#they were very dumb products of the early 2000s

[bugswarm]

Stealing this idea from the last post I reblogged since it was from the pre-poll days

As always, reblog this so we can get better data

#poll #music #portable music players #yes there is a such thing as a portable record player #try googling the audiotechnica at-sb2022 #theyve been around since the 80s apparently #theyre just rare/expensive #also does anyone else remember hitclips? #i do #i had 2 #they were very dumb products of the early 2000s

[highfantasy-soul]

Ok, here's my breakdown of Jessie Gender's video on NATLA. I decided not to post this as a comment on the video because I just don't feel like it would be productive, but I needed to refute the points she was making as she's a quite respected (at least, I really respect her opinions on things) video essayist and I felt like this video was...wild.

So, I guess it's best to just watch along with her video and read my commentary side-by-side because I don't give much context for my points, this is just a stream-of-consciousness style response.

To be perfectly clear - this is not intended to be a 'hate post' about her, this is just me feeling very strongly that the interpretations of things she had in her video needed to be talked about and another perspective given.

I shift from saying 'you' to 'Jessie' like halfway through (when I decided not to post this as a comment) but I don't feel like going through and changing all those, so yeah, just ignore it.

1) you insulted a martial arts kata as 'a mildly choreographed dance' - it shows a complete lack of understanding of other cultures and a desire to take a quick dig at something you didn't like in a way that insults a cultural practice. I really didn't expect to hear that sort of comment from you so it was pretty jarring when you said it. Ironically, you say that Sokka was wrong to assume the Kyoshi warrior's kata was a 'dance' because that's 'a girl's place' when...you literally made the same insult with not a hint of recognition just a few minutes earlier about a movie you didn't like…

2) I felt that the live-action really deepened a lot of the themes from the OG - take Iroh's storyline for example, fleshing out Suki's character so she's...you know, her own character and not just there to teach Sokka a lesson, and delving into how hard of decisions you have to make during a century long war. Idk, I'm just really curious as to how you felt quite literally the polar opposite of me

3) Sokka's sexism: the animated show handled it one way, but Sokka's treating women as 'less than' wasn't a core part of his character - in all honesty, it doesn't actually make any sense as he was raised by Hakoda (who we never see being sexist), Gran Gran (who left the NWT due to its sexism), and was surrounded mostly by older women. The sexism storyline in the cartoon was to teach a very blatant lesson to kids "don't be sexist, boys!" while the live-action made Sokka's struggles much more realistic and in line with the world building: he struggled with non-traditional masculinity and if he was 'allowed' to be that way while they were at war. For me, it's a much more important message for young men today than the very dated 'women can fight, too!' message that was needed in the early 2000s. It's very odd to me how you claim that Sokka always taking charge isn't ever challenged when...in literally the scene you're showing when you say that, Katara challenges him.

4) I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly see how Suki is her own person more in the animated version than in the live-action. She was literally created solely to teach Sokka a lesson and have no character traits other than 'I'm a strong woman warrior' where 'woman' means 'I like romance' rather than...I'm a whole person with my own wants and desires and fears that have nothing to do with a love interest as is shown in the live-action. You keep comparing the animated and live action as though they were trying to tell the same story about Sokka's journey with his role in the world, but they weren't. Of course Suki's attitude toward him is going to be different, of course he's not going to need to tell her 'you're right, I'm a dumb, terrible man, pretty please could you teach me', because it's a different dynamic they're going for in the live-action.

5) When Sokka pinned her in their lesson in the live-action idk how you got that she was 'demuring herself' to Sokka? Just as in the cartoon, he managed to get the upper hand - which she promptly took back, teaching a lesson along the way. She didn't make herself less so Sokka could feel secure in his masculinity - it's a bit odd you feel that showing respect to someone and helping them learn is 'demuring yourself'. I much prefer them respecting each other than the animated version of them seeing each other as less than and then...her giving him a kiss to prove 'see, I'm a romance-loving girl, too'.

5) To me, Suki beating Sokka in the live-action when the first sparred wasn't her being mean, it was her not understanding how much less experience Sokka had fighting - she genuinely thought he would be able to hold his own against her because he had told her he was the best warrior in his tribe. Her face clearly shows 'I have no idea what I did wrong - I thought that type of sparring is what everyone did for fun, why was he uncomfortable with it?' Not really sure why you made the connection that us seeing Sokka's abs was meant to indicate that his insecurities are unfounded when...literally the whole season shows us that Sokka's struggles aren't "end goal = big strong warrior" but rather "you don't have to be a big strong warrior to help, you are allowed to delve into other aspects of who you are and those are just as important". Just because he has muscles, also doesn't mean he's a competent fighter - those two things aren't the same.

6) It feels like you took certain scenes and made wildly left-field interpretations of them and then claimed that that's what the show was intending you to take from it. It's like saying that the scene that cuts from Sokka saying he bets Momo tastes like chicken and cutting to the scene that shows people cooking meat actually means the showrunners are saying Sokka is going to cook and eat Momo this season and that will then give him the powers of the Avatar. It's very clearly not what the showrunners were saying, but if you interpret it in the least forgiving way and then make a wild leap off that, then yeah, you might get upset with that made-up interpretation. Same with the reasons they didn't put Sokka in the Kyoshi outfit - there is 0 evidence of them nixing that part due to transphobia. I didn't see it as any malicious intent, just a streamline of the plot so Sokka doesn't have to go change before running away on Appa.

7) I feel that the live-action DOES challenge the Fire Bender's colonialist rhetoric in the Kyoshi Island episode, but the animated...doesn't? At all? It's solely about girl power - and as we see with Azula and all the women fire nation soldiers, the fire nation doesn't seem too caught up in sexism. You know what they are caught up in? Which you mention? Bender supremacy. And that's what the live-action directly addresses with Sokka being so surprised that Suki is able to hold her own so well even though she isn't a bender. He's seen just how powerful benders are (they destroyed his home, killed his mom, and beat his ass last episode) and it's in line with the worldbuilding that he feels like he's already several steps behind in being a good enough warrior because he doesn't have bending (a storyline that isn't brought up until an episode in season 3 of the animated show). To me, the live-action Kyoshi storyline refutes the Fire Nation's imperialistic themes much better than the animated show does.

8) The live-action's lesson wasn't that might makes right - Suki never did any strength training exercises with Sokka, she taught him how to control his body and use his opponent's strength against them. Fight smarter, not harder. Know what you're fighting for, not just that you want to fight. Even if you don't have the resources of your opponent, it doesn't mean you're doomed from the start. That last one is particularly poignant when we look at how much stronger the Fire Nation is than the other nations they're subjugating: it's the classic 'oppressed rising up against their oppressors and not winning because they just punched harder, but because they used what they had to fight for a righteous cause and didn't just give up because the other side was more powerful'. That's quite directly what the live-action was saying - the exact lesson you thought it should be saying. You have to do some serious extrapolating from the animated episode to get to those themes while the live-action drew that concept up to the forefront immediately.

9) Aang's journey to accept his Avatar responsibility and the previous Avatar's enforcing this is directly from the animated series. Like, directly. It's not the live-action show saying 'colonialism good'. Showing the Avatar power wasn't the showrunners saying 'see, this OP is good and cool', it was to show the magnitude of it - something the animated show does too. The live-action does talk about how terrifying and damaging that power is - literally the previous episode has Aang almost toss Katara and Sokka off the mountain and they mention it. Just earlier in that episode, Sokka talks about Aang almost killing them and Aangs major hang up about embracing it is that he might hurt someone. Kyoshi argues that not learning to control it will hurt more people and - y'all, individuals are allowed to have their own views of the power that everyone doesn't have to agree with. What happened to 'make strong characters with flaws in their world view?' did you all of a sudden decide that's NOT actually good writing? So having the Avatar who used her powers liberally, and as the video states, used them maybe too much, telling Aang that he needs to use his own powers a lot is…consistent characterization? Which is then challenged by Roku later as he tells Aang that all the Avatars are different and have different views on the power of the Avatar. Why is Kyoshi's opinions suddenly taken as wholly accurate in representing what the show overall is trying to say? She's giving her opinion to Aang - an opinion that has some truth to it, but also some flaws that Aang will need to navigate on his own journey. Kyoshi and Roku's stories are not compressed all into Kyoshi - only the aspect of Roku taking control of Aang and using his body to fuck shit up in the Avatar state is compressed - not the ideological aspects of it

10) Sokka supporting Katara's fight against Pakku is a culmination of his arc to let go of obsessively protecting her and actually letting her decide her course of action herself - because his arc was different in the show than in the animated series. Trying to say that the reason he told her to kick Pakku's ass didn't fit because he was never sexist wasn't the reason - it WAS a culmination of his arc, you just refused to see it by clinging to the old one.

11) The whole argument as to 'why show genocide' I already made a post about, but to condemn the depiction based on the way you interpret the showrunner's quote is disingenuous. Again, it's taking something and making up a narrative around it so you can feel justified in hating it. It's important to show a culture before they are killed because they deserve to be seen as people, not just martyrs. They had lives. They lived and were happy and had a rich culture. They were not just 'fated to die and be told of in history books'. Genocide is disgusting and hard to watch - it's calculated and brutal. Showing that drives home just how awful the actions of the fire nation are in practice rather than just theory. Yes, the airbenders fighting was 'cool' to see - in the way that all action is 'cool' to see. But no, the genocide wasn't played as 'look at neat fighting!' in the live-action. It was shown as brutal and terrible, horrifying and surprising, and the airbenders didn't deserve what happened to them. It also gives you a direct view of what the fire nation is capable of when they come to the south pole and the northern water tribe: you've SEEN the devastation first hand and you DON'T want to see it again. The threat isn't theoretical, it's very real.

11.5) To take a CHILD'S quote about the sequence being 'so cool' is absolutely WILD to me. GORDON IS A CHILD! No, he's not going to have the most sophisticated and politically nuanced sound bite to say about the action sequence in an interview. HE'S A CHILD! Holy mother of god. To use that to bolster your point that 'that's the way it was intended to be viewed and how everyone is going to view it!' is just…..holy shit. You're taking media interpretation from A CHILD??????? Do you think, if we interviewed a child about the OG show, they'd talk about the fucking colonialism??? How Azula was abused too and didn't deserve her fate?? Or do you think they'd say "The fight between the Fire Lord and Aang at the end was so cool!" Honestly thought Jessie Gender wouldn't try to bolster her interpretation with a quote from A CHILD, but I guess here we are…

12) It's wild that she makes the point that conservatives are incapable of reading deeper than just the surface-level visuals of a story while…she's doing literally the same thing just in the opposite way. The live-action depicted the genocide, therefore they MUST just want to 'cool' visual of firebenders fighting airbenders! There can't be any other things at play here! No story being told whatsoever because all it is is spectacle! That's all I see! Ironically, she's falling into the same trap of not looking deeper at why one might depict the horrors of genocide and the battle against people with no army.

13) Aang actually treats the genocide as more immediate in the live-action than he does the animated show. Most animated episodes, you can forget that it even happened, while in the animated show, it pops up a lot in some unexpected ways like when he's uncomfortable waterbending because Gyatzo had always been his teacher, when he yells at Bumi for making light of the genocide, his desire to get to the north to keep it from happening again, when Zhao proclaims that he can wipe out an entire race of benders and Aang says he knows exactly what that's like, when he constantly stays to help people because 'I couldn’t help my own people, but I can help them'.  Not only through Aang, but also through every child in the series - like with the animated show, the live-action shows how kids are shaped by the generational trauma of the war plus the immediate effects of it: Teo ready to fight, Jet making compromises to fight back, Sokka shouldering too much responsibility so young, Katara's trauma around her mother's death and her waterbending, Bumi losing his faith, Zuko and Azula being shaped by their father to be the perfect weapons to continue the war.

14) Interpreting Zuko's comment of 'sometimes the weak can become strong' right after his father mutilated him for showing compassion is not meant to be taken as a thesis that 'Zuko just needs to get better at fighting, this is what the story is saying, I am very smart'. It's showing HIS CURRENT view of the world - the idea that his father has taught him that he needs to be strong and Zuko has bought that and wants desperately to earn his father's love. Zuko's story through the series is showing that 'strength' isn't what his father defines it as (or what Jessie defines it as in her video) but rather it's strength of character - compassion is not weakness, it's strength, and no, that doesn't mean if you have compassion you punch harder.

15) The live-action show makes the Fire Nation MUCH more nuanced than the animated show - we see how Ozai and Azula aren't just maniacal villains, but we see the pain and torment their upbringings deal out to them, and in turn, deal to others. It shows the cycle much more clearly and showing fire nation citizens who disagree fleshes out the culture even more.

16) Jet was much more nuanced in the live-action as he's RIGHT about the mechanist being a spy and the king being lax in his duties. He's created a community of people to try to heal from the harm the fire nation has caused them and he gives actual good advice to Katara, helping her emotionally heal and remember the good aspects of her mother.

17) The argument that 'the live action is trying to ignore the past' is a massively simplified narrative. The live-action is showing Aang stuck in the past, unable to take large steps into the future. Pain, trauma and loss can anchor us in the past - it's HEALTHY to keep moving forward rather than only thinking about the pain in the past (ie Jet's advice to Katara). Aang was continually trying to avoid the genocide happening again while simultaneously trying to get past Avatars to do the big hard work for him. His lesson is not to 'forget the past just live in the now' but rather, don't let fear of what has happened in the past stop you from making a difference in the future. Yes, war is loss and suffering, but if you get paralyzed by not being able to prevent that, the fire nation will just keep marching across the world. It's about not letting the past immobilize you to the point where you stop fighting back against oppression - or getting together with a community to help you fight for fear they'll die just like those in the past did.

17.5) Letting go of the past is a buddhist philosophy that is a lot more complicated than Jessie is making it out to be here. Just as in the animated series, characters can come to realizations about lessons they need to learn while still taking seasons to fully learn the lesson - just because Aang said he's ready to let go of the past doesn't mean he's now ignoring it and all will be smooth sailing. It means he's ready to start taking steps to do that and approach life in a healthier way. It's wild that Jessie took the direct quote "I need to let go of the past to focus on my future" and then states that the show is saying "the character's aren't seeing future possibilities and hope, they're focused on the now" when, quite literally, the quote she just referenced….is talking about building a better future.

18) Then, she references later seasons (Aang in the fire nation school) a lot to indicate that the live-action is ignoring those concepts from the OG when….we're talking about season 1 here - not season 3. Why is the world not allowed to organically grow? Why would you make the argument that 'season 1 didn’t explicitly deal with these concepts that aren't brought up until season 3, so therefore they are ignoring them'?

19) Jessie uses a lot of clips from a Daily Wire (conservative talkshow) guy as if that has anything at all to do with the live-action ATLA. She's trying to draw a line between that ideology and the ideology of the show and I feel like she had to bastardize the NATLA show in order to do that so horribly, her interpretation of the story and themes is completely unrecognizable to what is actually shown on screen.

I usually agree with her takes on media, but this video was not it. Every interpretation she had, I interpreted the scenes/lessons in the exact opposite way and, I believe, I interpreted it closer to what the showrunners intended.

Oh no, i just had a thought: this is The Last Jedi all over again! I saw so many negative interpretations of that movie that I just sat and scratched my head over like "How in the WORLD did you get to that conclusion??" when I thought my own interpretation was just...the obvious way to view the movie. I had no idea my views on it would be so controversial. Here we are again. Time is a flat circle. Life is a meaningless cycle of disappointment and confusion, neverending.

#natla #natla positivity #netflix avatar #netflix atla #this isn't intended as hate to Jessie Gender - only a response to her publicly posted video

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Nintendo-vember Level 3: Dobson and his Toxic Nintendo Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be toxic. Now bear in mind, I did not say that it IS toxic, but that it can be toxic. This assumption that because we have pleasant memories of something, that it was always good all the time. A desire to get that back, ignores all the good that’s come since then. As well as all the bad stuff that was there too. And it poisons you. Making you more suggestible to deception and your own greed. Who is to say that your own past is more important than someone else’s future? And because you want something that may not have been real at all, the farther the goal post gets. Because you can’t really reclaim it. So it just gets worse and worse and you get greedier and more desperate for it, because what you really want is never going to come. Until in the very end, you become the thing you hated in the first place. Lewis Lovhaug – March 2018, Infinite Crisis

Everything I did for this month so far, was going to lead directly into today’s , actually long in the works, post. Cause today we go over the comic, that as far as I see it, may actually be Dobson’s most (in)famous one out there. The one that painted the public’s opinion of him more so than anything he would ever do when starting to draw “political comics” under Trump. The one that defined him for all of deviantart and kiwifarms from 2010 onward. A comic that will always show up, whenever someone online even remotely talks about him. The one that I have seen more times than any other being used for threads on /co/ for Dobson. A comic that is neither about politics, feminism or even part of any of his comic series. A comic that is truly centered around the concept of toxic nostalgia, rather than whatever Andrew Dobson was going for and that fits perfectly to the theme of this month.

Ladies, gentlemen and inbetween… I give you, the Localization one.

Released in 2010, a time when Dobson was still trying (and failing) to sell himself more on the image of just being a quirky nerd and Nintendo fanboy whose work you should support because he only wants to make others happy, this became a comic that genuinely cemented further in the eyes of others, how much of a self-indulgent and extremely manchildish prick with dumb taste he really was.

How, some here may ask who are a bit too young? Well, let me give you context…

For starters, by the time Dobson released the comic, he had already quite a bit of a reputation online for being a prick to other nerds. His infamous “West vs East” comic which he created “as a joke” to vent about the popularity of anime in the mid to late 2000s had been published three years prior and had, in combination with a lot of derogative journal entries and posts on deviantart and other pages, earned him the ire of many people. In addition, his failed or outright aborted “original” content had painted him as a quitter, who despite wanting all the fame someone could muster online, was not willing to put the necessary work in it.

Dobson was, for a lack of a better word, a bully among nerds who tried to use his platform to shame people for being “nerdier” than him or enjoying stuff he didn’t, while also playing the victim card for people not interested in purchasing his product or calling him out on his hypocrisies and flaws in opinions.

In that regard, Dobson was pretty much ahead of the curve to some “woke” companies. Insulting your customer and then being surprised when no one wants to buy your shit.

The other thing to be aware of, has to do with the history and popularity of Nintendo characters at least pre-1995 in America.

For the few not quite aware and as a quick reminder to everyone: Videogames back in the 80s and very early 90s (like 1990-92) did on average not necessarily have what we can call “complex” lore when it came to videogame stories and characters. At least not to a degree as we would get later in the mid-90s and onwards. Aside of (J)RPGs most games were simply focused on moving a character from one end of a level to the next and the story as to why we even bothered for Megaman to fight the Robo Masters and who the heck Dr. Wily was, was printed in the manual on a small page.

And Mario and Link were no exception to that. Mostly because they also had only very few genuine main titles under their name. By 1989, The Legend of Zelda had only two NES titles under its name, while Mario had (if we don’t account for non-jump n’run games in which he was shoved into because of his status as Nintendo’s mascot) the three main Mario Bros games for the NES, one game for the Game Boy, Mario Bros and the two Donkey Kong titles.

Lacking quite a bit in characterization game wise, Nintendo of America in order to sell the stuff had to partly make the characters appeal to the audience via localization done through merchandise and non-game related products. And early fans of these characters would obviously crave for it.

Enter The Super Mario Bros Super Show, a cartoon series produced on order of Nintendo of America by Haim Saban and DIC Enterprises (the same ones who would give us “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”, “Captain N” and “Inspector Gadget”) that ran from September 1989 till December of 1989. Using the first two Mario Bros games for the NES as basis for the character design of the show, the show itself had otherwise little to do with the games. Ignoring the live action segments, the actual animated episodes would have plots in which Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach (the later going by the then American official name of Princess Toadstool) traveled into whatever territory and had to deal with Bowser (or King Koopa as he was known) in a plot that had elements of some book, movie or anything else to parody.

In addition the show would later have Legend of Zelda based animated segments, of which 13 were produced. Those featured Link living in Hyrule castle with a more active “power woman” Princess Zelda and a fairy companion named Sprite and the two having to deal with Ganon, who was more of a dark wizard than a warrior based demon.

Overall, the shows were not really all that great compared to other stuff that existed cartoon wise, with some aspects of the characters feeling jarring nowadays. But honestly, for the sake of this article, I watched some of them and frankly they were not that terrible. They were typical 80s cartoon fanfare, which among other things included some animation errors and dumb slapstick. Especially the Mario segments were very slapstick heavy and Mario and Luigi were mostly characterized by Luigi being a bit of a scaredy cat even before the games did show him like that, Mario being rougher than you would think and dumb jokes about Luigi and Mario loving pasta and other Italian dishes. Because you know, Italians are only known for their cuisine!

The Zelda segments also had a bit of an “odd” character dynamic imagined for Zelda and Link. Zelda was a bit of a jerkass commanding bitch and Link could be a horndog trying to always flirt with her or trying to get a kiss.

There is one moment in an episode for example, where Zelda sits on Links bed after just having stopped some condor from stealing a piece of the Triforce guarded in Link’s room. Right then Link enters the room, sees the Princess sitting there and immediately says “smooching time” and tries to jump her to make out.

Minute 3:15 – 3:20 more or less Yeah, I think Pepe le Hyrulian would not really sell well with more modern audiences and sensitivities.

All that said, I can understand people having a soft spot for the show and enjoying it unironically. It is just that I think most of them would also be intelligent and understanding enough to see, that these shows did NOT give the ultimate interpretation of who or what these characters and their games were. Truth be told, even back then those things weren’t really acknowledged by Nintendo. Sure, Nintendo of America may have given the okay to do those things. But in Japan, global headquarters gave more or less a rat’s ass about it. They were busy making the NES and Gameboy profitable and worked on Mario Bros 3.

Truth be told, the most “characterization” Mario even got in Japan at the time was as followed: Shigeru Miyamoto thought he should be Italian and from New York. The former because he “looked” Italian to him (as a result of the mustache), the later because Donkey Kong, the game Mario originated from, was inspired in part by King Kong and King Kong is set in New York. Mario didn’t even have a name originally, having been known by Jumpman once. The origin of his Mario name is, that after Minoru Arakawa (president of Nintendo of America at the time) got into an argument with a real estate developer named Mario Segale, who Arakawa owned rent money, the game developers decided to name the character Mario. Which may or may not have been meant as a “take that” against Mr. Segale. But if so, it’s one that backfired.

But I digress. Point of that entire elongated history lesson is, that Mario and Link were in terms of characterization mostly defined to some 80s kids, by their depiction in the American cartoon, which had however very little in common with what the games were about. It was e.g. the cartoon who popularized heavily the entire idea of the brothers being from Brooklyn and having been transported via a magic pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom, while in the actual games, such a backstory was never really given. As evident by even the actual American instruction manuals for Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 I checked out online for this. Look them up.

And again, most people, even the kids, could accept that the animated show and what the games were, differed.

Then came the 90s, and with more titles under their belt, Nintendo of Japan decided to flesh out their mascots more to increase their popularity, resulting in Mario, Link and others getting “official” personalities as shown by their behavior in games and not just the inofficial ones via non-canon foreign material. And again, most kids and people were okay with that. After all, the games were what really mattered to them in the long run. Plus I think that as long as the games would simply “capture” the spirit of whatever they liked in the characters iand games n the first place, they would be okay with it.

But not Andrew Dobson.

Born in 1981 and likely not owning a NES up until the cartoon aired, he jumped onto the show as an eight year old and became a fan of it. In fact he enjoyed the Zelda cartoon so much, even as an adult he would draw fanart about it

Nothing at all wrong with that in my opinion. You like something, you have the ability to create fan content for it, go for it.

But as we more or less already established via the Howard and Nester comic, Dobson was as a person dead set that only the thing he liked or was first exposed to counts and not whatever others thought. Something that supposedly may explain why he genuine hates Bowser Jr and Yoshi, as evident by these tweets made a few years after the Localization comic was made.

And yeah sorry, but how can one hate Yoshi? Yoshi is an adorable pet dinosaur you can ride. You know how many kids would have loved someone like that in their life? Gues if Yoshi was less into vore and more into inflation, Dobson would have liked him more.

Speaking of the comic -and to finally get back to it- even Dobson admitted years later that the entire point of it is to simply piss all over Nintendo and that he was annoyed that his “beloved” American continuity got erased in favor of the “dirty Japanese” one. Despite the fact that the Japanese one is, as he himself admits, official.

And boy does he take the piss on it. To the point I want to call him R. Kelly.

So lets dissect how his stand is just the typicla strawman affair, unfunny and at times quite frankly outright homophobic, sexist, hypocritical and racist.

First, the art. As always, it is just “great” to see the degree in animation being fully utilized here. No background but skyblue, everyone looking more like a doodle, the use of the fillbucket, the director having 5 fingers on his hand in the second panel, but four in the fifth, getting the numbers of fingers on Mario completely wrong, missing out on Peach in the last panel and so on… brilliant! How come Disney would not hire someone who could draw like that! Oh right, because standards. Though those have gotten quite low over the years

Every single person working on this needs to be blacklisted.

But of course, the true brilliance comes through the writing. Starting with the strawman executive coming off as if what he does is something new. That he is the “evil soulless corporation” who doesn’t care for his employees and creations true personality and forces them to fit into some mold for the audience to enjoy. The “audience” and consumers also being more or less indirectly insulted by the way Dobson presents the entire affair, as he seemingly wants to blame “those damn kids” for ruining his favorite childhood characters.

But Dobson, I thought you loved corporations hating on fans.

Then we come to what the characters are supposedly changed into.

(warning, upload of the comic for the third time, so you cna always see what I refer to)

First, Mario being no longer from Brooklyn and that he is supposedly an Italian stereotype. As a non American, I have to ask: Why is it so important that Mario has to be from Brooklyn? I get the feeling the only reason people like Dobson or Moviebob care about it, is because they want to deep down culturally appropriate the character. Assure he is in some way of American culture and doesn’t belong to some “dirty, foreign country”, even if they have to go for a compromise and make him a dirty half blood Wop. I mean, I will say this: Yes, Mario has an accent that is stereotypical. And? I take a stereotypical accent and being otherwise a determined but friendly everyday hero over him being stereotypically obsessed with pasta and no personality conveyed through his actions aside of being a bit mean and bossy to his brother, as was the case in that dang cartoon.

The thing here is, Dobson was genuinely convinced that Mario’s portrayal as given by Charles Martinet, Mario’s VA from the early 90s up until August of 2023, wasn’t just stereotypical, but also racist, harmful and culturally insensitive. Something he believed even back in 2017 and resulted in a minor twitter meltdown

Look, I will say this here: Yes, Martinet’s voice for Mario is kinda stereotypical. And I did my research. Unlike Martinet, Lou Albano, the original voice of Mario in the Mario Bros Super Show, was actually of Italian heritage. Born in 1933 in Rome, having immigrated to the USA shortly after he got baptized in the Vatican (you can’t get more Italian than that!), he certainly was more authentically Italian than Martinet, who was born in California. Heck, Martinet’s father is actually French and he spend more time in France in his youth than in America or Italy. The story of how Martinet got his gig as Mario is also well known and painted by a rather stereotypical joke involving Italian food.

But to paraphrase the twitter user Dobson argued with, I think that all things considered, Martinet gave Mario and all the other characters he voiced over the years just a certain warmth and fun to their personality with the way he delivered his lines, that he managed to convey and define the cartoonish true nature of Mario and Co for many generations to come. And even now that he has been retired from the role, he is still a name recognized for the character. A character no one, not even freaking nationalistic Italians, seem to have a problem with. So, mangia un cazzo, Dobson. You sound just like the assholes who tried to get rid of Speedy Gonzales and in doing so pissed off all of Mexico.

Next the way he talks about Peach. Okay first, the Popeye arms are again just something from the cartoons. Or at least he believes it cause…. Well

Does that look like Popeye arms?

Second, he is essentially saying that Princess Peach, unlike the cartoon version, is a bimbo. Why, because she is blonde and you have some sort of deep seated hatred for blond people? Also, Peach hasn’t fought with Mario together in really any NES videogame either, Dobson. Oh what, Mario Bros 2? Aka the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic? The way he talks here about Princess Peach is just utterly sexist, as he essentially devalues Peach as a character, just because she plays a damsel in distress often times. Which doesn’t even necessarily mean, that she isn’t a badass in her own way, even in that role. I mean, she is still the sovereign ruler of an entire nation and in Super Princess Peach -which seems to be the game he references when it comes to her being “over emotionally”- she saves the day all on her own. Sure, she is emotional in the game, but the entire premise of the game is centered around everyone’s emotions going haywire along Vibe Island, including the villains. Bet Dobson hasn’t even played the game back in 2006 and just went off on some shitty rumor. Not to forget that this statement is utterly false. Peach has also been a great supporting character and fighter in games such as Super Mario RPG and Super Paper Mario, which were released BEFORE that comic. And nowadays she is also known as a great character in stuff like the Mario + Rabbids games plus she will get her own upcoming Princess Peach: Showtime game for the Switch. Lastly, let us not forget every game where, even if she played a damsel, was still important to the plot by defying the villain as best as she could. Not to forget the current movie, in which she still kicked ass while going out all in pink.

So, after he has been racist towards Italians indirectly as well as sexist towards women embracing their brand feminity (boy, don’t want to know how 2011 Dobson would have then reacted to the Barbie movie of 2023), let Dobson be judgmental about anime fangirls and also rather homophobic, by the way how he tries to tear down “modern” Link.

There are four things I hate the most about the Link panel, which make it frankly in my eyes the one where Dobson’s hatred and own nastiness really shine through.

First, the accusation that the “changes” to Link’s design past “Link’s Awakening” can be attributed to anime fangirls. Showing both his true hatred for women when they don’t fall in line with his views and his stuck up shitty opinion about anime fans and combining it with latent misogyny. Look, I have seen thirst anime fangirls myself a lot over my lifetime. But they were not the demographic to “ruin” Link. If anything, I think that the popularity of Cloud Strife in general with others may have slightly influenced Link’s design for Ocarina of Time. Which in itself also had been in development at least since spring of 1996, till its release in November of 1998. And even then, that is a stretch I came up with, cause in my opinion someone in the development team likely just thought “Hey, what if we move on from the more cartoony look of the late 80s and early 90s and try some “darker” fantasy elements, without going full Berserk?” And that is how we got Link in that game. Because of some developers trying to appeal design wise to a general audience, not just a random group of made up strawmen. You want to see games pandering to actual Yaoi fangirls aesthetically? Play Enzai or Twisted Wonderland.

Second, again his hatred towards blond people. I really would like to know where that comes from, because I doubt it was only related to some random bully in school being blond.

Third, the way he uses the word effeminate and describes post Ocarina of Time Link essentially as “nonthreatening”.

For starters, considering Link rams his sword into Ganon’s skull in Ocarina of Time and slashes away at many of his enemies, which is way more threatening and violent than just poking them with a stick in 2D overhead view, I wouldn’t really consider him “non threatening”. I like to call him and many of his future incarnations, badass as fuck. Even the cartoonish, childlike Link from the Wind Waker continuity, who didn’t just stab Ganon in the head, but put his sword in there for good. It also is kinda laughable how Dobson uses the word “non threatening” in a negative manner, seeing how over the years ever since he sucked off Steven Universe, he would whine on twitter and other social plattforms again and again how males in media are always resolving conflict only via violence and are not in tune with their emotions. In other words, he once considered being more or less pacifistic a negative trait.

Also, “effeminate”? Okay first, Link looks like this in Ocarina of Time…

What exactly looks “effeminate” about male Link here, or at least let’s say more “effeminate” than for example in a character like this?

Second, we all know that if Link all off sudden looked more like Guts from Berserk or the protagonist of DarkSoul (you know, more “manly”), Dobson would throw enough of a hissy fit, he would likely come back from his sabbath and whine how Nintendo is embracing toxic masculine traits in his characters. All while also blaming PS3 games for some reason for that.

Third, how exactly would Dobson define effeminate here? I mean, the term is already defined as being derogatory, the most common definition I found by Merriam-Webter online being as followed

Effeminate: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner

Effeminate: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement

So, Andrew “I hate all men” Dobson, has a problem with a character not being “typical” or stereotypical manly male? The same guy who praised the She-Ra reboot for its portrayal of Bow and fucking worships that fat fuck below as one of the best protagonists in a cartoon of the last decade…

Has actually deep down a problem with people embracing more female interests, qualities or just looking more feminine in appearance, even though the later may not be by choice but rather genetics? All while also having the audacity to say then this years later?

I find this just genuinely hate- and hurtful. Not just a simple complaint about a design choice regarding his supposed favorite fantasy game hero, but a “deep cut” towards people who just enjoy things not considered “stereotypically manly” or may feel not comfortable falling in line with gender expectations. I mean, what? Is a man now supposedly not manly in Dobson’s eyes because they like musicals, sweets are capable of showing empathy and other emotions or like to dress up in certain ways or take care of their appearance?

It is just disgusting to me, because I know people, both male and female, who had to deal with bullying and name calling a lot simple because they didn’t quite fall in line with expectations by others or struggle with their own identity partly because of expectations vs reality. And as evident by THIS comment TheHypocrisyofAndrewDobson received once it isn’t just “a joke” to people genuinely affected by that sort of mentality. And again, this derogatory use of the world and complaint towards “modern” Link comes from someone who years later would whine about toxic masculinity, put women on pedestals even if they are abusive, likely jerked it off to Link in Gerudo gear following Breath of the Wild and in the biggest ironic “twist”, loves the cartoon incarnation of Link, whose catchphrase is “Excuse me, Princess” and needs a restraining order as much as Warner Bros gave Pepe lePew.

And to finish this panel off (yes, we are still not at Samus), of course the next complain is how Zelda and Link are “no longer love interests” … now I apologize in advance towards any moderate shipper out here, but I am going full snarker mode now for this part. Okay?

Dobson… the fact that you cared so much about shipping two fictional characters in a series of children games, for a console primarily played by kids, while you were being in your 20s and above is pathetic as shit. I know that you have no one in life who genuinely loves you, because among other things you are incapable of either feeling or identifying true love while also being a selfish little shit, but to be so thirsty for affection that you project that need on some pieces of data or lines of color, makes you a bigger loser in my book than any republican who lost the primary against Donald Trump in 2015. The fact that you look at a piece of fiction and your immediate thought is “oohh, these two characters together would look very cute hugging, kissing and doing things I touch myself to at night”, while things such as plot progression and character development likely play second, third or fourth fiddle, only confirms to me that shippers (at least the once acting like you in that regard and other fields) are a fucking blight on any fandom and the world at large.

Now with that shit vented, I once again apologize for going that far, even for “comedic purpose” towards the people who actually can recognize when they go just a bit too far with shipping. But this isn’t just annoying in regard to this comic, it is annoying with Dobson in general. If you are even remotely aware of how he treats the LGBT subject for real as well as what he truly enjoys about Legend of Korra and Miraculous Ladybug, you know he is thirstier than someone stranded in the Gobi desert. Just look at his pic of Zelda and Linkle he made in honour of Hyrule Warriors.

I can kinda taste his urge to touch himself there.

To me it is just dumb to define any story out there and the characters in it by simply “are they getting together or not” because romance to me in storytelling is an additional flavor, not the main ingredient. It is one reason I really do not like Miraculous Ladybug for example. And the fact that Dobson seems to define Legend of Zelda a lot as a franchise by the “shipping potential” of Link and Zelda as implied by that panel, irks me in all the wrong ways.

I mean, for the most part the appeal of the Zelda games isn’t the “romance” between the two, it is traversing the land of Hyrule and saving it from evil while going on a big adventure. And let us be real here, Link and Zelda weren’t really an item pre-Ocarina of Time either. In the NES and SNES games they were essentially strangers to each other, with one filling the role of damsel in distress even a bit harder than Peach did. After all, Peach may be a princess, but she actually rules her kingdom. Zelda on the other hand is daddy’s little girl in those and other games post 1998. And the relationship they had in the cartoon, the one Dobson likes to call a “may they, won’t they” thing is in my opinion not cute, but toxic. She is a demanding bitch that calls him names at times, he is a horndog who needs a lecture by Sexual Harassment Panda and none of them improves character wise over the show.

What a misogynistic piece of shit

There is a reason I consider Tetra, Zelda from Skyward Sword and the “Wild” Zelda the better interests, because not only do Link and Zelda here have better chemistry and are both nicer and more respectful to each other in a manner, they also support each other in very heroic ways. I mean, Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom willingly sacrificed her own conscious just so Link can have a shot at defeating Ganon and saving Hyrule in the future, while Link wants to do everything to save his friend. If that isn’t impactful, tragic and has so much romantic potential, I don’t know what else would count.

But hey, supposedly the cartoon is better. And the 365 Days Trilogy is a great love story with no unfortunate implications involving sexual relationships and abuse. *snark*

And then it is Samus turn. And I really have to wonder, if Dobson ever even played a Metroid Game before Other M anyway, as he hates games with scary elements and FPS.

Aside of once again whining about changing the hair color (Dobson seems to be something of a reverse Aryan enthusiast), he acts as if the addition of the Zero Suit in Metroid was a cardinal sin and “sexist crap”, to entice more men to playing her game.

Okay… for starters, the Metroid games were already enjoyed by a huge male demographic long before that or before even Metroid Prime. Samus wasn’t a “played by females thirsty for representation” only character, as that comic seems to imply. She was considered a female badass hero from the moment she first appeared and her design is deliberately inspired by Ripley from Alien. And skimpy? Again, Dobson doesn’t seem to know what certain words mean. Skimpy would be when the outfit would show more off her skin or was barely there. This is a skintight jumpsuit, that also has a function in the game as a less movement restricting suit compared to Samus armor. Heck, just watch this video, that guy gives some decent explanation on the suit itself.

And yeah, I can agree that in certain cutscenes more so than the actual game, it does put quite a bit of emphasize on Samus “attributes” so to speak. But are we really trying to insinuate that the Zero Jumpsuit is more sexist than the character stripping off to her underwear as was the bonus ending content of the initial Metroid games?

And if the issue is that the skinsuit makes Samus more “sexy” and that Dobson does not want to see sexy characters in Nintendo games…

He should reevaluate the fact that he enjoyed the above later.

There is also this little tweet I found after the fact, Dosbon would make later in 2015, where he actually more or less confirms the idea, that he thinks the Japanese only care for Samus in a “sexy skintight” manner, by making this dumbass “joke” comparison

Ignoring the fact btw, that the pic on the left was drawn by Samus original designer Hiroji Kiyotake. Again, Dobson trying to discredit the Japanese. And don't get me even started that he enjoys Other M or takes more offense to the shoedesign of Samus in Smash Bros than anything

Finally, and to wrap this thing up, we reach the final panel, showing the executive declaring that the “old” stuff shall from now on be brushed off like Dobson tried to brush off his fetish artist days, all while the “new and improved, but truly despicable” pretenders of his favorite childhood heroes are behind him. Mario lobotomized to say MAMA MIA while his eyes look like he is possessed by the retardation of Talus, Link being a “silly girl who makes silly movements with her hands and likely just wants to hang out with cute boys”, while Samus looks pissed and just wishes she was in something less degrading for her than this comic. Like Other M.

Honestly, this comic just stinks of loser entitlement and as stated prior, toxic nostalgia. Dobson has never really been a creator of decent stuff, only a consumer who demands the next product as soon as he hungers for it and will be utterly judgemental to petty and spiteful degrees, when he doesn’t get what he wants or suddenly thinks he sees something “problematic” to it. And to him, already the fact that stylistic choices and aesthetics changed over time, a natural progression of things if you ask me, is “problematic” in his eyes. Dobson would have rather had for Zelda, Link, Mario, Samus and Co to be undefined postholders he could have projected himself on, or outdated 80s stereotypes and toxic men, because that is the first thing he was ever exposed to when it came to those characters. Why not go even further, Dobson? Erase the Switch, the Wii and any other game console post 1989 from history, so that gaming itself never evolves past the 8-Bit era. Let’s destroy Pokemon, God of War, Kirby, Sonic and many other franchises and characters, because they are not the “true heroes of the Golden Age of gaming”. Let’s see how you will like that, when they come for your beloved Skyrim.

Bottom line, Dobson is a nostalgic pig, stuck in a past he looks at through rose tainted, grease covered glasses and this comic more than anything written before and after that embodies the mentality quite as well. And even though he tried to play it off as a joke, anyone with half a brain saw through what it was really about. And they made Dobson know, partly through less words than I used here, why they thought his opinion and by extension he, sucked.

Dobson wasn’t just playing the overzealous Nintendo fan for shit and giggles. He was, this overzealous, almost destructive and utterly disrespectful fan, who believed in the superiority of his favorite childhood toy over the consoles of others, even if that included pissing off his own “kin” or accussing Nintendo of being problematic dirty foreigners. Just look at anything he would type in regard of Super Smash Bros for the Switch, like how pissed he was at the fact he had to put effort into getting his favorite character to play as. Essentially insinuating, the game and people enjoying it were crap, just because he was biased towards fighting games to begin with. And look, being critical of aspects of a game, is one thing. But some of the things Dobson found to complain about? Pathetic, childish and utterly irrelevant in the bigger picture of anything

I want to punch him in the throat for this voice alone...

And if you think Dobson being an opinionated Nintendo fanboy is cringe, wait till we get to him being an opinionated PS3 hater.

But before that, I want to tear at least one of his shitty Zelda opinions a new one…

#andrew dobson #syac #so you are a cartoonist #tom preston #adobsonartwork #webcomic #youtube #adobsoncomic #nintendo #super mario #legend of zelda #link #samus aran #metroid #nintendo vember #Youtube

[centrally-unplanned]

I discussed this briefly on Twitter a while back, but someone commented that they didn’t see why Lain & Evangelion were often seen as ‘connected’ in Western anime spaces. 

The main reason is, of course, A: They are both 90′s mindfuck anime that got big in 2000′s America. This is a whole genre, I know I discussed it before, but Evangelion, SEL, FLCL, Ghost in the Shell, etc fit this zeitgeist of alt + early internet trippy psychological-psychedelia. This is the same time period stuff like “Watch the Wizard of Oz w/ Dark Side of the Moon Playing” got big, let alone the obvious Fight Club + Matrix candidates. Even though these shows aren’t super connected in Japan (though, asterisk on that) they became connected in the west in how they were imported as a group to fill a niche western media, particularly for younger audiences, wasn’t filling. Certainly how dumpster fires like Elfen Lied were able to ride their coattails. 

But I don’t think this is all there is to it - Lain and Evangelion actually share a lot of thematic overlap. B: is obviously the narrative dilemma - should Shinji/Lain sacrifice their humanity to Instrumentality/The Internet and abandon their individual connections to Asuka/Alice in exchange for being permanently connected to all of humanity to resolve the dilemma of human identity and loneliness? Im not being cute here, “We are all connected” is a Lain tagline and its also the entire point of the Human Instrumentality Project, these are very similar core plot points. Its not a coincidence of course - Japan, always 10 years ahead, was moving fast into a modernity of urbanization, hyper-literacy, atomization/individualism, “Society of the Spectacle”, all that jazz. Evangelion & Lain are both grappling with what it means to be a member of that new social paradigm.

This is the clear reading, but I think there is a third connection that is probably underappreciated today, namely C: the subculture assault. Shinji rejects Instrumentality, for a lot of reasons but one of them is that he is an expy for otaku as a culture and way of life, and Instrumentality stands for the illusions of connection otaku culture grants you. You think being an otaku makes you part of something greater? It doesn’t, that is all abstract, you are a flesh-and-blood individual with connections to individual people, you can’t choose otaku-dom over the real world. Reject Modernity, Embrace Traditionalism, Have Sex, the whole shebang. Everyone knows this about Evangelion now, its the obvious reading.

Lain however is doing the same exact thing, just with hacker culture over otaku culture. Its not positing in a vacuum the idea of “uplifting to the internet”, its responding to a whole subculture of writers & people who are already, in a way, living that dream/nightmare.  You know, things like the “Cyberia” concept as spelled out in the titular 1994 book byDouglas Rushkoff - oh hey look thats the name of the nightclub in Lain, funny that! The 90′s into the 2000′s had a whole cultural movement around this, and Lain is rejecting it in the same exact way Evangelion is rejecting otakudom (which, to be clear, are both partial rejections, I’m simplifying).

The issue with recognizing that now is that otaku culture flourished, while hacker culture vanished. We don’t call it otakudom, of course, but fan culture, the extended fandom universe, going deep into media products, having one’s culture and reference points all come from a niche-but-shared media ecology, that’s everyone now! Okay fine not actually everyone, but its enough to no longer be a subculture. People don’t really talk as much about ‘otaku’ culture in Japan anymore because they are too widespread, and no longer seem uniquely Japanese, it can’t be one movement. Otaku won, so Evangelion’s Otaku critique remains valid, so valid they did a whole dumb remake to make the point even more explicit.

Meanwhile ‘hackers’ are dead. Like people, hack, sure, but its not a lifestyle anymore, because we all do live on the internet now and its nothing like that 90′s vision. Otakudom went everywhere and changed people, meanwhile the internet went everywhere and people changed it. “On the internet we all are connected” that is a fucking curse please Do Not Connect To Me if I have to listen to one more tweet about the impact of *Chapo Trap House* on *political discourse norms* I am going to bomb the Senate. Lain’s vision was pulverized and decapitated by reality, now existing as a nostalgic dream for a vanished utopia by hanger-ons time forgot still visiting IRC chat rooms or, well, Tumblr. 

The idea that someone could watch Lain in 1998 and feel *personally attacked* is hard now for us to grasp, the way that End of Evangelion can just be a gutpunch to fans. But in 1998 the gutpunch was at least somewhat intended, and I can’t think of a peer show that shares that goal with Evangelion more than Lain, even if the target was different.

(Note: the ‘hacker’ culture imo did die but you can also say it evolved and moved on, into AI Singularity Rats, into *siiiiigh* crytpo, and other modes. I think the gap is too large for Lain to resonate in that way though)

#evangelion #serial experiments lain #anime discourse #mini-essay

[lovemesomesurveys]

When was the last time you wore a mask, and what kind of mask was it? A few weeks ago when I went to my doctor appointment. It was just the common blue mask. Masks aren’t required anymore, but I still wear mine whenever I go somewhere and have no issue doing so.

Do you say "couch" or "sofa"? 🛋️ I say couch.

Have you found any gray hairs yet? if so, how old were you when you found your first one? I swear they started popping up the second I turned 30. I’m 33 now and haven’t had my hair dyed in a few years, in fact it’s all my natural color now cause I chopped my hair super short a couple years ago, and there’s several gray hairs currently. D: I blame the heavy amount of stress I’ve been through due to health stuff and the health stuff itself. I honestly never thought I’d be one to gray early like this. I have a bad habit of plucking them out and I’ve heard you shouldn’t do that but it drives me nuts. I’m allowing my hair to grow more before I finally get dye it again. I can’t wait.

Do you think you will dye your hair when you go gray, or will you let it be natural? Like I said, I’m definitely going to dye my hair again. 

Have you ever met anyone named Eden? No. 

Which name do you like better: Eden or Aiden? Eden.

What is your favorite type of meat to eat? 🥩 Chicken and turkey. With the turkey I’m referring more so to like sliced thin deli turkey for sandwiches. I like turkey we have on Thanksgiving, but it’s not my favorite. 

When was the last time you felt jealous of someone? Meh, for the first time in a very long time I’ve felt a little jealous of some people I mod with on TikTok for someone. It’s so dumb but sometimes it feels so cliquey and I feel left out and blah I’m too old for this.

What are three thing you think of when you hear the word "India"? 🇮🇳 *shrug*

Are there any bar stools in your home? No.

When was the last time you sat on a bar stool? I have no idea.

Have you ever been to a spa? 🧖♀️ Nope.

What is one thing you hate? My health situation. I really feel like I’m missing out on so much and life is just passing me by. Meanwhile, the rest of.the world goes on and people continue to live their lives.

Have you ever sprained your ankle? No.

Do you own an artist's palette? 🎨 if so, when was the last time you used it? Nope.

When was the last time you attended a religious ceremony? ⛪️ Physically, it was back in December of 2015. Otherwise, I’ve watched several sermons via live stream the past few years. 

If applicable, what is one trend you started when you were in school? I’ve never been a trendsetter. 

Have you ever done a craft project using a soup can? Possibly. 

Have you ever had a Sony product just stop working? *shrug* Also possible. 

What is your favorite type of tree? 🌳 Pine trees. 

Have you ever had a spaniel for a pet? No.

Do you like the word "iota"? Sure. 

What celebrities were you obsessed with when you were younger? Oh, I was totally the pre-teen/teen who had her walls plastered with posters of various celebrities popular at that time in the early to mid 2000s. Aaron Carter was my first celebrity crush, so I had a ton of his posters. Of course I was obsessed with the Jonas Brothers, so they took over a good amount of space on my wall. There was Jesse McCartney. Justin Timberlake. Various other celebrities. 

Would you rather sing or play an instrument? if you'd rather play an instrument, which instrument would you prefer to play? That sucks cause I’d love to be able to sing and play the piano. 

Were you named after someone, and if so, who? No.

Did you ever play with a yoyo as a kid? 🪀  >> I tried but they always just annoyed me in the end. << Same. 

Who is your current favorite celebrity? Alexander Skarsgard is my love, of course, but I also like Sebastian Stan, Pedro Pascal, and Oscar Isaac. I’m a fan of Jenna Ortega as well. 

What is one thing you aren't able to do currently, but you wish you could? I can’t travel or go anywhere, really, right now. The only places I can go are to doctor appointments via medical transportation on a gurney. :/ I can’t wait until I’m able to function somewhat normal and go places again. Just to the fucking grocery store would be nice. I really can’t wait to go to the beach.

What is one thing you think tastes good with granola? The only granola I eat is granola bars. And not those rock hard ones either, I’m talkin’ Quaker Oats chocolate chip or some other fun flavor. 

When was the last time you ate a granola bar? That being said, it’s been awhile since I’ve had one. I used to have them all the time. They made good snacks.

Do you prefer jelly or jam? 🥪 I think I’ve mainly only had jelly, but I’m not opposed to jam. Whichever. 

Have you ever met anyone named Cameo? No.

What was the last thing you sent in the mail? I have no idea. I haven’t sent something in the mail in a super long time. 

What is your favorite thing to do on the ice? >> I don't do anything on ice. <<<

Have you ever visited any of the Great Lakes? No.

Have you ever swam in any of the Great Lakes? if so, which of the Great Lakes have you visited? >> I can't swim, so no. the lake I live near is Michigan. <<< I can’t swim either nor have I been to any of the Great Lakes. 

What were you almost named? I’m not sure.

What was the name of the first dog you had as a pet? His name was Scruffy. 

Do you any of your family members have birthdays on a holiday, and if so, which one(s)? No. 

When was the last time you attended a kegger? 🍾 Never.

What was the last thing you wrote down? I don’t recall. 

What is your favorite type of bird? 🦜 I don’t have one.

Do you think of yourself as young or old? how old are you? I always say I’m old, but I’m only 33 lol. It’s weird like I do feel old in some ways, especially physically, and in the sense where I think like omg I’m almost 40. I also feel like a bitter old woman who has just been beat down by life for so long. But then I also feel like I’m emotionally younger and a child at heart in some ways. I feel like I’ve been stunted because of health issues. I don’t feel like someone almost in their mid 30s. Whatever that’s supposed to feel like, right? It’s confusing. 

Do you enjoy doing crossword puzzles? Sometimes. I had a crossword app I was hooked on for a bit. I like doing word searches more, though. 

#personal #text #survey #surveys

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Every now and then, I see tweets about 2D animated movies made around the 2000s... Typically action-oriented movies that were aimed at a "big kid" audience. Typically boys around 8-12 years old-ish. Movies that infamously flopped pretty badly upon release...

The likes of... THE ROAD TO EL DORADO, TITAN A.E., ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE, TREASURE PLANET, and SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS...

I'm gonna assume a lot of these people who pine for those kinds of movies to be made again weren't alive in the early 2000s, or were very very little when they were first released...

(I'm not specifically singling out Okiro, their post was simply wishing that these movies had done well when they first came out. No harm in that.)

Anyways... A lot of other people wonder why these movies that *slapped* flopped so hard back in the day...

For starters, it's because these movies were not very well-liked back when they first came out.

A lot of them got really mixed to negative critical reception, adults on message boards and forums thought they were or looked absolutely dumb, it didn't help that they were 2D animated during the era where any given new CG film was a big novelty worth seeing on a big screen. Keep in mind, the likes of SHARK TALE and CHICKEN LITTLE - both critically lambasted movies back in the day - still made more money than a beloved movie like LILO & STITCH.

Times changes, tastes change...

For example, in 2001, ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE was attacked for having a diverse set of characters. Swap "woke" for "politically correct", and you'll see that 2001-times were really no different from now times... We just didn't have social media back then. It was also ripped apart by some American anime fans who felt it was a deliberate rip-off of NADIA: THE SECRET OF THE BLUE WATER, and this was definitely fueled by the whole LION KING/KIMBA controversies that arose in the mid-to-late '90s. A lot of people were convinced that Disney was ripping off another anime classic. (Miramax, who were owned by Disney back then, also infamously tried to cut PRINCESS MONONOKE for its North American release, which also added fuel to the fire.)

But the main sort-of consensus on ATLANTIS was that it was a toothless PG-rated action movie that was probably too intense for younger kids and too silly for anyone over the age of 10 who would rather see a harder PG-13 movie, or something R-rated. They would be likelier to try to sneak into the SOUTH PARK movie than see something like ATLANTIS. That also affected TITAN A.E., TREASURE PLANET, etc. etc. Those movies targeted an audience that was never going to be there to begin with.

Meanwhile, in 2001, adults went and saw the CG animated comedies SHREK and MONSTERS, INC. in addition to families heading to them. The writing and the characters hooked them. I was at a Christmas party a week ago, and one of the older adult guests - who was maybe 10-15 years older than I am - was saying in a conversation about Disney and Pixar movies that he happened to like MONSTERS, INC. In a sorta, "oh yeah, that MONSTERS, INC. one. I like that!" It was hard to get a mid-20s adult to see an animated movie back then, and movies like SHREK and MONSTERS, INC. had the hooks for them.

The year prior, TITAN A.E. and EL DORADO flopped hard, but also, so did buddy comedy THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE, and the general release of FANTASIA 2000. All largely 2D movies, at that. Aardman/DreamWorks' CHICKEN RUN did great, RUGRATS IN PARIS made back its budget, and DINOSAUR was popular despite not making enough for Disney to greenlight a sequel and to keep The Secret Lab (the production company set up to make the movie) operating.

2002 was when TREASURE PLANET came out. That shared the year with CG comedy ICE AGE, which did very well, and Disney's 2D family drama LILO & STITCH, which did pretty good! The anomaly of that sorry era for 2D animated movies... Everything else, though... EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS, SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, POWERPUFF GIRLS MOVIE, etc. Rough year. The big hit was the 3D funny animals movie, and also the hybrid STUART LITTLE sequel. Oddly, THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE managed to somewhat make its budget back.

And of course, SINBAD happened to share its summer with FINDING NEMO. SINBAD didn't even make a fraction of FINDING NEMO's opening weekend gross... And that same year, RUGRATS GO WILD, BROTHER BEAR, etc.... All just grossed in the sub-$100m regions domestically and didn't do much better worldwide.

Movies like ATLANTIS and TREASURE PLANET, struggled because they didn't have an adult hook. I remember at the time, the lack of interest (I was 8 when ATLANTIS came out), and later seeing on forums what adults thought of these movies. How they didn't want to see them. How they looked uncool and stupid. Meanwhile, the likes of SHREK, MONSTERS (comma) INC., ICE AGE, and FINDING NEMO? That was where it was at!

ATLANTIS and TREASURE PLANET likely just looked like kiddie action movies that... Little kids probably couldn't go to see, so... For no one, really.

But some kids out there had the VHSes and DVDs of these movies, and watched them again and again and again... And took them, along with several other 2D flops of the era, into their adulthood. The ones who have kids are showing those same movies to them, so that's the happy ending. It's also kind of a Disney tradition... PINOCCHIO, FANTASIA, BAMBI, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and SLEEPING BEAUTY were massive flops on their first releases, too... I do know that ATLANTIS and TREASURE PLANET did much better on home video than they did in theaters, and I'm sure TV airings helped as well.

Video saved many a non-Disney animated movie, too. Like, there's a reason why there were sequels to movies like ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN and FERNGULLY. They were video hits. Heck, if anything, the video sales for movies like EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE and BROTHER BEAR are why they got direct-to-video sequels (and in NEW GROOVE's case, a TV series).

I could also go on a tangent about people pining for the '90s Disney animated movies like THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and TARZAN, and those same people comparing those movies to the rather focus-grouped and toothless Disney animated films we get now. Like STRANGE WORLD and WISH. And yet, when the likes of HUNCHBACK, HERCULES, MULAN, and TARZAN were released? They were treated as dull, more of the same, "politically correct" (especially in MULAN's case), insulting even. Those movies were also test screened for random groups of toddlers, and stuff was cut or altered because of what they felt. Things weren't perfect back then, either... We may look back on '90s Disney Animation and say "What nerve they had, adapting all those dark stories, folklore, and even American history into G-rated family friendly musicals!" And back then, that really really rankled and even offended folks.

So it's a real case of "you had to be there". In hindsight, a movie like HUNCHBACK or ATLANTIS seems amazing compared to some of the stuff that comes out today. It hits different, for sure. "How could the world have skipped these movies at the box office???" The world was very different back then. Box office reflects where the zeitgeist is at, and it too reflects lots of things, more than just "audiences loved the movie". Sometimes seeing a movie that everyone else is seeing for whatever reason is like some larger cultural thing, that same movie could very well be forgotten within a year.

Let's use 2001, ATLANTIS' release year, as our example... Some of the highest grossing movies of that year were PEARL HARBOR, JURASSIC PARK III, VANILLA SKY, etc. PEARL HARBOR, for example, is pretty reviled... But lots of people went and saw it, but I don't see or hear an ounce of the positivity regularly given to ATLANTIS, given to that movie. And that's a Michael Bay movie, no less! His once widely-despised TRANSFORMERS movies have seen reappraisal in some circles, along with some of his other pictures... So, long story short, box office means a whole lot of things... It just captures where the public is at, not so much the perceived quality of the movie nor if audiences actually liked the movie.

And sometimes, a movie is too late or too early. It's hard to make an impression when you never know where the larger public is at, and there's lots of other stuff out there... Maybe the old way of measuring a movie's success has been archaic for decades now...

[toxicnorn]

i can’t necessarily speak to discussions of transmisogyny in hp pre-2010s/2020s for virtue of the fact that i was not personally tuned into spaces that discussed this in the 2000s (this was also obviously before jkr went very publicly off the rails, though in retrospect, that was always lowkey an aspect of the series even if i didn’t pick up on it at the time; i will say that i recall jkr showing her ass on trans stuff on twitter before people give her credit for it, but i don’t remember the specifics of my timelines) but i’ve seen people very seriously say that there were no discussions of any of the problematic (i hate using that word because i associate it so much with 2013 Tumblr but there’s not really a better alternative) aspects of the books until very recently, and that’s categorically untrue and i’m going to give you a history lesson

this is very rambly and unedited. i am also coming into this with the perspective of a white AFAB culturally christian person, which obviously affects how i interact and interacted with the world. for better or worse, i have been extremely online since 1996 and i have been interacting with fandom since before some tumblr users were even born, which is like. not actually a good thing. i don’t see fandom as something inherently bad or inherently good; it’s a hobby i’ve had the same as editing pixel dolls or playing on pet websites. tho you have no idea about the drama of pixel dolls and pet websites. it has no innate value save that which we make of it, which is the same of most things. and, being an artificial construct, it’s inherently influenced by the shitty stuff that goes into it.

anyway

especially towards the ends of the 2000s/early 2010s, there was a lot of discussion on LJ particularly about racism, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny in the series, often on people’s personal blogs and usually more mild than what you’d see on tumblr, which is not a tone argument thing but which i’m merely bringing up to highlight the fact that people sent death threats over people going “i think maybe the narrative doesn’t treat girls well here.”

it’s just that this was met by a lot -and i mean a lot- of hostility: think the worst tumblr anons and make it on main but also make it more pseudo-intellectual. a lot of it was couched in language that anyone with criticism of any aspect of the series was not actually a fan (and an imposter, possibly a soccer mom) and that if you didn’t 100% enjoy an aspect of something, that’s on you for consuming it, the whole general “don’t like, don’t read” attitude that still gets shilled whenever someone says they don’t like something. a lot of fan culture is ultimately based on a very “us vs The Other” mentality while raising up products for enjoyable consumption (ie the canon book or movie or whatever, and also the fandom built up around it) as something elevated above (perceived or real) reproach, and that obviously is still very much an aspect of fan culture today, hence all of tumblr and people making ideological stances (and by this, i mostly mean strawman arguments shouted into the void for people to misinterpret however they want) about fanfiction a core portion of their online or real identities. which is to say, dysfunction is inherently built into fandom because it’s a microcosm of a dysfunctional society, a hobby whose adherents try to argue that it’s inherently a refuge from the greater world but which can never fully escape its influence, existing as a reflection of society at large while denying it.

or, if you want to translate that out of loser pseudointellectual speak, fandom at large was and continues to be racist, antisemitic, etc. as fuck and harassed the shit out of people for saying that cho chang is kind of a dumb name and that the whole house elf thing is kind of fucked up. seriously, the hp fandom was racist as fuck in 2009 and probably still is because fandoms are large are often very white, very tme, very culturally christian even if they deny it (i am saying this as someone who is all three things) and close in when those things are threatened unless it’s to the point that no one can deny it anymore (and even then), but i cannot personally verify the current vibe of the harry potter fandom because i don’t go there.

anyway, it’s not really a coincidence that when there were more widespread discussions about racism/sexism/etc. in fandom on LJ that it started to decline in popularity among fandom types and fandom culture latched onto tumblr. a fair number of shitty people flounced and migrated over to this website and that’s had way more to do with how fandom’s shaped up on tumblr than anyone really likes to admit. if you were a Big Name Tumblr User in 2012, there was a really big chance you were a former livejournal user who left for a site where less people recognized you for doing both stupid and heinous shit or just generally being a dick. this resulted in a tumblr culture that would very much try to silently drown out any criticisms of the series with vague positivity and “we have to UNITE” and a lot of other stuff whenever someone went “guys have you checked out what she’s done with native american belief systems. it’s uh. not great.”

this is not to say that fandoms have not gotten better in a lot of respects because they have, but, like, obviously it’s still shitty in a lot of ways, though sometimes i wish people were just outright homophobic instead of couching their dialogue in disguised language. a lot of tumblr/twitter culture revolves around not sounding -ist rather than like actually changing anything in any meaningful way.

anyway

this is all a lot of words to say that a lot of the current discussions going on in fandom have been going on for over a decade, but a lot of people in fandom today have no clue about that because the fandom also very deliberately tried to bury it, and by burying it, i mean virulently harassing people because they said something was a little sexist or whatnot

#longwinded rambling time #racism cw #antisemitism cw #not really discussing the exact specifics of it so much as saying that it existed in fandom #and people were harassed bc of it

[justcoins]

Shuttercount 5dmiii

#SHUTTERCOUNT 5DMIII FULL#

#SHUTTERCOUNT 5DMIII PROFESSIONAL#

On paper that immediately made people think that the old tepid 5D2 AF system had been rehashed and reused.īut these things didn’t tell the whole story. The other thing that received a lot of publicity was the dumbed down AF system, with only 11 AF points and only one hyper sensitive one, the center point. The reason for that will become clear in a moment. These are things exceeded by my 60D, and are clearly moves designed to provide separation between the 6D and 5D3. Yes, there were some head-scratchers of clear “dumbing down” moves by Canon like a lower maximum flash syncing speed ( 1/180th of a second, not 1/160th as is commonly reported) and a maximum shutter speed of 1/4000th. But that wasn’t the conclusion being drawn by those that were actually reviewing the camera and taking time with it.

#SHUTTERCOUNT 5DMIII FULL#

Some even referred to it as the “Rebel” of Canon full frame cameras. You see, the early word on the forums and even from the blogs/review sites was that the 6D was nothing but a stripped down bargain full frame camera. I like reading product reviews, so I started clicking links. Then, in January, I was trolling the photography sites every day, primarily looking for that deal on the 5D3, when I started seeing reviews of the 6D coming out. I’m a serious photographer (or so I think), why would I want “entry level”, even if it is a very expensive entry level camera? The 6D was not on my radar. The 6D had been announced, speculated on, and then released a few months ago. I had the money set aside to purchase a 5D3 – I was just waiting on a sale to drop the price a couple hundred bucks so that I could feel good about getting a “deal”. I just wasn’t using my 60D anymore, although I truly loved the camera. My intent was always to move the to the MK3, and after making the changes to my kit, I realized that I wanted to replace my surviving crop sensor body (Canon EOS 60D) with a second full frame body. I had to go through the process of re-orienting my lens kit, eventually selling all the crop only lenses (EF-S 15-85mm, EF-S 10-22mm, Tamron SP 17-50mm f/2.8, Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 ) and replacing them with full frame equivalents during this time frame. My MK2 has served me very well over the past year and a half, and has produced many of the best images that I have ever taken. I still feel that this was a good decision, for although I was initially disappointed in the MK2 for its (aged) handling and AF, the great image quality won me over. I bought a MK2 instead, deciding that I would use it in the interim until the MK3 price dropped somewhat. Then Canon’s projected price started hitting the news streams, and I realized that the approximate $4000 price tag here in Canada after taxes was more than I was interested in paying. As I was getting close to having the money together, I realized that the MK3 was coming soon and that I might as well wait for it. I stopped buying lenses (always hard for me!) and started putting money aside for a full frame body.

#SHUTTERCOUNT 5DMIII PROFESSIONAL#

I was doing more and more professional work and felt that the improved image quality and low light performance would be worth the added bulk and cost. Going back almost two years ago I had decided that I wanted to transition from my crop sensor DSLRs to a full frame body. I don’t earn my living from photography, but I do have a policy that all new camera gear that I purchase must be funded solely by photography proceeds. So why in the world did I choose Canon’s new “budget” (if you call a camera that costs more than $2000 budget!) full frame DSLR over the “serious” choice of the Canon EOS 5D MK3? I have been asked this very question multiple times, so that I felt that it was appropriate to respond here in a more extensive fashion.įirst, a little history. I have a fairly extensive kit of expensive equipment, and have the means to purchase a new camera body of my choice (although I don’t feel that I have 1DX money). Beyond that, I know from the response of those that I consider very accomplished photographers that my work is good. I’ve been published more times than I can count on one hand and get regularly asked to do paying work. At this stage I am a somewhat accomplished photographer. I do photography for both pleasure and for profit, so I call myself a “semi-pro” photographer. Not on my RadarĪs many of you know, I am a full time pastor and a part time photographer. Updated on April 24th, 2013: I have enjoyed my 6D so much that I have now sold my 5D MKII and purchased a second 6D body.

#Shuttercount 5dmiii

[sentiniel]

"... they're entrenched in club culture, hook-up culture, partying, who's getting with who — very dumb and shallow, perfect for reality tv. but the candy bar lesbians do really genuinely and passionately defend their right to be on their bullshit (probably because they're so drunk). but there's one argument that i find especially interesting."

they're just putting a bit more of a smile, and a bit more fun and sexiness into it, you know. i don't like the dowdy old stereotypes. diss the stereotypes.

"what is she talking about when she's talking about 'the old stereotype', rebelling against 'the old stereotype'? well, i think i know.

the lesbian stereotype that arose around the 1970s was very much 'flannel and combat boot wearing, mean man-hating vegan with braided armpit hair' type of lesbian. and there is a huge reaction against that from the younger generations in the 80s and 90s. this is when we see the 'lipstick lesbian' kind of stereotype or identity emerge, but overall i don't think that the movement away from the old stereotype was about becoming more feminine (it wasn't). it was about, if anything, becoming sexier, sluttier — sluttier and unashamed about it; more sex positive.

because the type of lesbian feminists who really set the stereotypes, they tended to be the type who thought that all porn was bad — any sort of power dynamic in sexual relationships, even between women was replicating patriarchy, and therefore, bad. they were in favor of a lesbian sexuality that was very soft and feminine and innocent and that simply did not work out for a lot of people.

the younger generation of queer women grew up and said 'no, we're going to be sluts, mom!' not really. which is to say yeah, that's pretty much what happened. they called it the sex wars, it was like a whole thing, everyone was real mad; wacky time to be alive, i'm sure.

so this huge push is going on in the 90s for lesbians to move away from the old stereotype: to dress sexy without any concern for whether it was feminist to do so, to be promiscuous without shame, to drink heavily, to have wet t-shirt contests and wave their sex toys around — to be pretty much what you see going on in this film. the women here are very much operating with a familiar 90s, early 2000s ideal of what people thought lesbians should be. one of the women confesses at the beginning of the film in this weird mirror shot that she's not even really into hookup culture, and then for the rest of the film she's right up in the drama participating in that with everyone else."

the thing that really strikes me is that none of these women have the vibe of being, like, effortless chads. like they're just so dweeby and so human at times. there's just so many of these weird little awkward moments of humanity where they do not coolly fit into this mold the way that you would expect a tv character to. and yes i include reality tv there, because we know that stuff's not real. i don't know, i just find that it really allows you to see the ideals of the time as something separate — something that is weirdly hanging over them, just as much as it is a part of them.

and i assume these moments must make it into the film because it's so clear their budget is like one shoelace and a paperclip. like they have no plan. they have no idea what they're doing. and the result is that these women get to be authentically themselves without a production team imposing narratives or imposing drama. of course they have drama, but for 2000's reality tv, it's really not bad.

there's no huge fights. there's nothing that feels scripted or even planned at all. it's just one person pointing a camcorder at them as they live their lives.

we see these lesbians going mad on lesbos, treating other women like items on a hookup list or objects to ogle and we ask: are these women simply privileged to live in a decade where they don't have to be as political and militant as their predecessors regurgitating mainstream misogynistic ideas uncritically, or is there something of an authentic lesbian experience here?

it's always going to be both. but in this case i was honestly really shocked at how lesbian it felt.

it embodies the problematic ideas of the time (obviously), but that aside, the film itself feels devoid of any imposing male gaze. it feels like a weirdly authentic window into what it was like to be a lesbian at the time.

i keep thinking about this scene of shauna showing off her body to the greek news cameras. we see her, and we see the mens' cameras watching her, and it's just such a literal image. it feels to me like we're in on the joke. she's messing with them, and she's comfortable doing that, because they don't actually have the power to define her or her sexuality or her queerness. she gets to run off into the distance with her girlfriend at the end of the film. no matter how much she shows off her body for shock value to a straight audience, it's her body. it's her experience of queerness.

anyway. this film is stupid and probably nobody should read into it, ever."

#strange aeons #lesbians go mad on lesbos #video transcript #theres something in the analysis here that like #eats at me and also puts a dumb smile on my face? #like many points here do #its just kind of confusing to me #but also kind of heartwarming

[yetanotherbuffyblog]

Well that sucked.

The gist of this episode is that the Scoobies and Potentials get tired of Buffy’s questionable leadership and decide to dump her. There’s some other stuff: Spike and Andrew investigate Caleb’s past, and Caleb confronts Buffy in the abandoned school.

But the main thrust is that everyone kicks Buffy out because she’s not doing a great job. And it’s true, she’s not doing that great of a job. That’s not news. But they decide to elect Faith their new leader because she’s a Slayer and not constantly being harsh on them right now. And to be fair to Faith she doesn’t want that, but they do it anyway and that’s dumb.

TV Tropes has a good summary of points under ‘Unintentionally Unsympathetic.’

Notes!

-Clem is pretty nice. Not sure why he’s comfortable just driving out during broad daylight. Maybe he’s not, but things are desperate.

-Faith still offers prison trades. She offers to give up chips for “box of cigarettes and soap.”

-Is it not possible to grow back Xander’s eye by magic? I don’t think anyone should try, as there would be probably be some sort of horrible trade-off, but given how many crazy things magic has been shown to be able to do I’m surprised it hasn’t really been discussed.

-I talked about this with Warren, but Caleb’s schtick being a virulent misogynist is, again, very awkward in the wake of all the stuff that’s come out about Joss Whedon’s practices regarding actresses and female writers on the sets of his shows and movies.

-Buffy’s fights with Caleb are all really straightforward attacks? She doesn’t use anything other than straightforward attacks.

-Did Hot Pockets do product placement? For Andrew to be complaining about Faith stealing his despite it being labeled.

-Oh gosh I forgot how 90’s/early 2000’s the music in the Bronze was…

-The Bronze is not safe! The Bronze has never been safe! Why would anyone think it would be okay to bring people there during an apocalypse.

-Faith shouldn’t be going anywhere! She’s a criminal! She should have thought what being on the run actually means! Going to a public club is stupid!

-I’m thinking there’s a lot of ‘character acts stupid to get this Plot to work’ going around. Let’s call it the influence of the Hellmouth.

-If the cops really wanted to kill Faith, they wouldn’t tell her they were going to shot her, they’d just shoot her. They have no reason to taunt about it, they don’t know her? Again, let’s chalk it up to Hellmouth.

-The whole thing about ‘letting these girls blow off steam’ would have worked a lot better before the disaster at the vineyard fighting Caleb? And what’s weirder is that Giles is FINE with it when he was the one going on about people not taking things seriously. Why is he okay with this? I’m not saying he can’t be, but there has to be a reason for the switch given to us on-screen and it hasn’t been.

-I think because this is the last season the writers wanted to have a certain storyline and so they throw the Conflict Ball in there, but it’s just… this happens with shows sometimes. I get it. Sometimes you need to move things at a pace and so you give people conflict you don’t have time to properly build. We’ve all been there. But this is a lot, and asking us to accept that the entire cast just turns on the protagonist right now, when she’s under a lot of pressure? Seems more than a little stupid. Maybe it’ll be worth it in the end, but right now it feels annoying and egregious.

-There are A LOT of Potentials. Did I not realize how many of these girls there are?

-The info that Giles found said that the mission was empty, but the priest they find there says that they are all dead and killed. What did he do with the bodies and blood?

-“Democracies don’t win battles.” WHAT THE FUDGE BUFFY

-Dawn you can’t just kick your own sister out of the house what the fudge. Not only is it a massive dick move, but IT’S NOT YOUR HOUSE, AND BUFFY IS YOUR LEGAL GUARDIAN WHAT THE FUDGE

-I don’t like Buffy being booted from the group, and her behavior leading up to it, but I appreciate that she wants the group to stay together and encourages Faith to lead them well.

-I am a little surprised that with the whole ‘used to be a supervillain’ thing, and being a nerd, Andrew doesn’t know Latin? Then again his and Jonathan’s Spanish was atrocious so it kind of makes sense that they didn’t know an ancient foreign language.

-The Latin inscription found says that the something is only for ‘her’ to hold, and that made Caleb go into a murder rage?

-Wait did this air around the same time as Firefly what the fudge

-Still don’t have a satisfying explanation as to what Caleb’s deal is, but I think we will get something on that later on.

-Spike knows how they make onion rings!

-Oh and I guess Spike’s going to be the one guy who doesn’t turn on Buffy? That’s… stupid, that the former/maybe love interest is the one who doesn’t turn. It just smacks of laziness to me. Again, maybe it won’t be terrible by the end, but right now it doesn’t feel so great.

-Look, even if they’re upset with Buffy, nothing they’ve seen of Faith shows that she would be a better leader than Buffy? She is wanted by the police and took them out to the Bronze when they know there’s a villain out there who can, and is happy to, kill them all! And while she’s a cool character, she’s not the person who should be in charge, and she knows it! These people have no clue.

#Buffy The Vampire Slayer #7x19 #The Slayer #Buffy Summers #Faith Lehane #Dawn Summers #Xander Harris #Rupert Giles #Spike

[kestrels-nook]

I watched He-Man: Masters of the Universe (2021)…so you didn’t have to.

If you’re anything like me, when you saw that Netflix made a new He-Man series, you were thrilled. SPOP was a masterpiece with a wonderfully diverse crew of characters, beautiful animation, and an investing, cleverly written plot line so surely the remake of its sibling series would be just as good, right?

nope :(

Now, I might not be the most qualified person to review this show. I never watched the original and am by no means an 80s kid but I’m going to do the best I can using my 2021 standards. I mean, it’s a remake of an old series so you should be changing all the bad things but keeping the good things.

First Impressions

You start the show and are immediately dropped into the action. Someone, assumed to be a villain, is sneaking through a big palace type place looking for something. There’s no world building or explanation or introduction. We are greeted with this character, watch her go through some turmoil and then escape. It’s a pretty rocky start. She-Ra started with a similar type intro, with the characters running through an intense obstacle course, but eventually the action dropped off and we got an explanation about what’s going on. With nothing else to go on, you try to form an opinion on this unknown character and the show as a whole. As someone very interested in tv production and animation, one of the first things I really paid attention to was the animation. I’ve always favored a more simplistic, 2D animation, like what Hilda does really well, but 3D, if done right, can be very pretty. However, the animation in this show was clunky and in your face. It felt like an early 2000s video game pretty choppy with stiff, overly exaggerated body movements.

After the opening scene the theme song/intro plays. This intro shows characters we’ve never met and is dramaric and flashy. There’s no connection to the show and none of it feels like it fits yet. Then, we’re thrust into another seen with our basic white guy main character and the confusion continues. Overall, the first impressions of the show weren’t incredible. It was difficult to get into and connect with what was going on.

Characters

One of the best things about SPOP, and I’m sure most people would agree with me, was the relatable and unique set of characters. With the show being heavily based off of something else, I’m sure there wasn’t much room for creativity when it came to character design, yet they somehow managed. He-Man on the other hand was greatly lacking in that department. Every single one of the characters was a bone thin, unrealistically proportioned, personality-less, and washed out. Except for when He-Man transformed. His entire upper half got super swole and bulky while his legs stayed the exact same. Kind of like a blonde Gru. He definitely looked like a Chad. Adam himself was incredibly cringe. His whole personality was white teenage protagonist, no depth at all there. Teela and Duncan were both decent characters, although they went through their ”redemption arc” much too quickly and Teela’s weird floating metal plates were weird and generally bothered me. They tried to give the characters all sad backstories but they all felt forced and flat.

The main villain also is boring. Basically taking the motivation of Scar from The Lion King, Prince Keldor is just power hungry or whatever.

Plus they got rid of the cool ghost looking guy and replaced him with a dumb, green, talking tiger. Fitting his name was cringer.

Plot

I don’t know where to begin with this. I don’t think the writers knew where to begin with this as well. Ouch that was harsh. Granted this was a kids show, so plot wasn’t as important as cool looking sc-if characters, but lots of kids shows get off the ground because they’re appealing to older audiences as well. And without a decently organized plot that’s going to be difficult to do. I’ve always said good characters can carry a bad plot but that’s only true to an extent and the characters themselves weren’t relatable enough for that. I think there were good intentions for the show but it feels like the first few episodes were kind of thrown together script-wise and that really impacted my entire view of the show. Just a bunch of people fighting over a sword but the reason why they want the sword or whos in the right is very unclear. Just the general vibes that the blond guy is the hero and the skinny purple girl and green skull guy are bad. Four episodes in and I’m honestly still not sure if there is much of a plot. Maybe I’ve been spoiled with high quality shows like ATLA and She-Ra but I feel like there should be an end goal and personal motivation for each of the characters and there didn’t seem to be any of that. Why did Duncan give up his whole life to help some random strangers? Did he have a life? Do any of the characters have an actual life or personal relationships? Its all just so empty.

Positives

I realize I’ve just done nothing but tear this show apart. Which is unfair of me, especially since it’s a product of probably years of hard work. And there definitely are some pros.

- The backgrounds are beautiful. One bonus of the animation style is incredibly detailed and thought out backgrounds, especially of the space sky. I’m a simp for cool looking moons, regardless of how scientifically inaccurate they are.

- The colors are cool and all spacey which I love. As anyone who has talked to me would know, one of my favorite parts of Luca was the appealing coloring of the characters and scenery. I love a girl with bright blue hair please more of that in media.

- The music was good! Nothing groundbreaking but cool! Good composition!

- Uh yeah

Conclusion

Overall, I’m not a fan. I realize I’m being Highly critical of this tv show aimed towards children, but I’ve seen some great kids shows and this wasn’t one of them. It was very scattered and disconnected and just…empty. A descent show to keep on in the background while scrolling or doing homework but not easy to get into and definitely not something to obsess over. The plot line was messy, the animation was off-putting, and the characters were empty. Definitely would recommend just watching She-Ra again.

{disclaimer: I’m not finished yet. If I finish and it gets better I will update!!}

Update 1:

little ghost guy exists! He is a robot so not as cute but still loveable. Add that to the positives!

also around episode 6 there starts to be a plot like but it still isn’t…great or attention grabbing. I’m still having to force myself through it

#Tl;dr #he-man 2021 = chunky animation and poor plot and character development #He-man #he man masters of the universe

[instantelephantmix]

How weird cat books shaped my life: a personal Warriors essay

I think we all have something we got into at a young age and we're still a fan of today. Sometimes that thing is way, way more important than you even realise.

When I was a young child, I had pretty stereotypical interests - I liked doodling, watching cartoons, and reading books about animals. I always did like animals a lot, especially cats, I was always living with at least one cat while growing up. The first two I remember were Moët, he was fluffy and timid and ginger-and-white, and Hemingway, or more commonly called Hemmy as nobody wants to shout "Hemingway" up the street when they want their cat to come home.

Above: Hemmy looking dumb.

When I was around 7, I was taking a look around the children's section of my local library and saw something I'd noticed my older sister reading recently. Warrior Cats: Into the Wild. I just wanted it because I liked the cover and I liked cats, and my parents allowed me to take it despite it being rated 9+. I think that, if they'd been stricter, I might have been an entirely different person - who knows though? I just know that those Warriors books hugely impacted my interests and hobbies.

I started reading and god, I was obsessed. There was something about the culture and history of these fictional wild cats that was so intriguing to me, but still simple enough for my young mind to digest. Being a homeschool kid who hadn't fully accessed the internet yet, I had no friends at all, so my family had to look at all my terrible drawings of fighting cats and endure me talking about them.

Below: a bad drawing of Sol from long, long ago. He has a giraffe neck.

There was something I always wanted though: a Warriors TV show or a movie. Ten years later we still don't have that, despite all the talk of a movie being in production. Where the hell did that go? But luckily, fans of the books had started making their own adaptations. Enter the late 2000s and early 2010s, the time of SSS Warrior Cats - an animated Youtube series based on the first book. I asked my mum if I could watch it and she allowed me to, opening up the door to a whole new portion of the internet.

Gone were the days of playing Flash games on the Cbeebies website, I had youtube! This was a massive inspiration to me, I decided I wanted to be an animator. Obviously I wasn't as skilled as the SSS team, I still don't think I am - but I tried.

Above: a run cycle animation from around 2015. My older animations are all sadly lost to time, the program I made them on was discontinued so I have no way of opening my old files.

Below: a new run cycle, 2021.

But over time, each member of the SSS team quit, and the channel became a wasteland with the series left unfinished. What was I to watch? How would I satisfy my desire for edgy animated cats? That was when I found Dimstar's Past, a series based on Warriors OCs, which also inspired me a lot. I think the creator turned out to be homophobic, which is a massive shame - but "separate the art from the artist", as they say.

I'd now seen these OCs, and I'd seen my sister writing stories about characters she liked, so what if I were to create my own Warriors and tell their story? While I'd written a few short, low-quality stories in the past, as most kids do, I think Warriors fully inspired me to write. I created "Rootstar's Past", a complete and obvious rip-off of Dimstar - but the story still exists in my mind, albeit very altered since then. I never even finished the first version. As I learned and became a better storyteller, I created better characters and more thought-out stories. Eventually I moved on from cats and wrote about more "human" characters - a lot of the time they aren't actually human, but they act like it.

Above: Rootstar's 2013 design, and his 2020 redesign.

Warriors also got me into roleplay, through playing Roblox and exploring forums, which further developed my writing and "impulsive storytelling" skills. I really miss the old Warriors Roblox games, like Lake Territory - morphs and maps may be better these days, but they don't hold the same charm at all. (For those who don't play Roblox - a morph is an object that the player can take the appearance of, though a button or GUI, to create looks that wouldn't be possible with the regular avatar editor.)

Above: Forest Territory, an old Roblox game. Notice the very cylindrical morphs that I still love.

I remember how I met my first real friend through Warriors roleplay. She was older than me, I was only around 9 when she was 16, but we got on surprisingly well. Me and my sister have the same 7-year age gap, so I was used to it. We shared other interests too; Five Nights at Freddy's, Undertale, and later Harry Potter. Sadly she was banned from Roblox and I never saw her again. I hope she's okay, whatever she's doing nowadays. I fondly remember our extremely angst-ridden characters - poor Soul, she could never get a break.

I made so many memories in those games. Playing in "Fan Clans" with magical powers, laughing at newbies who'd never read the books (don't get me wrong, I wasn't a rude person, but I was badly influenced by those who were), making the most complex morphs possible, creating cat romances, making drama... I want something like that again, but unfortunately roleplays don't seem to have any heart to them these days. Or maybe I'm the one who's changed? I don't know for sure.

There's one more interest that Warriors brought to me, although it's a very childish one. I won't go into too much detail because of that, I don't think anyone will care that much, but it does belong in this post.

As well as animation, there was another thing I saw people making short films and series with - Littlest Pet Shop toys, those stylised animal figures that Hasbro makes. They're not everyone's cup of tea, but I have to admit I fell for them and ended up collecting them. With the cats I made several Warriors fanseries and posted them on my mum's youtube channel, where they remain to this day. They're all unlisted or privated though, and I don't plan to show them to anyone, they were genuinely terrible. Maybe if I'm very drunk one day, or I don't care about my reputation, or someone pays me for it.

Below: my Littlest Pet Shop cats.

These days, Warriors doesn't hold quite as much significance in my everyday life. It still means a lot to me though - I like learning about the new characters, making my own, and doing art and animation for the community. It was my first fandom, and still my most consistent. I imagine its importance to me will only decline over time as I grow up and find new interests, but who knows? Maybe it'll stay with me forever.

Warriors probably made me into a furry, at least indirectly. I can never forgive it for that.

So what else am I doing? What fandoms am I in? I like Doctor Who, vampires, and I'm studying Digital Media in college, if that's of any interest to anyone. I still play Roblox and collect LPS, and I animate (very slowly).

Oh, and it's my birthday. Happy birthday to me. I'm 17 now.

#warriorcats #warriors #ramble #nostalgia sort of #artist journey

[hext00ns]

please tell me everything you can about ok ko because i wanted to watch it when it was on tv but i never watch tv so i've only seen like two episodes

Okay okay there’s a lot I can’t tell you cause it might not look it on the cover but this is totally a show best experienced by going in blind

This show at its core really is about a boy named KO who wants to grow into an amazing hero. Honestly? I made the connection the other night but ok ko is basically western BNHA

This show definitely has the whole “friendship is magic” thing going and ik some people don’t like that trope but honestly? Ok ko does it best ngl. And just like SU the show doesn’t hold back from allowing its characters to have complex and real emotions

Much like many modern cartoons it’s a show that starts out with an episodic formula but slowly develops and underlining plot as secrets reveal throughout the show

Honestly? I think a reason why I love this show so much is cause it has the same vibe as an early 2000s CN cartoon (which imo is one of the best cartoon eras ever) like something about ok ko really does feel like the best aspects of early 2000s CN and modern CN mashed together into one show. Even my friends who watched only two episodes and honestly are way more into anime and aren’t cartoon freaks like me agree with that statement. I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel that way with the show and I have a couple ideas from story to animation to characters but either way the show is amazing

Speaking of animation it’s animation IS FANTASTIC I actually have seen people complain about SU and KO’s animation style before and honestly? I don’t get why. People have called it unprofessional looking and lazy but???? I think it’s beautiful????? Giving priority to the story board art instead of the model sheets gives it this amazing feeling that’s kinda hard to describe like everything movies with this flow that’s original to it alone. Obviously this style isn’t for every cartoon but I think it works beautifully for ok ko

ALSO THERES GAY SHIT!!!!!!!!! And like three cartoon crossover episodes!!!!!!!! Which are all amazing. And there’s so many references to other anime, videos game, cartoons ect that every episode I lose my mind

Also???? The world building is kinda fucking amazing as well?????? Like they never dive much into why the world is the way it is but honestly they don’t need to cause it all feels so well crafted and real

There are also a few running gags in the show that are a riot and the way everyone in the show says “sorry” is literally my favorite thing ever yesterday at work I said “sorry” the way ok ko does and I just sat there for a moment like did I fucking just say that

But I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the ending. Obviously nothing spoilery but I think it’s important to warn for people going in blind. This show was cancelled. If I’m honest, having your show cancelled these days isn’t as hard on the show as it was in the past. Most the time these days the high ups will walk in, tell you you have only one season left to wrap things up, and leave you to it. That sucks. It sucks and I hate it so much. But it’s a lot better than the treatment other cartoons got in the past. Cartoons like Invader Zim and Shezow who were in the middle of working on their next season when they got the boot, leaving half finished products that will never truly see life like they were meant to. Or you get fucked the way Randy Cunningham did in where you set up an interesting cliffhanger but then are never green lit for the next season so you can resolve what you set up. It’s really sad because these days many creators talk about making sure seasons are condensed in their stories because they never know when their last season may be. Thankfully shows like Star vs, SU, and even ok ko were given one last season to do their best and wrap everything up that they could. Of course this is where many people that don’t do two seconds of research start making assumptions saying that it’s the writing staffs fault for endings being so rushed and that they’re bad at their job or some dumb shit like that which honestly makes me really mad cause these people don’t have a choice they don’t have a say in that kinda stuff. But they do their best with what they have. Ok KO’s end does feel kinda rushed but not as bad as say SU probably because SU just had so much world building and character stuff they had to cram into that final showdown. However ok ko does something I’ve never seen a cartoon do that was kinda brilliant? There’s this strange mix of I don’t like the ending of ok ko but also I do. I don’t like it cause I know it’s not how they wanted the ending to go I know there was so much more meant for this show and I’m so upset they didn’t get the chance to tell the story how they wanted to. But also the ending is beautiful the final two episodes made me cry for different reasons they really did take a bad thing and bring something good out of it. The final message they give in the last episode is a very good one and a very real to life one and I’m sure it’s what everyone in the crew was feeling at the time. It’s extremely melancholy

Honestly this was the fastest I’ve ever binged a show on my own before. I think it only took me two weeks or so and honestly if it wasn’t for work I probably would have gotten through it faster it’s just so good and hard to put down I often found myself staying up way past normal just to watch another episode

This has definitely become one of my all time favorites for many reasons honestly some you can see from above and some I didn’t mention. Either way I highly recommend this show it’s fun beautiful and full of heart and love

#ok ko let's be heroes #hex chants #anonymous

[aion-rsa]

5 underrated Richard Donner movies you need to see

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Richard Donner will forever be remembered as the filmmaker who created the blueprint for the modern superhero blockbuster with 1978’s Superman starring Christopher Reeve.

Yet that doesn’t tell even half the story of the Bronx-born filmmaker’s brilliant filmography.

Donner was in his late 40s by the time Superman came along, having made a name for himself in Hollywood two years earlier, with 1976’s suitably terrifying The Omen.

Prior to that, he was a budding director making the transition from the small screen to the world of cinema. Donner worked on everything from Gilligan’s Island to The Twilight Zone. Even then, it was clear he was destined for bigger things though, as anyone who saw  “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, the iconic episode of The Twilight Zone he directed, starring William Shatner, can attest.

While a disagreement with producers ultimately saw him walk away from Superman II, the 1980s saw Donner establish himself as an incredibly versatile big budget director capable of handling everything from the epic family adventure fun of The Goonies to the balancing act of action and comedy found within the buddy cop antics of Lethal Weapon.

It was a skillset that drew admiration from the very best in the movie industry, including Steven Spielberg who was among the first to pay tribute to Donner after learning he had passed away, aged 91.

“Dick had such a powerful command of his movies, and was so gifted across so many genres,” Spielberg, who worked with Donner on The Goonies, said.

“Being in his circle was akin to hanging out with your favourite coach, smartest professor, fiercest motivator, most endearing friend, staunchest ally, and – of course – the greatest Goonie of all.”

Donner may not have had the same impact in the 1990s and early 2000s but he still enjoyed major success with the Lethal Weapon franchise and as a producer with movies like Free Willy and X-Men.

More importantly, the other films he made during that period and in the years between some of his biggest hits remain well worth revisiting or seeking out for the first time – starting with these five.

Ladyhawke

Coming hot on the heels of The Goonies and two years prior to Lethal Weapon, Ladyhawke represented another major departure for Donner. A dark medieval fantasy, it centred on Rutger Hauer’s mysterious Captain Etienne Navarre and his female companion Lady Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer), a pair of star-crossed lovers on the run from a vengeful bishop who has placed a demonic curse on their heads. While Navarre transforms into a wolf by night, Isabeau exists as a Hawk by day. Teaming up with petty thief Philippe Gaston (Matthew Broderick) they embark on a quest to overthrow the evil bishop and break the spell.

Something of a passion project, Donner had attempted to get Ladyhawke off the ground several times before finally getting the green light from Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox in the mid ’80s. The film then suffered another setback when Kurt Russell, originally cast as Navarre, dropped out during rehearsals. 

That ultimately proved a blessing in disguise with Hauer going on to deliver arguably his best performance since Blade Runner. Not everything about Ladyhawke works – Broderick’s character feels a little too close to Ferris Bueller while the runtime could be trimmed down – but it remains a beautifully realised fantasy epic, full of memorable action set pieces, stunning cinematography and a spellbinding turn from Pfeiffer.

A box office bomb upon release, Ladyhawke has stood the test of time too, garnering a cult following as an authentic and fresh take on the sword and sorcery formula. 

Maverick

Maverick is the film Will Smith must have hoped Wild Wild West would be; a funny, clever action comedy based on a classic TV show. Coming in an era when most westerns were deadly serious, Donner’s film also felt like a breath of fresh air and benefited hugely from a masterful William Goldman script that was both witty and unpredictable.

The latest in a series of films featuring Donner’s muse-of-sorts, Mel Gibson, this time out Mel plays Bret Maverick, a brilliant card player and equally impressive con artist trying to collect enough money to earn a seat at a high-stakes poker game. Along the way he is forced to contend with a fellow scammer in the form of Jodie Foster’s Annabelle Bransford as well as lawman Marshal Zane Cooper, played by James Garner, who starred in the original TV series.

While the glut of cameos from country music stars and the likes of Danny Glover can be a little distracting, there’s something wonderfully charming about Maverick with Gibson, Foster and Garner all on top form and boasting an undeniable chemistry that helps keep things entertaining. 

The climactic poker game which sees Maverick face off against Alfred Molina’s psychopathic Angel is also expertly handled by Donner, who cranks up the tension as Maverick reveals his final, decisive, hand with a slow-motion toss of the final card towards the camera. A critical and financial success, Maverick has been largely lost in the shuffle since its release but should be sought out.

Conspiracy Theory

There’s something strangely prescient about Conspiracy Theory given the current predilection for such thinking on the internet at large. One of Donner’s most inventive and intelligent outings alongside Gibson, this time out Mel plays Jerry Fletcher, a New York City cab driver with a penchant for paranoid conspiracy theories.

Jerry’s life takes a turn for the strange when he finds himself being targeted by a set of shady government goons led by Patrick Stewart’s Dr Jonas. He quickly realises one of the conspiracies he has been promoting in his weekly newsletter (this was the ‘90s) is based more in reality than he thought. The question is: which one?

An engrossing thriller featuring Donner’s trademark dashes of witty humour, Conspiracy Theory is bolstered significantly by the presence of the ever-reliable Julia Roberts as a government lawyer with a soft spot for Jerry. Despite a lengthy run time, Donner also keeps the action moving along at an engaging pace while Gibson’s performance is just the right side of manic to keep you rooting for him.

A first foray into the kind of deep state conspiracy thrillers that were commonplace in Hollywood at the time, the film also boasts some genuinely striking moments, not least the sequence where Jerry undergoes “psychotic testing” at the hands of Dr Jonas, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in A Clockwork Orange.

Though it was a hit with audiences, Conspiracy Theory earned mixed reviews but appears increasingly worthy of reappraisal.

Timeline

Some movies are big, dumb but lots of fun. Timeline sits firmly in that category despite what many naysayers would have you believe. It’s a brash, simplistic sci-fi flick to rival the likes of The Core and Geostorm and thoroughly entertaining to boot.

The fact that it features Gerard Butler, as well as the late, great, Paul Walker only adds to that sentiment.

Walker plays Chris Johnston who, along with Butler’s Andre Marek and a team of fellow archaeologists travel back in time through a wormhole to 14th century France to rescue their professor, Dr Edward Johnston (Billy Connolly), who just happens to be Walker’s character’s dad too.

Based on a book by Michael Crichton, Donner had been in the running to direct Jurassic Park a decade earlier and jumped at the chance to adapt Timeline for the big screen. While filming went off without a hitch, Donner repeatedly clashed with Paramount Pictures in post-production and was forced to re-cut the film three times in a development that saw the release date pushed by nearly a year. The resulting edit did not sit well with Crichton either, who disliked it so intensely he stopped licensing his work for a few years after.

Whether Donner’s original cut would have earned better reviews or Crichton’s approval remains to be seen but what remains of Timeline is still a well shot, enjoyable sci-fi yarn with some neat medieval action flourishes. 

16 Blocks

Donner’s final film also ranks among his most unappreciated. On the surface, 16 Blocks sounds like the perfect fodder for a game of buddy cop movie bingo.

It stars Bruce Willis as Jack Mosley, a worn-out NYPD Detective with a drinking problem tasked with transporting Mos Def’s trial witness Eddie Bunker to court. Problems arise when some of Jack’s fellow officers arrive to kill Eddie and prevent him from testifying. Eager for redemption, Jack decides to take the would-be assassins on and get Eddie to court on time.

A formulaic enough premise, 16 Blocks is emboldened by the fact it plays out in real-time with Eddie required at the courthouse by no later than 10am. In this sense, Donner found himself in new territory with an action thriller that thrives on a unique sense of urgency. 

While the filmmaker is no stranger to the action formula, this setup sees him imbue events with a renewed sense of chaos, as Jack and Eddie fight their way through armed adversaries, busy crowds and bustling traffic, all against a cacophony of shouts, car horns and gun blasts.

Ostensibly a chase movie on foot rather than four wheels, the action traverses 16 blocks in 118 minutes and rarely lets up for a second with Donner proving a dab hand at balancing the action with the engaging back-and-forth between Willis and Def who are both understated yet effective throughout.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Throw in the ever-watchable David Morse as the leader of the shady cops baying for Eddie’s blood and you have arguably one of the most underrated action thrillers of the early 2000s 

The post 5 underrated Richard Donner movies you need to see appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[adultswim2021]

The Brak Show #1: “Leave It To Brak” (AKA “Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk”) December 21, 2000 - 5:15AM | S01E01 regular series version aired October 7, 2001 @ 11:00PM

I’m trying to break the habit of assuming only my friends are reading my various blogs, but I failed in one fundamental way: I didn’t really describe the premise of Sealab 2021, like, at all. Despite digging into it’s roots somewhat by watching it’s various pilots, I failed to include even a paragraph with the basic premise of the show. I’ll try not to make the same mistake with Brak. Instead I'll make a DIFFERENT mistake by writing way too long of a blog entry.

On December 21, 2000, after Sealab 2021, The Brak Show, then titled “Leave It To Brak” debuted. Who the fuck is Brak? Brak began life as a villain on the 1960s iteration of Space Ghost, a fairly garden-variety Saturday morning action kid’s show. He appeared in, I wanna say, a very small handful of episodes. I’ve seen the whole series, and I don’t think he was like, a regular or anything. Without looking it up I'll say he was on it twice. In the show he was a space pirate and had whiskers. He has a very memorable design. I’ve never been sure if we’re actually looking at Brak’s face or if he’s wearing a helmet. His fangs imply that we’re looking at his actual face (or at least his actual jaw), but that little curtain thing that hangs down from his, uh, ears? Is that a naturally occurring part of his head? It suggests that his wardrobe is actually his body, and vice-versa. He just looks absurd, making him perfect fodder for an absurdist revision.

Brak as we know him today was first used (barring some kind of Cartoon Network commercial that I’m unaware of) in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, appearing with Sisto. Sisto is his twin brother who appeared in the 60s show. Why Brak was targeted for comedic revision and not Sisto eludes me. I’m guessing “HI MY NAME IS BRAK” just sounds funnier than “HI MY NAME IS SISTO”. Anyway, in the first Coast to Coast episode they are voiced by C. Martin Croker (RIP) doing a Beavis and Butt-head parody. Eventually Andy Merrill took over the role, basically turning Brak into a, uh, childish adult. Okay, he’s basically doing a retarded guy voice. Sorry, but it’s time to grow up.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast debuted in 1994 and remained a cult hit on the network until it was moved to Adult Swim and eventually canceled in 2004. The concept of Space Ghost Coast to Coast was Space Ghost, a super hero from the 60s, now hosts a modern 90s late night talk show, interviewing live-action celebrities on a monitor that hangs over the set. Random obscure Space Ghost villains would show up with skewed personalities from their original 60s counterpart. Brak was easily the runaway star of the touted rogues gallery. He would come in and cheerfully sing a song about beans or something else equally wacky. He rarely had a definable role on the show, he was just a figure that was around and would wander into the set.

A second 90s Space Ghost spin-off was commissioned called Cartoon Planet. This was an actual kiddy show that aired during the day as opposed to Space Ghost Coast to Coast which was kid-friendly but meant for adults. This time Space Ghost, Zorak (Space Ghost’s bandleader on Coast to Coast), and Brak would host an hour of classic cartoons, with little absurd skits between segments set in a studio SORTA like the Space Ghost Coast to Coast set but different. LOTS of Brak’s fandom is based on these skits, which were a little more silly and lighthearted than the material on Space Ghost Coast to Coast. The skits were popular enough that they repackaged them into their own half-hour show, sans classic cartoons. This was an early point of confusion for me. Beloved Brak songs turned out to be from Cartoon Planet and NOT Space Ghost Coast to Coast, so I'd tune into Space Ghost wondering if they cut out all the Brak segments or what?

Cartoon Planet would answer viewer letters (conceivably real ones; they DID include various ways to contact “Ghost Planet” at the end of both Space Ghost Coast to Coast and, I’m guessing, Cartoon Planet, which I never did see in it’s original form). They actually answered the reason for Brak’s lack of intelligence (brain-damage caused by Space Ghost, using an actual clip from the 60s show). I bring this up not out of genuine concern for continuity or canon; these aren’t huge concerns for the writers of these shows. The real reason Brak is dumb is because Andy Merrill thought the voice was funny, probably. I bring it up because generally the premise of Space Ghost in the 90s is that even though he IS a super hero with super hero abilities, he’s also an actor who makes cartoons about being a super hero. So, it can be concluded Brak’s brain damage is from a stunt gone wrong and not carried over from the fiction of the show.

The premise of Space Ghost Coast to Coast is that Space Ghost has captured evil villains Zorak and Moltar and is forcing them to work on the show. But they also freely reference their personal lives outside of the show, breaking character. They are actors who are sticking to a premise only when it’s convenient. Yes, it’s fun for the kids to pretend that Space Ghost has enslaved his enemies to work on his talk show, but the reality is that when the camera turns off they all go home to their apartments or wives or whatever. This concept feeds directly into The Brak Show: we aren’t watching Brak’s real home life; Brak, cartoon character and actor, is playing himself in a sitcom. His mom isn’t his real mom. His Dad isn’t his real dad. Zorak isn’t his real best-friend. They are all actors. This isn’t played up in any significant way on the show itself except for a few moments and certain episodes, but THAT IS WHAT’S HAPPENING and you wouldn’t really understand that just by watching this episode and nothing else. You would have to have been paying attention all this time to Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Planet, and also, yes, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak.

Okay, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak isn't REALLY required viewing for this series. But guess what? I watched it for the first time ever in preparation for this and now we all have to deal with Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak (sorry I keep repeating the full title which is Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak) was a two-episode special presentation that aired on Cartoon Network while Space Ghost was on hiatus and before The Brak Show's stealth premiere. It (Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak, that is) was a Sonny and Cher style variety show, featuring Brak and Zorak on stage together performing songs, intentionally corny sketches, and a LITTLE BIT, but NOT A LOT of backstage drama; which could be argued to have been part of the show itself. Variety shows doing sketches fictionalizing the backstage antics of the production is nothing new. There are also live-action integrated celebrities, and the show comes to a screeching halt whenever they show up. Maybe their performances are hampered by having to perform on a green screen, but these segments come off lame and pandering. Space Ghost Coast to Coast would make it's name featuring washed-up, kitschy, or counter-culture celebrities. Here we are treated to Monica, Freddie Prinze Jr. (whose segment in particular really drives me up a wall), some wrestler guy, and a lady who's name I don't remember. Okay, I admit I fast forwarded through the second of the two episodes a LOT. Sitting through one episode in real time was just too much to bear.

Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak is written off by a lot of Brak fans as a substandard product, and they're not wrong. I myself never sought out the whole special until I started writing this blog. But there's one thing I'll give it, the visuals (minus the live-action celebrity parts) are actually pretty fun. There's a lot of weird character designs, and the same playful use of stock footage and kinetic editing from Cartoon Planet carries over into this. Skipping past the celebrity guests and watching the special on mute would be the preferred viewing method here. Honestly, I've never been that charmed by Brak's songs. I never cared much for Cartoon Planet.

Brak Presents the Brak Show Staring Brak eventually became The Brak Show, but with one more step: a scrapped audio-only pilot. This pilot appears as an audio commentary track on The Brak Show Volume 1 DVD set. I discovered it by accident. In preparation for this blog I popped the DVD in, saw there was commentary for Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk, and pressed play. Instead of Andy Merrill and Pete Smith dryly talking about their creative process, I was treated to what would have been the audio for a Brak Show pilot (there are stage directions being read in lieu of visuals), roughly the length of an 11 minute episode. This version plays up the backstage antics of Brak's variety show much more, kinda like Larry Sanders meets Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Returning from the show is Brak and Zorak, along with Allen Wrench, a talking Allen wrench that appeared in Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. On Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak, Allen had a crazy high-pitched voice. In this audio pilot he sounds closer to Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Also present in the audio pilot is Thundercleese, who curiously sounds like the regular series version of Thundercleese. In “Leave it to Brak”, Thundercleese sounds slightly different. Maybe they went back and rerecorded Thundercleese for the DVD?

That FINALY brings us to the actual episode. “Leave it to Brak” was the first episode of “The Brak Show” proper to air (though if I remember correctly from what was reported way back when, they wanted to call the actual show “Leave It To Brak” but couldn't for legal reasons). It feels more like a first episode than Goldfish does, which was the first episode I saw when Adult Swim officially began in 2001. “Leave it to Brak” introduces each character with fake studio audience applause. They even introduce Sisto, who simply walks in front of the camera, farts, and is not seen again. The premise of the show is this: Brak stars in a family sitcom. His mom belongs to the same species as Brak, but his dad is a tiny human voiced by George Lowe doing a Ricky Ricardo voice. According to this episode; Brak is roughly high-school aged, but it's all a pretense to get this cast of weirdos together under one roof. Again, Brak is a cartoon character playing himself here, so we're not meant to actually think these are his real parents; Brak is not half-human, necessarily. It's all just for the sake of this dumb show.

The plot of the episode is this: Zorak, Brak's best friend and worst influence, convinces Brak to help him kidnap the mascot of their rival high school, a chicken named Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk. Having done this, Brak grapples with the morality of his actions, tries to deceive his parents by dressing the chicken up like a little man, is caught, and is taught a lesson. There's a comedic final scene that reverses the lesson Brak supposedly learned, and then it ends. Somewhere in there we are introduced to Brak's giant robot neighbor who blows up Zorak for ripping up his lawn.

The Brak Show was possibly the most anticipated show when Adult Swim was announced. We all quietly ignored how much Brak Presents The Brak Show Starring Brak sucked; mostly because this was touted to be a show for adults. Afterall, Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak's biggest shortcoming was the fact that it was the first Brak-centric product to pander directly to children. Brak was always seen as a uniquely weird creation that just so happened to appeal to kids, kinda like Pee Wee Herman or Joe Camel. Also the idea of parodying the sitcom genre seemed novel, despite the fact that it wasn't really a new idea. Now it just comes off like a shallow observation: boy, old sitcoms sure were corny, right?

I don't know exactly how to pinpoint what was so disappointing about this show. I can see there was a genuine effort to make it funny. Dad was a decently funny character. They weren't just trying to mock sitcoms, they were trying to build a genuinely strange world that resembled our own. Brak lived in the suburbs but there were aliens and robots everywhere. Sci-fi situations casually reared their ugly heads into the lives of these characters. I mean, look at the plot description of Brak stealing a high school mascot; it's an ACTUAL SITCOM PLOT. There's no real subversion to it other than the fact that Brak and Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast are doing it. This could have been decent as a one-off special like Tim & Eric's Bag Boy staring Steve Brule. But they made more.

Oh wait, I figured out why The Brak Show sorta sucked. It's the fact that the show was a musical. Fuck, I hated that so much that I blocked it out of my head until this moment. Every episode had musical numbers in it sung by Brak and the family. Ugh. They were supposed to be funny nonsense but I never liked it. In fact if there were ever an edit of the show without the songs I would probably remember it much more fondly.

This version of the pilot had very simplistically drawn backgrounds. When the show went to series they redid the backgrounds with photo-realistic settings and props. It's a much more appealing look. This version of the pilot was briefly featured in an episode of Sealab, where Murphy was flipping through the channels on his monitor. He flips past this and Aqua Teen Hunger Force and maybe Space Ghost? This was back in the early days when every show seemed like it was connected to each other. I miss that. The “regular series” of The Brak Show used to give the show a different parodic on-screen title; “Mr. Bawk Ba Gawk”, which aired fifth on Adult Swim, had the opening title “B.J. And the Brak”. “Goldfish” used “Leave It To Brak”, which causes some episode guides to get confused over which episode is which. In fact, Adult Swim's website features the pilot version of this show and incorrectly uses the plot summary for “Goldfish”. I'm not linking to it because the listing says it expires today. But go look for it if you want.

The other big difference between this version and the “regular series” version is there are a few missing bits here and there. For example, the pilot version starts with Dad asking Mom for another biscuit. She sighs and says “maybe later”, to which dad just shrugs off. There's also a cut song I call “Kiss you hot” that dad sings to mom. There's probably other differences here and there. Oh, Brak's clock is the beeflog illustration from Brak Presents the Brak Show Starring Brak. Isn't my life fuller for being able to make that connection? God, I'm so glad I watched Brak Presents the Brak Show Staring Brak last night instead of getting an extra hour of sleep.

So what's good in this? I REALLY like the scene where Bawk Ba Gawk is at the dinner table and everyone keeps stealing his little hat to wear. Mom scolds Dad for wearing the hat, to which he mutters “I'll do what I damn well please”. Mom then plucks the hat from his head. When we cut to the wide shot, she's wearing it. Funny! SOLIDLY VERY FUNNY. But the series generally suffers from them trying to cram in weird pointless bits of absurd comedy. Only sometimes does it work. Not sure why. But that's how it goes, I guess.

#the brak show #brak #space ghost coast to coast #space ghost #brak presents the brak show starring brak #adult swim #adultswim2021

[mysterious-prophetess]

so, I just finished watching the Snyder Cut of Justice League

And since I did watch the Theatrical Cut or Josstice League (and own that on Blu-Ray) I thought I’d compare and contrast.

From here on out the Theatrical version is Josstice League and Snyder Cut is Snyder Cut

First, the things they have in common: A lot of the plot beats and characters appear in both with the exceptions that are probably obvious.

But the story still is

“Space Invader from beyond the stars is on earth searching for magic macguffins to end life on Earth as we know it forces Bruce and Diana to recruit a team of other metas to stop this and they end up reenacting Re-Animator with Superman/Clark who died in Batman v Superman with the MAcGuffin and the MacGuffin Ship from Man of Steel and in the end, though shit gets weird in Russia, they save the world and resume their lives in slightly better shape than before.”

Now onto the contrasts

I’ll hit the low hanging fruit and go with Tones first.

Josstice League’s tone could flip-flop wildly. Which, since they were trying to mimic the MCU’s tonal flip-flopping (by even hiring the same guy who set it up with Avengers) makes some sense.

Snyder Cut isn’t without levity but it doesn’t do the drastic veers that Josstice League did.

There are some things I liked better about Josstice League, believe it or not.

While the tone shifting like it did was very MCU copy-paste at times, there were character moments of the Flash from Josstice League I enjoyed.

I even liked Diana’s little heart-to-heart with Bruce from Josstice League.

I also liked Bruce being behind bringing Lois into the fray post their attempts at science based necromancy calling her “the big guns” even if that sounded way more like Tony Stark than Bruce Wayne.

One final compliment I can give Josstice League was the soundtrack. I like the music I like and I liked the music they chose.

The scenes that the Snyder cut extended were a 70/30 split of me liking the extensions with a 30% split of them thinking “You know, I get why they cut this” and this being the character set up scenes. Flash’s sequence is ok, and so is Cyborg’s, but the Aquaman one with Bruce and Diana’s foiling of a bank heist felt too drawn out. Aquaman interacting with Atlanteans sequences are mostly needed to establish the other characters and how he got the trident and costume change.

It’s neat to see how things got into place for each scene but.....if this was a book I was editing, those would be the darlings I’d have told Snyder to kill.

The extra characters were folded in seamlessly. It was nice to see Willem DaFoe’s Aquaman character get an appearance since he’s a big player though the change in hair style was jarring.

I was stoked to see Martian Manhunter. So stoked.

I was also pleased by the revised Steppenwolf design. Before, he just seemed like....I can’t quite put it into words eloquently but Josstice Steppenwolf looked liked an early 2000′s CGI cutscene character crossed with a few of the Orcs from Lord of the Rings and an orc from Warcraft the failed movie. Just off and not much of a villain.

This one is a major improvement and it’s pretty clear he’s a grunt the whole time.

Was very excited to see Darkseid in a major movie.

Now all they need to do to make me happy is use Brainiac in a live action movie. Yeah, I know he’s been live action a couple of times but not in a major movie.

For the most part, the action of Snyder Cut just felt better.

The quiet scenes also felt better.

Problem is, the length makes watching this in one go not really a practical thing. I know there are chapter marks, so kudos for that, but this film isn’t perfect.

The Length thing is a nitpick. Since this is a special home-release, I don’t care as much as usual about length but I really have opinions on movie lengths for theatrical stuff partly from being a movie goer back when that was a possible thing to be AND from working in a movie theater. (I’m of the opinion that keep theatrical releases to 150 minutes or you’re just being an over indulgent jerk of a studio)

Now onto actual problems.

First is that I both love and hate Snyder’s Snyder-verse.

So, I hate the Grittier Superman Snyder came up with in Man of Steel wherein Superman is less Paragon and more like a Punisher type. Same goes for Batman in Snyder-verse (since he’s not a fan of guns and the whole doesn’t KILL people rule)

If any come at me with “but that’s because he’s too simple a character otherwise” I’ll direct you to Overly Sarcastic Productions’s better worded video essay about paragons not being boring/simple.

But Snyder does have good ideas for a general shape of his universe, and he also is pulling in more comic book source material into the films, which I love.

but his universe is always darker and grimmer than necessary and sometimes his aesthetics are weird.

Speaking of that-that weird destroyed future timeline wherein Supes is working for Darkseid.

Can’t say I like the aesthetics of it. Can’t say I like how Batman is portrayed in it either and no, not a fan of Mera or Joker’s presence. I’m able to admit that this is due to both of the actors portraying them. Though, I also really don’t like the Suicide Squad Joker.

Superman going evil isn’t unheard of in story arcs. See animated Justice League story arc wherein the Flash was killed by Lex Luthor.

Making Lois the key to his heart also isn’t a bad idea. 

It’s just the moment the movie threw that in just before the end, I rolled my eyes at it. I also thought the Lex Luthor bits were a bit superfluous, at first, but hey, it explained Deathstroke the Terminator (and gave a name for the face of his terrible future counterpart).

So, yes, I enjoyed the Snyder Cut for the most part. Should it come to physical media, I’ll probably purchase it.

Comparing the two films isn’t quite fair, but Snyder Cut just looks better over all.

I’ll give the Josstice league credit for being shorter-easier movie to sit through, with some dumb moments enough for fun and maybe even a scmaltzier ending at times but it just looks like the second draft of something next to a final draft with the Snyder Cut.

Snyer’s Cut’s polish is nice, but the length does undermine it.

So, actually both versions are fine but one clearly looks like it had been smashed and glued back together while the other is smooth and seamless with more consistency over all.

Like what  you will.

I like both but Snyder Cut is, to my eyes, the better put-together film.

#justice league #snyder cut #josstice league