molemanninethousand

[molemanninethousand]

Regarding why this battle, in spite of previous promises that I wasn't about to let such happen yet again, took so long to come around recording-wise (and thankfully not visualization-wise thereafter), let it be known that SkippyShorts was approached to voice Broly, and responded, after which I kept patiently waiting on his every subsequent response through correspondence attempting to get the role planned out for a matter of months until he finally admitted that he wouldn't be able to do it. Skippy has long been one of my most personally beloved YouTube channels from repeated viewings during my formative period many years ago, and was in the midst of what has since sadly proven to be yet another short-lived return to activity at the time.

Thrawn, now making his spectacularly long-awaited arrival to my videography, was at a loss for casting for the longest time as well, with his first MERB voice from Sonic Vs. Star Wars being evidently long-gone and a certain other prior one-time vocal contributor who was approached for the part declining to return out of dissatisfaction with how his previous performance for me turned out based on the audio-editing format.

The very basic casting I ultimately settled on, with both lead parts being recorded in-person with longtime old friends, was certainly not something I would have foreseen when first setting out to get this battle recorded. I personally feel satisfied with the finished result, but of course I'm highly biased in my inclination to feel that way about most all my projects when they're first released. Only time will tell if this one holds up, and whether I make good on following it up with the rest of my planned battles on a reasonable schedule.

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Special thanks and welcome to the MERB family to Angel669 A.K.A. StarSieGuy.

Hoping to get the video for this done and up within the month (February), especially seeing how I previously promised that the battle would be released in 2024, which ended up only holding true for the lyrics.

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I seriously need to keep myself reminded of just how quickly I can make something if and only if I actually commit to doing so without the hesitation that's kept me inactive so often for so long.

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The Avatar Rap

(Parody of the D.K. Rap by Grant Kirkhope)

Water, Earth, Fire, Air!

Once, the four nations lived in harmony;

Then came the attack of the Fire army!

Only the Avatar could stop the damage,

But when the world needed him most, he vanished!

HUH!

A.A.!

Avatar Aang!

He's the latest in the line; you'll know his name.

He's out of the ice to douse some flames!

His bison, bo staff, and lemur all fly;

With his arrowed head, he'll pierce the sky!

His skills are great, but there's learning to do;

He's the last member of the Air monk crew!

HUH!

A.A.!

Avatar Aang!

A.A.!

The Avatar is here!

This gal's got hope that you'll listen up, dudes;

She can change chi paths to soothe your wounds.

She's wet and wild when she needs to be,

From a tribe under fire for a century!

She'll bend your blood if you do her wrong,

And woe be to the guy who killed her mom!

HUH!

A.A.!

Avatar Aang!

He has no honor; he has no place.

This prince has a fucked-up face!

He can block bolts when he needs to,

And fight his crazy sister just for you;

Redeem himself like Dickens's Scrooge,

Sans spirits, save for his stint in blue!

HUH!

A.A.!

Avatar Aang!

A.A.!

The Avatar is here!

He's back again, as seen on Netflix,

And this time, he isn't sexist!

He can get real high on some cactus juice;

With his meteor sword, he's got rad moves!

His first girlfriend turned into the moon,

And his 'rang makes three-eyed freaks go boom!

HUH!

A.A.!

Avatar Aang!

HUH!

Finally, eyes staring blank,

It's the last member of the Avatar gang.

This Toph's so tough, it isn't funny;

If you fight her, well, that's rough, buddy.

Can beat up the Boulder with relative ease;

Moves metal blocks with new techniques!

She can't read text, except in braille,

But Beifong's one hell of a gal!

HUH!

Come on, Iroh; take it to the spirit realm!

Koi, Koh, face-stealer, dragon-dance arts,

Agni Kai duels and wrecked cabbage carts; oh yeah!

War in Ba Sing Se being denied,

Lion turtles, badgermoles and leaves from the vine; oh yeah!

And then there's Jet:

He's dead.

Will absolutely be a sentence-mixed video in the very near future.

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For as sporadically as this was conceived and how different it is from anything else I've ever put on my YouTube channel, I'd say this came together just about as well as I could have hoped.

Stay tuned for more uploads coming soon (by my standards)!

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The Samurai

(Parody of "The Scientist" by Coldplay)

Came here to slay you, shogun unholy;

Shapeshifting master of horror.

I shall prevail like my father before me;

Pinning you down on the floor.

What trickery is this? White rings encircle;

Flung to the foulest of futures.

Hopeless dystopia: extraterrestrials;

Bots spawned from endless producers.

Blade of three gods, what I harness;

Oil's spilled extra-thick by the slash.

Jumping the highest and farthest.

Fractured fairy tales are getting me miscast.

Gotta get back to the past.

Now, through time's marching, I remain ageless

As across a warped world I walk.

Spartans and Scotsmen, flying princes and ravers;

Vikings encased in molten rock.

Once met an immortal, guarding a portal;

Said that I wasn't ready yet.

Then, he was too strong; now, I've waited too long,

And Ashi is getting possessed.

Fallen for darkness's daughter;

Oh, it's such a shame we couldn't last.

Allies around me are slaughtered;

I'll bring it to an end in a final flash.

I'm going back to the past.

Watch ooooout!

Watch ooooout!

Watch ooooout!

Watch ooooout!

I may or may not have this recorded in the near future, depending on any attention/feedback on this post.

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...Need any more be said?

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With this battle being the subject of MERB's first official "Who won?" poll posted on my channel's community tab, results have resoundingly favored Cynthia, which I can only assume has a lot to do with my mother's recordings as Malenia not going over so well in the eyes/ears of the public. While I won't name names, a certain someone else who has previously appeared multiple times in my series was originally planned and even paid to voice the character, only to renege and refund at the last minute for one of the stupidest reasons possible: being unwilling to say the word "rapist" even as a canonically accurate reference to a character who was, in fact, a literal rapist.

As of its Tumblr posting, this battle has gotten disappointingly few views and engagements so far; quite possibly the lowest degree of such any MERB installment has ever received within the same timespan following release, at least since very early on. I understand that this is mainly due to the severe lapse in my regularity of releases for the longest time now, it being my first upload in six months, which makes it all the more fortunate that I am presently determined not to repeat such a delay in producing the next battle, and hereby promising that it will be released by the end of 2024... hopefully along with a certain other form of related YouTube content, albeit not on my own channel; stay tuned...

On a semi-related note, the period following this upload actually has been one of significantly surging views for my channel despite the minimal attention garnered by the new video itself, by dubious virtue of the MTV pilot featuring Dave Navarro visiting our family trending yet again due to highly awkward reasons which I don't feel I'm qualified to weigh in on directly.

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This had actually been one of the earliest matchups conceived and planned for MERB within my mind; possibly floating around in there for a longer gestation period, so to speak, than any other to come to eventual fruition to date.

That being said, I feel finally coming to making this ended up proving a mixed blessing when the concept as I'd envisioned it for all those years doesn't really hold up to scrutiny particularly well for how specific the connection is supposed to be nor for how little I ultimately leaned into it with the battle's narrative in its final act, especially with how long it plays out for prior to reaching that punchline in any capacity. Nevertheless, my satisfaction with the lyrics themselves and their vocal deliveries is easily on par with the best of my series; big props to Tupac's actor, Kato Deville.

Here's also shouting out to fellow ERB-adjacent YouTuber Yeezo, who made this short edit based on the battle.

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The main challenge in writing this was the question of how much to focus on the actual finished products of either film represented versus the history of their infamous creation processes and how different and better they could have turned out. In Zigzag's case, I had little choice but to lean more towards the former approach since by all accounts, his role was the most fully-realized and least interfered-with compared to the other characters and storylines in The Thief and the Cobbler... with the convenient exception of an intended climax involving an illusory dragon, leading to its appearance here opposite the dark deity Supai, both artistically rendered by Fruzmig.

Additional huge special thanks for visual contribution here go to YDGeon for the ending animation.

The idea that evolved into this started years prior as Zigzag Vs. Jafar, with the Genie replacing the latter mid-battle, which I quickly abandoned after Robin Williams' official appearance with the prominent references to his Aladdin role in ERB; it's still crazy how that's still the most representation they've ever given a Disney animated film, though if such had to be limited to a depiction of an actor visually evoking their Disney character while still primarily representing the real person, Robin Williams was certainly as worthy a choice as any.

On a related note: Snuff Out the Light > Shiny > Hellfire

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YouTube Tumblr Poop: A Disturbing Forecast from the Whether-You-Like-It-Or-Not Girls

Originally made in early 2023 and promptly banned from YouTube: forcibly removed in three separate uploads, each less visually graphic than the last, with this being the final and tamest version, for "sexually explicit content" despite all footage included in all versions coming directly from existing YouTube uploads, many of which had been up for years and continue to be there without issue and/or had millions of views, as well as being a goddamn YouTube Poop.

I naturally want to be mad about this, but compared to how badly YouTube's administration has screwed and continues to screw many other people over, I'm honestly lucky this is the most substantial content of mine to be forced off the site.

In hindsight, I actually suspect the reasoning for the hypocritical removal while allowing all the same footage elsewhere was a matter of mistaking the joke here for sincere fetish content... the thought of anyone in a position of authority still being so out-of-touch and ignorant to internet humor as to be capable of might in fact be funnier than the video itself.

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For the record right off the bat (to do which should still be reserved for Mr. J, by the way; fuck you, Rocksteady), I don't even like Harley Quinn very much at all; she's easily one of the most overused characters in anything. However, the main reason I felt compelled to use her again was because her previous appearance and depiction in Poison Ivy's battle with Audrey II is quite possibly the single most outdated and poorly-aged of any character in MERB's history, and much like DC itself with the character as a person, I wanted to redeem my use of her.

In hindsight, I easily didn't need a custom artwork for Wolverine's cameo, him being one of the most prolific characters in comics with the literal opposite of any shortage of official imagery for representing him, but I wanted to specifically use the design from his official ERB with Freddy Krueger as well as the specific posing to complete the Red Dawn reference. I also just really like having Fruzmig on board wherever possible; she's cool.

According to my correspondence with Harley's voice actress in this, Amber Schwinn, she had previously spoken as the character while working at Six Flags, and was eventually told to stop because the park wasn't permitted to use her in that specific context. That might very well make this the first time MERB has featured a technically official actor of a character, albeit only by the loosest of criteria.

This matchup was actually conceived as a royale before I decided to focus solely on these two, the would-be additional entrants not being scrapped, per se, so much as they were saved for their own battle down the line: the next in my plans as of this very posting; stay tuned...

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Conceptually, this one is pretty average in my eyes: a solid matchup for sure but not particularly unique or humorous like others that I hold more fondly; as one comment stated, it's rather surprising that the idea itself isn't more common and had never been depicted before.

I'll admit that David Ohlsen was miscast as Wesker here; he doesn't necessarily sound bad but it's just not accurate to the character's actual voice, and while he's previously sounded nothing like other characters he's played without me so much minding, I'd prefer to hold my current content to higher standards of vocal fidelity compared to my older stuff.

See the page for Sephiroth's far more conventionally fitting voice actor, Caesar Castillo A.K.A. The Midnight Bard here, as well as here.

The bit with the reanimated Aerith, artistically rendered by @Fruzmig as is so often the case with unique visual elements in my battles, was inspired by a comment I came across during the production of ERBoH's Rick Grimes Vs. Walter White regarding the zombies it was known would be appearing in the battle, suggesting that they would be Walter White's own victims. That would have been particularly appropriate, considering how the most famously graphic such casualty in Breaking Bad was guest-designed by the effects team from The Walking Dead.

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I really do adore this comparison format.

I also still am not sure what's funnier: the meta-casting itself with V for Vendetta's dictator, or the fact that they felt the need to change the character's name to sound more like "Hitler" as if he wasn't obviously evil enough to begin with.

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(Originally made in January 2023)

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Resuming with commentary posts on my battles, am I, now? Why, yes; yes, I am.

The decision to make this video in the form and format in which it now exists came very sporadically in a sudden stroke of inspiration following roughly a year of inactivity from MERB, after which it was immediately and rapidly produced. As of MERB #51, the next battle was intended to simply be Petyr Baelish Vs. Bigfoot, which had been part of long-term plans for years beforehand as evidenced by the cryptid's silhouette teased among other characters at the end of MERB #42. The idea was amusing enough on paper, but come time to actually make the battle, I found Bigfoot exceedingly difficult to work with as a figure, leading me to keep putting off on writing it, and by July of 2022, the amount of time that had passed without a battle from me was well-past the point where the initial concept for MERB #52 wouldn't have cut it as a hiatus-breaker.

As such, I revamped plans while still refusing to outright go back on the in-video promises of both Littlefinger and Bigfoot, using V.V. Argost from The Secret Saturdays as a more specific and less nebulously-defined version of the latter while formatting the video as a meta-commentary on my own poor scheduling, using it to establish a roadmap going forward and adding additional characters whom I was interested in using yet had no solid conventional matchups for (or whose would-be matchups would be incompatible with others I was now planning in one particular case). The first MERB News is something of a pet personal favorite among my older videos, after all.

I remain extremely grateful to Justin Mike Buckner, now known as Mr. Jay, for playing Joseph Smith here in what is definitely a solid candidate for the single best verse in my entire series, partially on account of its unrivaled length but definitely solidified by his performance. Skeep Tieel as the Crypt-Keeper is another highlight in this lineup, and Finn McCool as Argost warrants mention as well in terms of vocal talent from fellow YouTubers here. Even though he's only a cameo in this, it was also cool to have Yobar in an actual completed video after his MERB debut as Nom Anor in Sonic Vs. Star Wars ended up being relegated to audio-only status.

As stated in its outro, every character I had planned to use in the seven battles announced through this video is hinted at in its lyrics; this is no longer the case, but only on account of plans being expanded to include two more battles, with the "season" (which has occupied half the time my series has existed at this point, I know) currently intended to end at #60.

I'm well-aware that despite it serving as an announcement of a major return my quantity of output since this video has remained severely wanting, which I'll admit has had to do with me relapsing into investment in cartoon girls being [REDACTED]. As of this posting, here's hoping once more to pick up the pace going forward, and that the resumption of my activity here on Tumblr will help keep me motivated in that regard...

[molemanninethousand]

First post here in years, I know; consider this a sort of test to see if I can still get any engagement on this site.

Special thanks to my friend David Ohlsen-Esparza, who is personally responsible for my familiarity with the video used in the bottom-right image; for the uninitiated, see it here.