booxmowo

[booxmowo]

[booxmowo]

Even if the Nightmare Time story about it never gets produced, I'm going to take it as canon that Charlotte Sweetly is originally a genius C.I.A. agent converted into a deep cover assassin by C.C.R.P.

[booxmowo]

My Cinderella’s Castle Fanart! I loved this show so much!! I hope to the nine good gods that they create more tales in this world, the vibes are so fun.

[booxmowo]

So to tally the score that's "T'noy Karaxis" used consistently in the subtitles of seasons one and two of Nightmare Time, "T'noy Karaxsis" used in the illustration in the Black Book in Killer Track, "T'noy Keraxis" used in the subtitles of Nerdy Prudes Must Die only, and "T'noy Karaxiss" being used consistently in the current Kickstarter and The Black Tarot.

[booxmowo]

I keep thinking about this moment. First of all, yeah, that's just a supremely fucked up thing to do, cutting off someone's limb and then immediately using it as a prop to mock them.

But also... the visual metaphor the Stepmother is constructing is inherently contradictory. That is Ella's own foot, it is an undeniable fact that she belongs above it. The relative positions of Ella and her foot at this moment could not be more obviously unnatural, but the Stepmother is insisting that this is the natural position of not just Ella but all of mankind.

She talks about humanity as if there is a natural hierarchy and she is merely putting them in the place they have always belonged, but she can only assert her supposedly inherent superiority by taking things that clearly rightfully are Ella's and using them to prop herself up. She will never see this as a contradiction. In her perspective, the fact that Ella deserves nothing is so irrefutable that it is only natural that anything Ella has, up to and including her own body, can be revoked the instant that it would benefit the Stepmother and her daughters to have it.

And her self-assured belief that nothing that is Ella's is truly Ella's is ultimately her undoing. As she sees it, the final step in her plan is simply to get the right feet and put them in the right shoes, and then she wins, her daughter becomes queen, trolls once again rule over the manfolk. However the Gods themselves can look down and see that, regardless of the Stepmother physically separating them from Ella, what's happening is Ella's feet being put back into Ella's shoes, and that means Ella wins.

[booxmowo]

The cyclical nature of all things motif goes hard. The fact that the song's title starts and ends with the same word, and the song itself starts and ends with the same lyrics, but with different meaning. The fact that the literal meaning of "ashes to ashes" is that all things start as ash and end as ash, but also because Ella is, in the Fairy Queen's own words, a "child of ash" it can also mean a legacy transferred from one ash(more) to the next.

The way at the start of the musical everyone's fear of Ella was rooted in the idea that she was tainted by her mother's witchcraft, but what ultimately saves Ella is stepping into her mother's footsteps. The fall of House Ashmore started with Lady Ashmore performing a ritual underneath the old oak, and so the end of the tragedy comes the same way.

And to say that all things begin and end as ash is to acknowledge that ash can be the beginning just as easily as it can be the ending. A flickering cinder can alight a new flame. The dying ember can create new life.

genuinely love ash to ash from cindrella's castle-- someone said it's the most accurate depiction of an archfey warlock pact, and I agree. big eldritch fae god giving ella the power she desires, even if what she desires to do with that power is neither sweet nor good? perfect.

I also think it's super metal how ella's dress is crafted from the last bit of light present in the heat death of the universe and how time is cemented, lyrically, to be cyclical with the beginning of the song's "lady ashmore danced" referring to ella's mom, and then the end of the song's "lady ashmore danced" being about ella.

[booxmowo]

Angela Giarratana is a gift to the world of theatre, and Mariah stepping away from Black Friday at exactly the right time for Angela to join the Starkid cast will go down as the Mean Girls musical's most important contribution to the artform.

Favorite Angela Moments 78/∞: Lex and Lex

[booxmowo]

I love how Angela Giarratana looks like a cryptid in this shot.

And even not in the "haha, funny still frame" way, I mean her looming in the background blurry but identifiable solely by silhouette and colour scheme is actually conveying an appropriate sense of dread. This is a scene of the monster creeping up on the unsuspecting protagonist, after all.

[booxmowo]

I think Nick Lang has said that Ted is one of the easiest characters to write for because you can just have him say whatever the wrong thing to say is at any moment, so the fact that he still feels like Ted even when every other character feels off isn't too surprising.

The rest of the cast it kind of feels like their characterizations and dynamics are shifted to what they need to be to move the plot where it's going. Given that this actually is a script that got cancelled and then dug up to serve as bonus material it's very possible that they gave up on it so early that it's been through fewer drafts than a normal episode would go through. It's also possible that the inability to get the plot moving in the intended direction without distorting the characters was the reason it was scrapped.

But whether it's "the characters feel wrong because this is a much rougher draft than what usually reached production" or "this story was scrapped because the writers recognized how much the characters weren't working right in the storyline"... those are both reasons why counting it as canon doesn't feel right even in a weird multiverse continuity like Hatchetfield.

I would also like to note that saying "Yes, Melissa is a serial killer who abducts men and forces them to act like dogs, but the rest of the CCRP office staff just never find that out in any timeline" is, in my opinion, way funnier than saying that Hey, Melissa! is canon.

bill saying “i never liked that beanie’s girl” ????? wtf bill add this to the list of reasons why i don’t count hey melissa doesn’t as canon

[booxmowo]

My cold take on Hey, Melissa! is that I think it's the worst Hatchetfield story. My hot take on Hey, Melissa! is that I think a lot of the conversation around why people don't like it is backwards.

Hey, Melissa! is not a script that gets labeled as "the bad one" for simply being creepy and unsettling, it is a script that gets labeled as "the creepy and unsettling one" due to simply being bad.

I don't think Hey, Melissa! is actually more disturbing than e.g. Jane's a Car or Perky's Buds, I think it's bad for subtle reasons that I'm constantly tempted to describe as a general "lack of being good". I think people watch it, don't get the usual dopamine rush from seeing familiar Hatchetfield characters, and then when attempting to explain why they didn't like it the only thing that sticks out to them is that the human pet stuff is really weird.

It has been pointed out that the Starkid fandom loves pretty much every unhinged woman except Melissa, and honestly I think that is telling. She seems to fit into a broader archetype that people certainly enjoy, and not even the most dedicated Hey, Melissa! hater would pretend that Mariah isn't giving it 150% in the role, so why isn't this story loved by all the same people who sincerely say stuff like "I hope Grace Chasity kills even more people next time we see her"? The answer is that it's just... not good.

bill saying “i never liked that beanie’s girl” ????? wtf bill add this to the list of reasons why i don’t count hey melissa doesn’t as canon

[booxmowo]

I think a big part of making a good adaptation is to zero in on which parts of the original resonate with the story you want to tell.

Fennel and Lloyd Webber looked at Cinderella and apparently saw a stereotypical makeover story about a woman needing to change her looks to be desirable, and then made their whole musical a counterpoint to that. That's an angle that's really not even applicable the fairy tale; Cinderella gets a "makeover" because she has never even been allowed to have nice clothes. But regardless it leaves the whole thing very confused at every point as to whether it's telling the story of Cinderella or a deliberate counternarrative to Cinderella.

The Lang brothers looked at Cinderella and recognized that it was largely a story about a survivor escaping her abusers and getting a break of good karma. They introduced a lot of their own dark fantasy elements but everything changed in the story was still in service of making Ella's eventual victory over her stepmother more cathartic.

There's also the matter of making a "subversive feminist retelling" that can only build up its protagonist by emphasizing how much all other women suck. Versus simply telling a story where most of the principle cast are women with distinct motivations and personalities.

bad cinderella fell on her face so that cinderella's castle could soar

[booxmowo]

I still pretty regularly think about Lucy Westenra's character being summarized/conceptualized as just "girl - dies".

The entire description of her character is "girl" and her role in the plot is simply "- dies". I don't know, I guess because I like Lucy Westenra as Bram Stoker wrote her it feels weird seeing her reduced to... no... originate as a simple two word entry in a list. On the other hand there's no way this is an unusual way to come up with characters; you write the barest outline of their role first and then flesh them out later, and that includes inventing characters for the sole purpose of dying.

But on a sort of meta level it makes me feel sad for Lucy Westenra the completely fictional woman, because she was always going to die. Like, not just independent of any choices she could make, but independent even of what sort of person she was. She was destined to die because she was invented to die.

girl - dies

She is a girl, a simple fact that is of course established immediately within her introduction to the story. She dies, an event that by definition happens to her only at the end of her role in the story. All other features of her as a character can only happen in between.

Dracula is one of the most adapted storylines in all of English literature and by proxy Lucy Westenra, though she doesn't appear in every version of Dracula, has been adapted to film, television, theatre, etc. dozens and dozens of times. And honestly, the various adaptations of Lucy are often so different in personality from each other that it does feel like "girl - dies" is the core of her identity. Every new writer/director has their own take on who this girl is and why she dies.

Years ago... coming up on half a decade ago now, I wrote a silly post where Lucy herself explains how everything she does can be read into and used to prescribe the "meaning" of her inevitable death. I don't remember if the description "girl - dies" was part of the original inspiration, but it certainly fits.

What are very probably the first notes Stoker wrote regarding Jack and Lucy in the process of planning Dracula.

[booxmowo]

Spoilers for both campaigns ahead.

Guy Hudson in The Roottrees are Dead: He got promoted to company president instead of Ernie Jr. due to some behind the scenes family politics, did a terrible job of it for a little less than five years, then died. That's it. One of the key hints in placing him on the family tree is simply that his obituary says he and his wife had no children when they died.

Guy Hudson in Roottreemania: The family tree has been expanded to include possible infidelities, and literally half of the new entries are women he slept with or children who might be his. He personally selected (based on his own "requirements") the majority of the secretaries hired during his five year tenure, of which there were surprisingly many because most were underqualified and none of them stayed with the company for more than two years. He seemed to have a pathological need to celebrate any business deal by sleeping with the wives or daughters of his business partners. After being president for only one year he hired a respected nonfiction author to write a biography about him, but refused to let her publish anything that wasn't a shallow propaganda piece painting him as "the second coming of the great Elias Roottree". He also tried to sleep with his would-be biographer because of course he did. Towards the end of his tenure he was paying a combined $60,000 a month in hush money to the mothers of his numerous illegitimate children. To reiterate, this is within less than five years. The Roottree Candy Company's PR team has had to put out statements clarifying that although they're thoroughly investigating any claims to being a secret Roottree, they are not casting doubt on any claims to having slept with Guy Hudson, because the fact that Guy regularly held swinger parties on the company's dime is well established.

The Roottrees are Dead is genuinely one of the funniest games of all time because the two campaigns are SO fucking different from each other tonally. it's like:

Main Story: you are tasked with slowly unraveling one of the most fucked-up family histories on the planet and read on with horrified fascination, culminating in a powerful message that's very touching and REALLY hits home in the current political climate

Roottreemania: so you know that one guy? that guy most notable for running the family business like shit for like five years before dying in a car crash who you didn't really think too much about in the main story? yeah so it turns out he had sex with at least five different women (note: one source mentions that his wife was bisexual and in on this) and you now need to track down his bastard children. he's not even the only family member who committed adultery here he's just the most notable one for, again, having sex with at least five different women. anyway godspeed

[booxmowo]

I think a game developer actively attempting to troll their game's speedrunning community could never come up with something as funny as Super Metroid's "save the animals" choice.

A "Good Ending" that amounts to one choice made only after the final boss has been defeated, too small a difference to ever be made into it's own distinct category, but a large enough detour that doing it is a guaranteed time loss, but a small enough detour that a skilled speedrunner will never fail at it and always theoretically has the opportunity to do it at the end of a normal run. With the only acknowledgement within the game being a two pixel sprite flying across the screen for a split second during the standard ending cutscene, but also later entries confirming that two-pixels-flying-across-the-screen ending is unambiguously canon.

It's a perfect storm.

[booxmowo]

Off the top of your head, is there a particular piece of pedantry you are particularly proud of?

Yes.

[booxmowo]

Gonna do them in order until I run out of steam:

Diffocod: It’s a cod, which obviously makes it a water type, but it also either differs or is difficult. Actually I’m gonna go with Diffocod differ in ways that are difficult to tell. It has a bunch on minor form difference a la Spinda. It’s Water/Psychic I’ve decided. Diffocod possess the mental prowess to immediately recognize all of their minor differences.

Firebermen: Is obviously a Fire type. But also... fibers... and “men” is plural implying that this is one of Falinks-Tandemaus sort of ones that is just straight up multiple creatures treated as a single Pokémon. I’m now imagining tiny men made of fire that are tied together by a fiber... that is also made of fire. Weird concept, hypothetical GameFreak, but okay. It’s a pure Fire type.

Nanarcer: Is, I think, an archer made of bananas? So primary grass (Oh hey we already have a starter trio (no we don’t, Firebermen and Diffocod are definitely single stage Pokémon)) and... I’m feeling Fighting as the secondary type here. Yeah this isn’t a starter either this is the Bounsweet/Smoliv kind of Pokémon, it’s earliest stage is a banana with a face and it gets more humanoid as it evolves.

Exulation: Oh man this one doesn’t give any hints towards what kind of creature it is. I believe it’s a pun on “Exhalation”, so it’s primary characteristic is that it breathes out... I think it’s a Fairy type, and there’s some sort of magical property that occurs every time it breathes, but I really can’t guess what the thing actually looks like.

Sweeze: Another Fairy type. A funny little trickster made out of candy. Bet it’s gonna get a weird signature move that makes it really good in competitive and then we get a ton of memes about how, like. Tyrannitar and Grimmsnarl are scared of Sweeze.

Barbon: Is a fish but actually it’s not a Water-type, it’s Steel/Dark. Wait this is treading really closely to Overqwil in terms of concept, maybe it shouldn’t be a fish? Hmm... maybe the execution will be different enough.

Browbedably: Oh man what a name. But it’s a portmanteau of “Browbeat” and “Dabble”, so this is like, a really overbearing artist? I’m now imagining it as as a sort of jerk version of Smeargle, so I think it’s another breed of dog and is a Dark type.

Strisitor: Portmanteau of stride and visitor. This is definitely a mid-stage one. It’s first and third forms have more descriptive puns involving the word stride, and so it needs to incorporate the same word and so we get “Strisitor”. It’s a bird, but a bird that prefers to run so I don’t know if it should be a Flying type. You know what maybe Strisitor is a pure Normal type, but I think it’s evolved form is going to add something to it that gives it a secondary type.

Wishine: Is a shiny coin that evolves into a wishing well. Or maybe they aren’t literally a coin and a well, but they have those motifs. In fact, they’re actually fish. Yes this is the third fish line in this post but in my defense there really are a lot of fish Pokémon. Wishine is pure Water type.

Quartwish: Wait I actually hadn’t read this one when I wrote Wishine’s description, is this Wishine’s evolved form? Okay. Quart in this context is a unit of volume, a reference to quarters, and a reference to quartz, because Quartwish is a Water/Rock type. Quartwish carries a basin filled with water and Wishines wherever it goes.

Prinvaully: Is a portmanteau of prince and volley. This Pokémon has a regal motif and throws things. It’s not the fully evolved form, because that ones name is gonna be a pun on “King”. Prinvaully is... a Steel type, not really based on an animal. It’s got a crown but the crown is actually a part of it’s body and similarly shaped spikes grow on the rest of the body and get used as ammunition instead.

Trifies: Huh. Trifies, Trifies, Trifies... There’s a specific vibe to this name, but it’s really hard to figure out what words it might be playing on. Maybe “trifle” but that doesn’t tell me much. ... I think it’s a Fairy type, and I think it isn’t fully evolved and I... can’t tell you much more.

Sumentfurtific: Umm... does this one even fit in the character limit? No it doesn’t it’s 14 characters long. Illegal Pokémon name. Anyway. Sumentfurtific is ground. Like not just that’s it’s type, Sumentfurtific is literally just a soil layer. I uhh... don’t know what it looks like when you send it out onto the battlefield. Sumentfurtific is not allowed to exist, so it doesn’t need to make sense.

Apporins: This Pokémon’s entire reason for existing is a stupid pun on the phrase “comparing apples and oranges”, and to be clear, that is a compliment. This a third branch of the Applin family, where the wyrm starts inhabiting an orange instead so that it can know what it’s like and my god that is stupid but that’s what Apporins is and you know what this might be my favourite on this list GameFreak please turn Apporins into a real thing. It isn’t even a different type from Applin’s other evolutions, this is just straight up a third Grass/Dragon final form of the same family.

Powean: ... I think this one is Prinvaully’s evolution. It’s a pun on “queen”, not “king” like I thought it would be. Yeah I guess “prince” and “princess” both start with “prin”. My bad. Still pure steel type. It grows even more menacing spikes and an even more impressive crown.

Founty: It found you and now is ready to collect you’re bounty, heh. This one is just a sendup to westerns in terms of it’s personality, which is pretty funny. It’s a Dark type, due to the grey morality of the archetype its aping. This one is based on an animal, but it’s gonna be something entirely unrelated to westerns that the designer just thought would look cool.

Sankle: Water/Ground. Quicksand Pokémon. It is a pit, that you sank into, up to you’re ankle.

Aerocioundly: Was worried this was another Sumentfurtific situation, but no it’s 12 characters that’s allowed. Crisis averted. So obviously this is a Flying type. In fact I think a pure Flying type. Windy thing.

Derphitiges: Oh that is a weird name. It’s Bug/Rock. It’s like a termite but it eats rocks instead of wood.

Aunces: It’s, uh... Yeah I’m out of ideas. How many did I get... 19? Okay.

Game: This page will procedurally generate a set of fifty nonexistent English-like words each time it's loaded. Load the page, pick one – it can be any one, but it has to be one of the set of fifty generated by your very first page load – and tell us what kind of Pokémon it is.

[booxmowo]

The trick here is that you don’t need to know anything about Power Rangers so long as you have such a deeply ingrained knowledge of Pokémon that not recognizing a name is a surefire indicator it isn’t a Pokémon.

I see the name “Jindrax” and don’t immediately remember what it looks like, what type it is, and what it evolves from/into, then the most likely explanation is it isn’t a Pokemon.

I wonder whether anyone has done one of those "X or Y" quizzes where the categories are "mid-generation Pokémon" and "obscure Power Rangers villain".