place over the course of Halloween in the fictional town of Warren Valley, Ohio. Its story is told in a nonlinear narrative, with characters crossing paths with each other throughout the film. At the centre of the story is Sam, a peculiar trick-or-treater dressed in pajamas and a burlap sack, who appears to enforce the “rules” of Halloween.

This film was a hit in the box office, but for the few years, no one really talked about it. In recent years, it has gained a cult following and there have been talks of a possible sequel.

This films is perfect for Halloween. It’s riddled with the holiday: fallen leaves, trick-or-treating, jack o’ lanterns, all that good stuff. See it for yourself and join the following.

2. Mad Monster Party

Hey, remember those Christmas specials? Frosty the Snowman? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Santa Claus is Coming to Town? Of course you do. Well, the same company (Rankin/Bass Productions) tried their hand at making a special for a different holiday: Halloween and “Mad Monster Party” was that final product.

Baron Boris von Frankenstein (voiced by Boris Karloff [yes, I mean that]) achieves his ultimate ambition, the secret of total destruction. Having perfected and tested the formula, he sends out messenger bats to summon all monsters to the Isle of Evil in the Caribbean Sea. The Baron intends to inform them of his discovery and also to reveal his imminent retirement as head of the "Worldwide Organization of Monsters". Besides Frankenstein's Monster and the Monster's more intelligent mate who live in the island castle with Boris, the invites also include Count Dracula, the Mummy, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Werewolf, The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The special did decently at the time of its release but since Rankin/Bass Productions was (and still is) known for their Christmas specials, the film flew under the radar and was pretty much forgotten.

Like “Trick ‘r Treat”, “Mad Monster Party” has gained a cult following in the recent years, but it’s still not talked about as much. Find the film for yourself and see why it should never be forgotten.

3. The Halloween Tree

“The Halloween Tree” is a 1993 Hanna-Barbera film based on the Ray Bradbury novel of the same name. The film tells the story of a group of trick-or-treating children who learn about the origins and influences of Halloween when one of their friends is spirited away by mysterious forces. The film stars Ray Bradbury as the narrator and the late Leonard Nimoy as the children's guide, Mr. Moundshroud.

I remember watching this film every year on Cartoon Network when it aired on the Halloween season (I don’t think they do anymore since it doesn’t fit their TTG agenda....), so it hold a special place in my heart. In the film, the children travel though time and witness ancient traditions that modern day Halloween takes inspiration from. From rituals carried out my Celtic Druids to Dia de los Muertos in Mexico; there’s something for everyone in this film.

4. Frankenweeinie (1984)

When I say “Frankenweenie”, I’m not talking about the 2012 stop-motion remake, I’m talking about the original 1984 film that got Tim Burton fired from Disney (yes, you read that right).

If you’ve seen the 2012 remake, then you already know the story. For those who don’t, allow me to give you a synopsis: The film is both a parody and homage to the 1931 film Frankenstein based on Mary Shelley's novel of the same name. The story goes as is: A young boy sets out to revive his dead pet using the power of science. It’s such a simple concept, a boy and his dog. But that concept, really never gets old. While I love the 2012 remake, I grew up watching this version and, call it a bias, I prefer this version.

5. Creature from the Black Lagoon

This 1954 monster flick is considered a landmark. It’s the film that inspired Guillermo Del Toro to make “The Shape of Water” (it’s true, I shit you not). It’s “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”. While this is not a film I grew up watching, I have fond memories of watching it in my honors biology class in high school. Yes, the film is cheesy as fuck and it at times leaves much to be desired. But, past all of that is a relic of the past and a film that helped paved the way for monster movies (and made monster fuckers dream come true).

So what’s the film about? A geology expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossilized evidence from the Devonian period that provides a direct link between land and sea animals. What follows is a return expedition to the Amazon to look for the remainder of the skeleton.

6. Freaks

Easily one of my favorite films. I could watch this anytime of the year. It’s an incredible film. The best part, the freaks in the films: all real. No make-up or special effects. You had Johnny Eck, Schlitzie, dwarf siblings Harry and Daisy Earles, and conjoined sisters Daisy and Violet Hilton are just a few of the freaks that starred in this movie.

The film is about trapeze artist Cleopatra who learns that circus dwarf Hans has an inheritance, she marries the lovesick, diminutive performer, all the while planning to steal his fortune and run off with her lover, strong man Hercules. When Hans' friends and fellow performers discover what is going on, they band together and carry out a brutal revenge that leaves Hercules and Cleopatra knowing what it truly means to be a "freak."

“Freaks” is easily one of my favorite films of all time. I’ve always had a fascination with sideshow, freakshows and such; and to have this relic of the past is really something special.

7. The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

While this film has two short stories, the one I want to focus on is “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. This segment scared the piss out of me as a kid and I LOVED IT. The second segment is based on "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving and it follows Ichabod Crane, a lanky, gluttonous, superstitious yet charming dandy arrives in Sleepy Hollow, New York to be the town's new schoolmaster.

I don’t want to give too much away but I assure you this segment is so much fun to watch. Both Ichabod’s and Mr. Toad’s segments are a lot of fun to watch. If you want to check it out for yourself, I highly recommend you do (research the production history as well, really interesting stuff).

8. Beetlejuice

You all know this film. Tim Burton. Michael Keaton. Young Winona Ryder. Danny Elfman. Geena Davis. The Banana Boat Song. What else is there to say?

9. Onibaba

I’ve only discovered this film this past year is it’s easily on my top 3 list. You may not know this, but I’m a huge sucker for Japanese folklore (thank my Japanese roots for that) and when I discover Onibaba, I already knew this film was up my alley.

I don’t want to give anything away about this because I want you to go into this film blind like I did. Let me just say this: the two women in this film are badass.

10. Kakurenbo

This.... this is film that made every second count. “Kakurenbo” is only 25 minutes long and they made every second and every frame count. You may be thinking “That’s way to short to tell a full-fledged story!” The thing with Japanese storytelling is that they make 25 minutes as good as a two hour film and Kakurenbo is no exception.

The film entails a game of "Otokoyo", a version of hide and seek played by children, wearing fox masks, near the ruins of an abandoned old Kowloon-inspired city but there is a twist: children who play disappear, never to be seen again.

I first saw this film back in 2005 when it played on Cartoon’s Network’s adult-oriented nighttime programming, Adult Swim. 10 year old me was completely engrossed by this film. The story, the designs of the demons, everything about the film stuck to me. I recently got the my hands on the DVD (thanks mom) and I’m elated that I can enjoy “Kakurenbo” on any given day and not have to scour Youtube for a “decent” version.

I know I’ve said this throughout this list, but I STRONGLY urge all of you to check out “Kakurenbo” when you get the chance. You will not be disappointed.

#long post #shut up chrome

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vintagegeekculture · 7 years

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Dead Fandoms, Part 3

Read Part One of Dead Fandoms here.

Read Part Two of Dead Fandoms here.

Before we continue, I want to add the usual caveat that I actually don’t want to be right about these fandoms being dead. I like enthusiasm and energy and it’s a shame to see it vanish.

Mists of Avalon

Remember that period of time of about 15 years, where absolutely everybody read this book and was obsessed with it? It could not have been bigger, and the fandom was Anne Rice huge, overlapping for several years with USENET and the early World Wide Web…but it’s since petered out.

Mists of Avalon’s popularity may be due to the most excellent case of hitting a demographic sweet spot ever. The book was a feminist retelling of the Arthurian Mythos where Morgan Le Fay is the main character, a pagan from matriarchal goddess religions who is fighting against encroaching Christianity and patriarchal forms of society coming in with it. Also, it made Lancelot bisexual and his conflict is how torn he is about his attraction to both Arthur and Guinevere.

Remember, this novel came out in 1983 – talk about being ahead of your time! If it came out today, the reaction from a certain corner would be something like “it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that tumblr is at it again.”

Man, demographically speaking, that’s called “nailing it.” It used to be one of the favorite books of the kind of person who’s bookshelf is dominated by fantasy novels about outspoken, fiery-tongued redheaded women, who dream of someday moving to Scotland, who love Enya music and Kate Bush, who sell homemade needlepoint stuff on etsy, who consider their religious beliefs neo-pagan or wicca, and who have like 15 cats, three of which are named Isis, Hypatia, and Morrigan.

This type of person is still with us, so why did this novel fade in popularity? There’s actually a single hideous reason: after her death around 2001, facts came out that Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her daughters sexually. Even when she was alive, she was known for defending and enabling a known child abuser, her husband, Walter Breen. To say people see your work differently after something like this is an understatement – especially if your identity is built around being a progressive and feminist author.

Robotech

I try to break up my sections on dead fandoms into three parts: first, I explain the property, then explain why it found a devoted audience, and finally, I explain why that fan devotion and community went away. Well, in the case of Robotech, I can do all three with a single sentence: it was the first boy pilot/giant robot Japanimation series that shot for an older, teenage audience to be widely released in the West. Robotech found an audience when it was the only true anime to be widely available, and lost it when became just another import anime show. In the days of Crunchyroll, it’s really hard to explain what made Robotech so special, because it means describing a different world.

Try to imagine what it was like in 1986 for Japanime fans: there were barely any video imports, and if you wanted a series, you usually had to trade tapes at your local basement club (they were so precious they couldn’t even be sold, only traded). If you were lucky, you were given a script to translate what you were watching. Robotech though, was on every day, usually after school. You want an action figure? Well, you could buy a Robotech Valkyrie or a Minmei figure at your local corner FAO Schwartz.

However, the very strategy that led to it getting syndicated is the very reason it was later vilified by the purists who emerged when anime became a widespread cultural force: strictly speaking, there actually is no show called “Robotech.” Since Japanese shows tend to be short run, say, 50-60 episodes, it fell well under the 80-100 episode mark needed for syndication in the US. The producer of Harmony Gold, Carl Macek, had a solution: he’d cut three unrelated but similar looking series together into one, called “Robotech.” The shows looked very similar, had similar love triangles, used similar tropes, and even had little references to each other, so the fit was natural. It led to Robotech becoming a weekday afternoon staple with a strong fandom who called themselves “Protoculture Addicts.” There were conventions entirely devoted to Robotech. The supposed shower scene where Minmei was bare-breasted was the barely whispered stuff of pervert legend in pre-internet days. And the tie in novels, written with the entirely western/Harmony Gold conception of the series and which continued the story, were actually surprisingly readable.

The final nail in the coffin of Robotech fandom was the rise of Sailor Moon, Toonami, Dragonball, and yes, Pokemon (like MC Hammer’s role in popularizing hip hop, Pokemon is often written out of its role in creating an audience for the next wave of cartoon imports out of insecurity). Anime popularity in the West can be defined as not a continuing unbroken chain like scifi book fandom is, but as an unrelated series of waves, like multiple ancient ruins buried on top of each other (Robotech was the vanguard of the third wave, as Anime historians reckon); Robotech’s wave was subsumed by the next, which had different priorities and different “core texts.” Pikachu did what the Zentraedi and Invid couldn’t do: they destroyed the SDF-1.

Legion of Super-Heroes

Legion of Superheroes was comic set in the distant future that combined superheroes with space opera, with a visual aesthetic that can best be described as “Star Trek: the Motion Picture, if it was set in a disco.”

I’ve heard wrestling described as “a soap opera for men.” If that’s the case, then Legion of Super-Heroes was a soap opera for nerds. The book is about attractive 20-somethings who seem to hook up all the time. As a result, it had a large female fanbase, which, I cannot stress enough, is incredibly unusual for this era in comics history. And if you have female fans, you get a lot of shipping and slashfic, and lots of speculation over which of the boy characters in the series is gay. The fanon answer is Element Lad, because he wore magenta-pink and never had a girlfriend. (Can’t argue with bulletproof logic like that.) In other words, it was a 1970s-80s fandom that felt much more “modern” than the more right-brained, bloodless, often anal scifi fandoms that existed around the same time, where letters pages were just nitpicking science errors by model train and elevator enthusiasts.

Legion Headquarters seemed to be a rabbit fuck den built around a supercomputer and Danger Room. Cosmic Boy dressed like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror. There’s one member, Duo Damsel, who can turn into two people, a power that, in the words of Legion writer Jim Shooter, was “useful for weird sex...and not much else.”

LSH was popular because the fans were insanely horny. This is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the thirstiest fandom of all time. You might think I’m overselling this, but I really think that’s an under-analyzed part of how some kinds of fiction build a devoted fanbase.

For example, a big reason for the success of Mass Effect is that everyone has a favorite girl or boy, and you have the option to romance them. Likewise, everyone who was a fan of Legion remembers having a crush. Sardonic Ultra Boy for some reason was a favorite among gay male nerds (aka the Robert Conrad Effect). Tall, blonde, amazonian telepath Saturn Girl, maybe the first female team leader in comics history, is for the guys with backbone who prefer Veronica over Betty. Shrinking Violet was a cute Audrey Hepburn type. And don’t forget Shadow Lass, who was a blue skinned alien babe with pointed ears and is heavily implied to have an accent (she was Aayla Secura before Aayla Secura was Aayla Secura). Light Lass was commonly believed to be “coded lesbian” because of a short haircut and her relationships with men didn’t work out. The point is, it’s one thing to read about the adventures of a superteam, and it implies a totally different level of mental and emotional involvement to read the adventures of your imaginary girlfriend/boyfriend.

Now, I should point out that of all the fandoms I’ve examined here, LSH was maybe the smallest. Legion was never a top seller, but it was a favorite of the most devoted of fans who kept it alive all through the seventies and eighties with an energy and intensity disproportionate to their actual numbers. My gosh, were LSH fans devoted! Interlac and Legion Outpost were two Legion fanzines that are some of the most famous fanzines in comics history.

If nerd culture fandoms were drugs, Star Wars would be alcohol, Doctor Who would be weed, but Legion of Super-Heroes would be injecting heroin directly into your eyeballs. Maybe it is because the Legionnaires were nerdy, too: they played Dungeons and Dragons in their off time (an escape, no doubt, from their humdrum, mundane lives as galaxy-rescuing superheroes). There were sometimes call outs to Monty Python. Basically, the whole thing had a feel like the dorkily earnest skits or filk-singing at a con. Legion felt like it’s own fan series, guest starring Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day.

It helped that the boundary between fandom and professional was incredibly porous. For instance, pro-artist Dave Cockrum did covers for Legion fanzines. Former Legion APA members Todd and Mary Biernbaum got a chance to actually write Legion, where, with the gusto of former slashfic writers given the keys to canon, their major contribution was a subplot that explicitly made Element Lad gay. Mike Grell, a professional artist who got paid to work on the series, did vaguely porno-ish fan art. Again, it’s hard to tell where the pros started and the fandom ended; the inmates were running the asylum.

Mostly, Legion earned this devotion because it could reward it in a way no other comic could. Because Legion was not a wide market comic but was bought by a core audience, after a point, there were no self-contained one-and-done Legion stories. In fact, there weren’t even really arcs as we know it, which is why Legion always has problems getting reprinted in trade form. Legion was plotted like a daytime soap opera: there were always five different stories going on in every issue, and a comic involved cutting between them. Sure, like daytime soap operas, there’s never a beginning, just endless middles, so it was totally impossible for a newbie to jump on board...but soap operas know what they are doing: long term storytelling rewards a long term reader.

This brings me to today, where Legion is no longer being published by DC. There is no discussion about a movie or TV revival. This is amazing. Comics are a world where the tiniest nerd groups get pandered to: Micronauts, Weirdworld, Seeker 3000, and Rom have had revival series, for pete’s sake. It’s incredible there’s no discussion of a film or TV treatment, either; friggin Cyborg from New Teen Titans is getting a solo movie.

Why did Legion stop being such a big deal? Where did the fandom that supported it dissolve to? One word: X-Men. Legion was incredibly ahead of its time. In the 60s and 70s, there were barely any “fan” comics, since superhero comics were like animation is today: mostly aimed at kids, with a minority of discerning adult/teen fans, and it was success among kids, not fans, that led to something being a top seller (hence, “fan favorites” in the 1970s, as surprising as it is to us today, often did not get a lot of work, like Don MacGregor or Barry Smith). But as newsstands started to push comics out, the fan audience started to get bigger and more important…everyone else started to catch up to the things that made Legion unique: most comics started to have attractive people who paired up into couples and/or love triangles, and featured extremely byzantine long term storytelling. If Legion of Super-Heroes is going to be remembered for anything, it’s for being the smaller scale “John the Baptist” to the phenomenon of X-Men, the ultimate “fan” comic.

The other thing that killed Legion, apart from Marvel’s Merry Mutants, that is, was the r-word: reboots. A reboot only works for some properties, but not others. You reboot something when you want to find something for a mass audience to respond to, like with Zorro, Batman, or Godzilla.

Legion, though, was not a comic for everybody, it was a fanboy/girl comic beloved by a niche who read it for continuing stories and minutiae (and to jack off, and in some cases, jill off). Rebooting a comic like that is a bad idea. You do not reboot something where the main way you engage with the property, the greatest strength, is the accumulated lore and history. Rebooting a property like that means losing the reason people like it, and unless it’s something with a wide audience, you only lose fans and won’t get anything in return for it. So for something like Legion (small fandom obsessed with long form plots and details, but unlike Trek, no name recognition) a reboot is the ultimate Achilles heel that shatters everything, a self-destruct button they kept hitting over and over and over until there was nothing at all left.

E. E. Smith’s Lensman Novels

The Lensman series is like Gil Evans’s jazz: it’s your grandparents’ favorite thing that you’ve never heard of.

I mean, have you ever wondered exactly what scifi fandom talked about before the rise of the major core texts and cultural objects (Star Trek, Asimov, etc)? Well, it was this. Lensmen was the subject of fanfiction mailed in manilla envelopes during the 30s, 40s, and 50s (some of which are still around). If you’re from Boston, you might recognize that the two biggest and oldest scifi cons there going back to the 1940s, Boskone (Boscon, get it?) and Arisia, are references to the Lensman series. This series not only created space opera as we know it, but contributed two of the biggest visuals in scifi, the interstellar police drawn from different alien species, and space marines in power armor.

My favorite sign of how big this series was and how fans responded to it, was a great wedding held at Worldcon that duplicated Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa’s wedding on Klovia. This is adorable:

The basic story is pure good vs. evil: galactic civilization faces a crime and piracy wave of unprecedented proportions from technologically advanced pirates (the memory of Prohibition, where criminals had superior firearms and faster cars than the cops, was strong by the mid-1930s). A young officer, Kimball Kinnison (who speaks in a Stan Lee esque style of dialogue known as “mid-century American wiseass”), graduates the academy and is granted a Lens, an object from an ancient mystery civilization, who’s true purpose is unknown.

Lensman Kinnison discovers that the “crime wave” is actually a hostile invasion and assault by a totally alien culture that is based on hierarchy, intolerant of failure, and at the highest level, is ruled by horrifying nightmare things that breathe freezing poison gases. Along the way, he picks up allies, like van Buskirk, a variant human space marine from a heavy gravity planet who can do a standing jump of 20 feet in full space armor, Worsel, a telepathic dragon warrior scientist with the technical improvisation skills of MacGyver (who reads like the most sadistically minmaxed munchkinized RPG character of all time), and Nandreck, a psychologist from a Pluto-like planet of selfish cowards.

The scale of the conflict starts small, just skirmishes with pirates, but explodes to near apocalyptic dimensions. This series has space battles with millions of starships emerging from hyperspacial tubes to attack the ultragood Arisians, homeworld of the first intelligent race in the cosmos. By the end of the fourth book, there are mind battles where the reflected and parried mental beams leave hundreds of innocent bystanders dead. In the meantime we get evil Black Lensmen, the Hell Hole in Space, and superweapons like the Negasphere and the Sunbeam, where an entire solar system was turned into a vacuum tube.

It’s not hard to understand why Lensmen faded in importance. While the alien Lensmen had lively psychologies, Lensman Kimball Kinnison was not an interesting person, and that’s a problem when scifi starts to become more about characterization. The Lensman books, with their love of police and their sexism (it is an explicit plot point that the Lens is incompatible with female minds – in canon there are no female Lensmen) led to it being judged harshly by the New Wave writers of the 1960s, who viewed it all as borderline fascist military-scifi establishment hokum, and the reputation of the series never recovered from the spirit of that decade.

Prisoner of Zenda

Prisoner of Zenda is a novel about a roguish con-man who visits a postage-stamp, charmingly picturesque Central European kingdom with storybook castles, where he finds he looks just like the local king and is forced to pose as him in palace intrigues. It’s a swashbuckling story about mistaken identity, swordfighting, and intrigue, one part swashbuckler and one part dark political thriller.

The popularity of this book predates organized fandom as we know it, so I wonder if “fandom” is even the right word to use. All the same, it inspired fanatical dedication from readers. There was such a popular hunger for it that an entire library could be filled with nothing but rip-offs of Prisoner of Zenda. If you have a favorite writer who was active between 1900-1950, I guarantee he probably wrote at least one Prisoner of Zenda rip-off (which is nearly always the least-read book in his oeuvre). The only novel in the 20th Century that inspired more imitators was Sherlock Holmes. Robert Heinlein and Edmond “Planet Smasher” Hamilton wrote scifi updates of Prisoner of Zenda. Doctor Who lifted the plot wholesale for the Tom Baker era episode, “Androids of Tara,” Futurama did this exact plot too, and even Marvel Comics has its own copy of Ruritania, Doctor Doom’s Kingdom of Latveria. Even as late as the 1980s, every kids’ cartoon did a “Prisoner of Zenda” episode, one of the stock plots alongside “everyone gets hit by a shrink ray” and the Christmas Carol episode.

Prisoner of Zenda imitators were so numerous, that they even have their own Library of Congress sub-heading, of “Ruritanian Romance.”

One major reason that Prisoner of Zenda fandom died off is that, between World War I and World War II, there was a brutal lack of sympathy for anything that seemed slightly German, and it seems the incredibly Central European Prisoner of Zenda was a casualty of this. Far and away, the largest immigrant group in the United States through the entire 19th Century were Germans, who were more numerous than Irish or Italians. There were entire cities in the Midwest that were two-thirds German-born or German-descent, who met in Biergartens and German community centers that now no longer exist.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a lot about how the German-American world he grew up in vanished because of the prejudice of the World Wars, and that disappearance was so extensive that it was retroactive, like someone did a DC comic-style continuity reboot where it all never happened: Germans, despite being the largest immigrant group in US history, are left out of the immigrant story. The “Little Bohemias” and “Little Berlins” that were once everywhere no longer exist. There is no holiday dedicated to people of German ancestry in the US, the way the Irish have St. Patrick’s Day or Italians have Columbus Day (there is Von Steuben’s Day, dedicated to a general who fought with George Washington, but it’s a strictly Midwest thing most people outside the region have never heard of, like Sweetest Day). If you’re reading this and you’re an academic, and you’re not sure what to do your dissertation on, try writing about the German-American immigrant world of the 19th and 20th Centuries, because it’s a criminally under-researched topic.

A. Merritt

Pop quiz: who was the most popular and influential fantasy author during the 1930s and 40s?

If you answered Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, you’re wrong - it was actually Abraham Merritt. He was the most popular writer of his age of the kind of fiction he did, and he’s since been mostly forgotten. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has said that A. Merritt was his favorite fantasy and horror novelist.

Why did A. Merritt and his fandom go away, when at one point, he was THE fantasy author? Well, obviously one big answer was the 1960s counterculture, which brought different writers like Tolkien and Lovecraft to the forefront (by modern standards Lovecraft isn’t a fantasy author, but he was produced by the same early century genre-fluid effluvium that produced Merritt and the rest). The other answer is that A. Merritt was so totally a product of the weird occult speculation of his age that it’s hard to even imagine him clicking with audiences in other eras. His work is based on fringe weirdness that appealed to early 20th Century spiritualism and made sense at the time: reincarnation, racial memory, an obsession with lost race stories and the stone age, and weirdness like the 1920s belief that the Polar Arctic is the ancestral home of the Caucasian race. In other words, it’s impossible to explain Merritt without a ton of sentences that start with “well, people in the 1920s thought that...” That’s not a good sign when it comes to his universality.

That’s it for now. Do you have any suggestions on a dead fandom, or do you keep one of these “dead” fandoms alive in your heart?

#fandom history #lensman #robotech #prisoner of zenda #mists of avalon

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electroma89 · 6 years

Note

💐🌷🌹🥀🌺🌻🌼🌸☘️🌿🌱 hey bitch, what's up?????? Lemme see those flowery asks bloom

Back to this bitch that has a lot to ask about me, Miley what’s good!

jasmine; what mythical creature do you wish actually existed?

I was about to say mermaids but hell no bc I wanna go on a cruise sometime. I’d love to see a pegasus flying in the sky. And faeries, lots of faeries.

lavender; soundcloud or vinyls?

Vinyls, plus the aesthethic pics of my room i couls take with them.

primrose; what book does everyone right now need to read?

Like right now? Like in these times we’re living?: 1984

lunar mist; do you like wearing other people’s shirts/jackets?

Mmm shirts not so much, now pullovers are a whole new story.

bird of paradise; what was the best thing that happened to you this month?

We’re only a week into this month lol, I think it’s all the chocolate I got on Easter, and also a quick trip to the store and being surrounded by cute shit.

gardenia; what’s a promise you’ve recently made to yourself?

To change my mindset to attract positive things

lion’s fairytale; would you rather be the sky, the ocean or the forests?

The ocean, no doubt about it.

whirling butterflies; would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

I mean that’s the plan, we’re in a relationship after all xD

marmalade skies; do you plan your outfits?

Depends on my mood, when I have to go out super early the next morning I plan my outfit to gain extra time, but most of the time I decide on the spot.

apricot drift; how do you feel right now?

A bit heavy, I think I ate to much at lunch, bit tired too.

everlasting daisy; what’s the last dream you remember having?

I think it was a nightmare bc I woke up pretty statrtled, but I don’t remember why

queen’s cup; what are you craving right now?

You mean food? I just ate so no xD I’d love a good sunday nap rn

lavender dream; turn ons/offs?

Long hair, featherly touches, kisses on my cheeck, big smiles; as for turn offs I’d say poor hygiene and treating people with disdain

water lilly; when was the last time you cried? why?

I think my eyes watered a lot yesterday bc I was watching an opera and boy that makes me emotional af

lily of the valley; did the one person who hurt you most in your life apologize?

Nope

winterberry; do you bite or lick your ice cream?

Lick bc braces

honey perfume; favorite movie ever?

Howl’s Moving Castle

desert rose; do you like yourself?

Yup, a lot

snapdragon; have you ever met or seen in person a celebrity?

I mean if you consider dubbing actors as celebrities (bc I do) I’ve met Roberto Chávez, Hugo Nuñez and Enzo Fortuny

night owl; how many countries have you visited?

Only one (Mexico)

heliotrope; have you ever been in a castle?

In Santiago and Viña del Mar

creams and sky; what’s the craziest/bravest thing you’ve done?

Carry on after losing everything

lantana; what’s on your mind right now?

“holy shit this is a long ass ask list”

pumpkin patch; what’s your zodiac sign?

Sagittarius

tulip; name 5 facts about yourself.

I love to sing even if I’m bad at it.

I’m currently learning 3 languages: catalan, german and japanese.

My second surname is arab.

I lived in Mexico for 6 years.

I don’t want kids.

daphne; do you believe in karma?

In a way

queen of the meadow; ever been in love?

Yup, multiple times

wisteria; whom do you admire and why?

Daniela Vega, for being so true to herself in a country full of hypocrites and prudes

angel’s face; what was your favorite bedtime story as a child?

My mom didn’t told me bedtime stories, she sang me songs, my fave was “Caracol”

remember me; did you make someone laugh today?

I always make laugh my mom, my aunt and my cousin in family lunches

iris; do you believe in ghosts?

Something like that, I believe in energy and different existential planes

lilac; if you could go back in time which time period would you visit?

Anything before colonization, please

caramel kisses; would you want to live forever? why/why not?

Healthy? Maybe, maybe not bc watching everyone die tho

primula; what makes you sad?

Lots of things: injustice, sad lyrics, when people don’t take me seriously

rain lily; was today typical? why/why not?

Pretty much typical

queen anne’s lace; who do you trust the most?

I don’t think I trust anyone plenty 100% tbh

lady’s slipper; what did you have for breakfast today?

Tea and milk, bread with butter and bluberry jam, a few chocolate eggs

forget me not; do you have any regrets looking back in your life?

Not having fought harder for the dreams I had in my teenage dreams

lunaria; what’s your favorite fictional universe?

I’m invested in too many stories that it’s impossible for me to pick just one

violet; favorite tv show?

Right now I’m watching “La Casa de Papel” and omfg

sunflower; share a favorite quote.

“Cáete siete veces, levántate ocho”

snowdrop; what does your ideal day look like?

Plenty of rest, delicious food, walk around the city, lots of cute stores

tiger lily; do you have any hobbies?

Editing pics and videos, discovering new music, collecting skull themed stuff

peony; share a small random book passage that means something to you.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” - 1984

tea rose; what’s something you always wanted to do but were too scared?

Wearing whatever I want, enjoying whatever I want, not caring about what people think

honeysuckle; do you usually date people your age or older/younger?

My age, I dated someone older once but didn’t last too much

sweet pea; who means the world to you? why?

Freddie Mercury, his music means conmfort, warmness and inspiration to me

love in the mist; best books you’ve ever read?

Dracula, Frankesntein, 1984 (my fave)

foxglove; who is your favorite cartoon character?

Sailor Jupiter is my hero

magnolia; coffee or tea?

Coffee

crown imperial; would you rather be extremely rich or extremely loved?

Can it be both? I mean you don’t pay bills with love

snowflake; are you a dog or a cat person?

Dog person

bell flower; what is your biggest addiction?

Social media recently

cosmos; do you ever think about the galaxy?

Yas, so aesthetically pleasant

moonflower; what’s your favorite color?

Black

freesia; do you have a good relationship with your parents and siblings? why/why not?

I don’t have siblings, and I’ll go to a concert with my mom next month so I say it’s pretty good

sundrop; are you a morning or a night person?

Night person no doubt

poppy; have you ever dealt with a mental illness?

Depression and dissociation, anxiety these last years

clover; how would your friends describe you?

You should tell me gurl xoxo (no en serio dime)

dandelion; do you consider yourself and extrovert or an introvert?

Introvert at first, extrovert when I feel comfortable

lilly; what’s something you love watching/reading but you are too embarrassed to admit you do?

Uhmm nothing? I’m pretty honest withthe things I enjoy: cartoons, pop music, you ask and I’ll tell you

anemone; describe yourself in 3 words.

Honest, loyal, opinionated

lotus; best memory as a child?

My friends in elementary school, and my childhood summer vacations

angelonia; what is your eye and hair color?

Brown and brown

dahlia; do you like crystals?

Yep

buttercup; if you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?

No gender roles since the begging of time

baby’s breath; what’s your hogwarts house?

I don’t like Harry Potter (*collective gasp*)

calendula; biggest pet peeve?

Twirling my hair

blanker flower; would you rather go to a cocktail party with your best friends or stay home and read a book/watch a movie with your pet?

Cocktail party!, with lots of dance please

blazing star; share a secret.

If I share it now it wouldn’t be a secret anymore

carnation; would you rather live longer or happier?

Happier, holy shit

petunia; who’s story is your biggest inspiration in life? why?

Anyone who could overcome difficult times in life, bc it shows that “there’s light at the end of the tunnel”

bluebell; do you wear glasses?

Since I was 6

nymphea; forest or river?

Forest

orchid; do you like exercise?

I know I need it, but I’m not a big fan

pansy; do you like poetry?

Not a big fan, but I can appreciate the beauty in some works

morning glory; any special talent that you have?

I don’t think so, I think i’m pretty average tbh

Omfg siento que corrí una maratón

#ask #makore-lune

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yourbri · 6 years

Text

Tagged by @01ramen so thank you so much! Love you xx

1. How would you describe your fashion style?

A casual, comfortable look...usually all black ^-^

2. Favorite Bands? (P.S. If naming Korean Bands, bands require instruments lmao so BTS is a group, NOT a band. Day6 IS a band.)

Day6 (Korean), Radwimps (Japanese), Coldplay, Fall Out Boy, Imagine Dragons

3. What is you soulmate like/ How would you imagine your soulmate?

Well...I like to think I already found my soulmate who likes me back...so he’s the definition of squishy and perfect. Thinking about this makes my heart go wild.

4. What fictional character do you see much of yourself in?

Miss Havisham from Great Expectations

5. What are your top 5 cartoons/animes?

Kimi No Na Wa, My Neighbour Totoro,

6. At midnight you change into a mythical creature. What is this creature?

A phoenix.

7. Summer is coming up, what are your plans?

Actually...winter is coming up for me..so my plans is to stay in my bed forever.

8. Favorite Disney/Pixar film?

Either Tomorrowland or Big Hero 6

9. Top 3 foods?

Udon, rice, potatoes.

10. Dream Occupation?

Lawyer

My Questions: (tagging: @nitanna @lunailly @yuenaki @01ramen @ayeuncha @cinbaby only if you want to!)

1. What is the song that is stuck in your head right now?

2. Favourite film?

3. What was the weirdest dream/vision you had?

4. What colour do you think goes best with your personality?

5. What is your current desktop background/phone lockscreen?

6. Top 3 dream places to travel

7. What does your url mean?

8. Are you an indoor or outdoor person?

9. What instrument do you wish you could master?

10. Favourite weather?

#tagged #tagging #asks #txt #mine #personal #feel free to do it <3

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

Text

categorized and generalized all the types of tumblr aesthetics i have come across.

I have been going through archives for the last five years on tumblr now, and i can’t help but notice that a lot of blogs are the same. There seems to be a pattern in the sorts of aesthetics i run up against. So, in my exhaustion, i tried coming up with all the different aesthetics, and i tried to put them into certain categories. Obviously, some of these categories are mixed with others.

PORN TUMBLR

-general porn

-lesbian/gay general

-kinky stuff

-daddy dom stuff - tied up boobies

-bears

-just unrealistic nudes

-just realistic nudes

-vintage porn, and occasionally porn that is so old that it was drawn by someone in the 1800′s

- hentai and erotic animal people cartoon characters going at it

-person who took about five pictures of themselves naked five years ago who has not come back

RICH KID TUMBLR

-super modelesque kids in their super rich cool kid clothes and fashion in Starbucks taking pictures of their food and their trips to Europe in 1st class

- incredibly expensive looking sunglasses

-rich kid travel blogs with hundreds of thousands of notes of pictures from rich people buildings

-quotes that say 'be happy' or stuff about saying anyone can just travel anywhere at any time, just the general advice you might get from someone who doesn't know how the other half lives

- cats

VINTAGE TUMBLR

-the greatest generation stuff, forgotten early hollywood actors/actresses, very old movie gifs, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Carol Lombard, early Joan Crawford, Gone with the Wind ect..

-50's, 60's and 70's, Nancy Sinatra, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn – generally a lot of Audrey Hepburn

-Posts old advertisements and old cars, sometimes old toys, a few pinups, vintage comics, kinda weird

- vintage toy blogs - just toys, named and dated

-sometimes retrospace stuff

-sometimes just old comic book stuff

FEMINIST/ GENDER STUDIES TUMBLR

-intersectional feminists who post mostly text and back and forth writings, sometimes they fight

-radfems and turfs, unpopular minority of angry at the intersectional feminists

- Fat Acceptance movement, chubby bunnies

-other girl's selfies, lots of girl power related drawings of gender symbols and the like, Grimes, being a witch, Courtney Love, sailor moon, and so forth, sometimes bleeds into soft grunge

-topics on transgender, gender fluid and others that have informative

- asexual community

BLACK LIVES MATTER TUMBLR

-black lives matter awareness, police brutality, pointing out flaws in legal system

-lovely stylish selfies

-call outs of racism, lots of dialogue, and the extension of twitter

80's + 90's GIF TUMBLR

-like gifs of scratched up VCR obscure film openings, and repetitious obscure 80's gifs in general, everything is fuzzy and looks like it came from an 80' infomercial, kinda makes you feel scared

-90's gifs of Pee Wee Herman, Catdog, Clarissa Explains it All, Chucky Cheese, Fruit by the Foot, Beavus and Butthead, Bart Simpson, and so on

HIPPIE TUMBLR

-just like the rich kidz, only they have white kid dreads and post a lot of vanlife stuff, lots of festivals

-mostly psychedelic gifs, with occasional trippy art, Foster the People is their favorite band

-real hippies, who post pictures of communes and people making tyed dye things, nonsexual nudes with hairy women, Grateful Dead stuff

-Buddhist and Hindu quotes, sometimes lilies

SOFT GRUNGE TUMBLR

purple and pink skies, water, windows with lace

girls with pale skin and perfect make up, and chokers, bruises, sparkly skin

mermaid texture, mermaid hair colors

Lana Del Rey

kind of like 90's only more melty and pink

quotes about good vibes

Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless mind reference

moon print

dream pop bands from the early 90's

GROWN UP SOFT GRUNGE TUMBLR

picture of Uma Thurman overdosing in Pulp Fiction

lots and lots of flowers

lots of sensual pictures of pale skin under certain lighting

albino people

albino animals

pictures of sunrises

Reykjavic

kind of like the Soft Grunge, but just a little bit more subtle and film tumblry

ART BLOG TUMBLR

old roman art

chinese, japanese and korean art from long ago

renaissance and medieval art with religious context

just like medieval art of specifically torture

18th and 19th century portrait paintings

Scenic paintings of hills, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet

Dada, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Adolph Wolfie

Modern art that is squiggly, slimy, and bizzare, breaks art rules but looks good, David Shrigley

Modern Surrealists

ARTIST BLOG TUMBLR

posts really great homemade gifs that nobody knows about infrequently

blogs that only have the artwork of the blog owner – generally post infrequently and not given enough credit ever, except maybe one of there works has a whole bunch of notes

person who keeps painting the same thing over and over again and does it a lot for years at a time, 0 notes usually – who are you??

collage artists that mix 50's scenes with hyperspace backdrops

FILM BLOG TUMBLR

-Stanley Kubrick, Jean Cocteau, lots of black and white french films

-that movie where the two people are sitting on the ledge of a building and the other one jumps off

Clockwork Orange

-Paris, Texas

David Lynch

Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks (gets stolen by other kinds of blogs frequently)

Wim Wenders,

Rare film art from Poland in the 70's

Jans Svankmajer

Man Ray, Max Ernst,

cool quotes by philosopher, artist, psychologist, or film director

Amelie

sometimes Wes Anderson

PHOTOGRAPHY TUMBLR

abandoned places, gas stations, archaic cafes, falling apart amusement parks

uses too much dark fade out in the background pictures of fields and stuff, overused filtering – posted a ton three years ago and then left

just photostock

girl who takes pictures of herself in costume

Nature pictures, animal pictures ect..

person who just takes pictures of textures and minimalist buildings – usually colorful

person who's personal Instagram picture just automatically post to tumblr also, probably never checks up, usually pictures of them with friends as a pub

Indigenous pictures from around the world, some of them from books, some from National Geographic, some from other places

Super old pictures from old newspapers, the great depression, WW2 – generally black and white

MUSIC TUMBLR

Really likes Led Zeppelin, The Doors and The Who, sometimes mixed with other vintage, often posts the same pictures and songs for years – you feel bad because no new music will be coming out from these artists

super cheesy Van Halen, Kiss, Styx, Ozzy person, Big Hair, likes 80's pin ups and skulls, sometimes into martial arts

super cheesy death metal fan, lots of pinups, corny black and white pictures of skulls and such

REALLY likes British Invasion, The Zombies, The Kinks, The Hollies, The Animals, will occasionally post Detroit girl groups from the 60's, some Velvet Underground, pictures of the Beatles girlfriends

Just David Bowie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop. Maybe some New York Dolls

Old Blues and Jazz, Etta James, Son House, Nina Simone, pictures of Leadbelly and Howlin' Wolf and especially Miles Davis

really into post punk, Nick Cave, Siouxsie, Bauhaus, The Cure, Einsturzende Neubauten, Lydia Lunch, PJ Harvey and Rowland S. Howard, sometimes Morrissey. also generally mixes film and art blog stuff in with occasional feminist things

Just Morrissey, they call him Moz.

Fan clubs for specific bands that are newer and popular like Arctic Monkeys or Fallout Boy, but also ones blogs that really like emo lyrics from early 2000's and such – scene kids that are still scenin' it up

loves Jens Lekman, Belle and Sebastian, The Magnetic Fields and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Cigarettes After Sex. Usually posts really cute modern art, and uses tumblr mostly for writing, has the cutest hair cut and can pull off overalls, never posts too little or too much, extremely twee

HISTORY TUMBLR

ancient mesopotamia, greek and Egyptian history and relics

Blogs that are specifically about one place in one era - Ancient Russia, Ireland before it was taken over, precolonial India and so on

Samurai, Geisha, and scrolls

Swords, knights, castles, kings of Europe in general

Specific Wars, examples: 7 Years War, Revolutionary War, WW1 + 2

France from before the revolution – pictures of wigged men, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette

Jane Austen time era anything 18th and 19th century, slight excuse to post lots of Pride and Prejudice gifs with Keira Knightly and that Mr. Darcy in the rain

Outfits – just outfits that are really old

person who is obsessed with the Nazis and seems to like Hitler

Flappers and earlier 20th – often an excuse to post gifs of Downton Abbey

Vintage books, often children books, but sometimes others

DESIGN TUMBLR

really fucked up pictures of the Simpsons melting and stuff

gradient graphic art with symbols or words meant to convey a product that I don't understand for an obscure magazine subscription

graphic squiggles without form, minimalist graphic pictures of beach balls, tennis bats, and sneakers

bizarre smiley faces made from smaller smiley faces

80's inspired design

odd looking models with undercuts and no eyebrows

cartoon dogs and cats

just static and glitches. Nothing more, nothing less

either they make their own graphic designs and they rarely post, or they compile reblogs of everyone else's and they post all the time

WEIRDO TUMBLR

insane family pictures of family who all has mullet dressed as bumble bees

Lots of Robert Crumb, some vintage stuff, but nothing remotely main stream

Some of the modern art, but only the weirdest of it

claymation masks

Comix

Moebius

art from early Power Point

100 piece sculptures with melted toys

paintings of monsters

Steve Brule

children's fan art of Smokey the Bear – looks disturbing

Items that are too kitschy to be accepted by your average vintage indie blog

sometimes a specific blog centered around some kind of crazy event where everyone dresses completely insane

POLITICAL TUMBLR

the communists and Marxists

a mixture of BLM and LGBTQ stuff

the libertarians, anarchocapitalists, Ayn rand folk

the left wing anarchists, freegans, graffiti punks, garden punks, possums

informative left wing news that explains to us everyday how the GOP is fucking us

alt. right creeps who are simply here to be trolls and upset everyone else – anti SJW, that stupid frog, nationalists, trump supporters and such – irrelevant poorly thought memes

I miss Obama memes

Bernie Sanders forever and always folk

RAINBOW TUMBLR

pictures of rainbow candies, toys, designs, clothing and so forth all of it rainbow

people who post one color at a time, so when you go through their archive it's all gradient and neat looking – usually the pictures are a little stock photoish though

HALLOWEEN TUMBLR

Betty Page

The Cramps. Reverend Horton Heat

Psychobilly pin ups, old cars, burning skulls, vintage B horror movies, The Swamp Thing

Legitimately obsessed with the activities of Halloween – posts witches, devils, trick or treat candy, Bella Lugosi, The Monster Mash, Halloween decoration - and doesn't ever forget how many days away Halloween is

Jack the Skeleton

Freddy Krueger

FANCLUB TUMBLR

Superwholock

Hannigram

American Horror Story

K Pop and J Pop + Korean Drama

boy bands in general

Hamilton

My Little Ponies

Ghibli Studios

Various anime shows

fat Disney princesses

Super heroes

Pokemon

Big Bang Theory

Mighty Boosh

Monty Python

Phantom of the Opera

Labyrinth

Vampire Chronicles

Orange is the New Black

Breaking Bad

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter

Star Wars

Steven Universe

Adventure Time

Game of Thrones and Walking Dead

any television show really

Furry cartoons

lots of spacy quick anime chibi versions of characters who are hooking up and wouldn't normally in the show

scenes from movies with subtext that comes from a different movie or show

probably countless others i am not thinking of.

SPECIALTY TUMBLR

serial killer blogs

unexplained mysteries, ghosts, ufo's

pictures of galaxies with information (not sparkly silly ones with no context)

sewing and yarn

precious stones

cars

just gardening

just cats

religious blogs, either Islam, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist

specific animal blogs, snake, spiders, wild cats and such

science blogs about technology and stuff

NATURE TUMBLR

stock photoish pictures of camp grounds and misty mountains – often taken by the hippies

angelic looking deer, and occasional animal burials with flowers'

person who takes pictures of flowers all the time

granola type fellow who loves juicing and backpacking – doesn't get on tumblr much

BLACK AND WHITE GOTH TUMBLR

slenderman fan art, actually just about anything creepypasta related

you have to turn off the music when you visit their page because it's just too much

fan art of black eyed children

slit wrists

pictures that were turned into Gifs because they shake

taxidermy

screamo lyrics

Alice in wonderland with X's for eyes

gothic models

occasional serial killer

skulls and references to Edgar Allan Poe

GIF MEME TUMBLR

just a sea of Gifs and memes relating to anything about life ever – almost shitposting but not quite

eventually one of the gifs got 100,000 notes for it's relatability so they get a lot of traffic

lots of pictures and circumstances from The Office, Parks and Rec, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Nihilist memes

SOFTY TUMBLR

kind of a little girl dom thing going on

Kawai and lots of Japanese girls

cute colorful make up

plushies and toys

references to fantasy cartoons from the 80's, the last unicorn, or that one with the girls in that band

Polly Pockets, Furbies, trolls

gifs of stars and hearts

Sailor Moon

pink bedroom

baby animals

occasionally more on the vintage kitschy side

WICCA TUMBLR

ravens, bats, candles

pentacles and other symbols

crystals

sometimes there is dreads

occasionally, it is a serious practicing Wicca who posts spells and gives witch advice

lots of personal reflections

boobs

GROSS TUMBLR

Tim and Eric, Steve Brule centered blog that are mostly in the act to make you feel queezy

like, people eating cheerios with ketchup and people wearing shoes with the soles cut out, people putting their feet in spagetti, bad tattoos on foreheads

snails, beetles, bird doing mean things to people

mostly moldy things, moss, strange dolls

things that look like they came from the dark crystal,

delapitating bedrooms that once belonged to a little girl, torn wall paper, old porcelain dolls that are slightly upsetting

Clowns

occasionally a blog so gross you will be ruined for having seen it – Two Girls one Cup sort of thing

NERD TUMBLR

old video game start up pages

Super Mario Bros.