#Anyway. I think the comedians a good character but obviously i hate him and | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 1 year

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Round-up of some more stand-up specials I’ve watched in the last month or so.

All the Adam Hills DVDs/specials – Live in the Suburbs (2006), Characterful (2008), Joymonger (2008), Inflatable (2011), Stands Up Live (2012), Happyism (2013), Clown Heart (2017)

I’ve mentioned this one a few times, but thought I’d include it in this round-up anyway. I’d previous watched a whole lot of his stand-up in clip form on YouTube, and I’d heard bits of his earlier stuff on old Radio 4 shows, but I’d never actually seen his full shows and I decided it’s time to change that.

Basically, they were very close to what I expected, to what you could expect if you know Adam Hills from TV but have never seen his stand-up in any form. Enthusiastic. Optimistic. Energetic. I think that is actually what he’s like; if it’s a character, then it’s one he’s been keeping up since at least 10 solid years before he got any major TV work. You know how with some comedians, you see or hear clips of them from before they were famous and you say, “Wow, I can’t believe they were so different back then”? I’ve found a number of old clips of Adam Hills, and he’s always been the same.

There are a few differences, obviously. It’s interesting to me that in his earlier stuff, he talked about hating applying the word “disabled” to himself, because he didn’t like being defined by what he can’t do. On The Last Leg these days, he easily identifies as a disabled person. I’m aware that there could be a very, very cynical reading of this that says he changed it for the TV job, but I think it’s at least as likely that his view of himself just evolved. I know lots of people, including myself, whose relationships to labels that could identify them change over time. And it does make sense that for perfectly non-cynical reasons, getting more work that brought him into contact with Paralympians and other impressive people who identify with the term “disabled” could have changed his mind about that.

Also, the stand-up does give him more room than a TV show to get into some details, and he goes a bit dark about some stuff. It mostly feels in character – the Adam Hills from TV is energetic and optimistic and mostly positive, but he also gets genuinely upset about horrible things in the news, so it doesn’t feel like something contrary to his generally positive persona if he shows that side in his stand-up too. There are only a few times when he gets so dark that it does start to feel incongruent, which isn’t a bad thing at all, just a bit unexpected. Particularly in the 2017 one when he touches a bit on a drinking problem and marriage struggles.

It's possible that Adam Hills is defined by passion more than by positivity, he brings that to the good stuff but also to the bad stuff. I think my favourite of his shows was the 2013 one, where he did this brilliantly. Still had the positive stuff, but got angry about things too, about big things and small things and things that seemed small but he talked around them until they became connected to bigger things, and managed to be consistently funny the entire time. I think in every show he was trying for some philosophical-ish stuff, which worked better at some points than at others, but I thought he nailed it in his 2013 one.

Another big thing that defines his stand-up is he does a huge amount of crowd work, which is obviously not surprising. Brings in a bunch of audience members at the beginning, then keeps going back to them throughout the show, makes them part of it, works his material around whatever he gets from them, usually ends up bringing at least a few people on stage at some point. If he weren’t already hosting a live TV show, I would watch this stand-up and say, “Why isn’t that guy hosting a live TV show? He clearly has the energy and stage presence to do it.”

The disability inclusiveness is also interesting. I’d read before about him having live sign language interpreters at his shows, and I’d seen some clips of that before, but I hadn’t realized just how much it affects the shows until I saw them in full. He incorporates it into his material and his improv, and it adds to the whole thing. He even lets deaf people heckle, announcing at the beginning that if you’re deaf and want to say something, just wave your arms to get the attention of the interpreter, sign your heckle at her, and she’ll relay it to Adam. It happened a few times – obviously he gets lots of disabled people in the crowd, including deaf people, including some who heckled via the interpreter, and he got into interpreted discussions with them. That was pretty cool.

I’ve written a bunch about this now, and having said all that, I’d say overall, none of these were among my favourite stand-up hours I’ve ever seen. None of them seemed groundbreaking or incredible. But they were all good, and at their best, they showed me sides of Adam Hills that I really like and think we haven’t seen in a while on TV. Some parts of all of them were very funny, some parts of all of them made good points and gave me stuff to think about, all of them felt joyful and exciting. He’s very, very good at what he does. What he does is not be the best stand-up comedian in the world, but it is be a strong stand-up comedian who was definitely born to host TV shows.

Oh, and in the 2012 one, which was filmed at the end of that year and when the very first parts of The Last Leg had only just happened, the camera sometimes cut away to Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker laughing together in the audience. Josh Widdicombe’s first two DVDs also cut to Alex Brooker laughing in the audience at times. So that’s kind of adorable.

All the Demitri Martin DVDs/specials (except If I, since I’d already seen that one) – These Are Jokes (2006), Person (2007), Standup Comedian (2012), Live at the Time (2015), The Overthinker (2018)

Again, I’d seen and heard a lot of him in clip form before, and I’d seen his 2004 show If I (which, to tie this into the previous bit, beat Adam Hills for a Perrier Award when they were both nominated in 2003), and I decided recently that I should really watch the rest of his full shows.

Again, it was pretty well exactly what I expected. In fact, “exactly what I expected” applies more to this than it does to the stuff about Adam Hills, because I don’t think Demitri Martin’s shows surprised me in any way. I mean, they’re creative and offbeat quirky comedy that would surprise someone who went in expecting a regular night at a comedy club, they’re just not surprising if you know anything about Demitri Martin. Which, again, isn’t a bad thing. I like what I know about Demitri Martin, I know Demitri Martin is funny, and he did not disappoint on that front.

If you don’t know what to expect from Demitri Martin, a quick summary is that Daniel Kitson once told us his friend had a competition to see who could write the most Demitri Martin-like joke, and he won with: “Never judge a book by its cover. Unless it’s a book about book covers, and it has a bad one.” Which is an excellent example, that is the most Demitri Martin-like joke I’ve ever heard, including all of Demitri Martin’s actual jokes. Now you know what to expect from him.

Demitri Martin is a lot of one-liners, some songs but the songs are mainly just a collection of one-liners with music in the background, and visual aids with graphs and charts and drawings. Almost aggressively quirky at times. So quirky that it would be annoying if he weren’t also funny, but luckily it is also funny. The biggest thing I learned from watching his full shows is he builds in callbacks surprisingly well for someone who mostly does otherwise disconnected one-liners, and that’s always fun. Because of his format I didn’t expect any callbacks, so I was delighted every time they happened.

I still have a few of them stuck in my head. “Saying, ‘I’m sorry’ is the same as saying, ‘I apologize.’ Unless you’re at a funeral.” “It’s weird the way finger puppet sounds okay as a noun.” Based on this sample of two, it appears that the ones I like best are the ones that take about a second to work out his point, and once you do work it out, it means something horrifying. And that tracks. They’re not all like that. I also liked: “I was walking in the park and this guy waved at me. Then he said, ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.’ I said, ‘I am.’ ” And: “I don’t find your kids nearly as interesting as you do. Which is how you want it, by the way.” I also enjoyed most of his charts.

It's good stuff. It’s repetitive after a while, but that’s more my fault than his, I don’t think he wrote these things with the intention of someone watching/listening to them all within a couple of days. It’s always clever and usually funny, and really impressive that he wrote that much stuff. Other comedians can draw out a story for ages; he has to come up with a lot of different angles to fill that time. Which would also explain why a few of them repeat material, but again, to be fair to him, they weren’t designed to all be consumed in a couple of days.

Having said all that, I still don’t think any of those other shows were as good as his first one, If I from 2004. Not because the others weren’t great, just because the 2004 one was very, very good. It’s on YouTube and I highly recommend it.

Shelf – Hair (2022)

I really, really enjoyed this one, though I’m probably biased by being exactly in their target demographic. I’m pretty sure it’s good no matter who you are, though. I’m almost sure of that. It’s smart and enthusiastic and scathing at times. It’s well structured and themed, which I always like.

This is one of the very few things I know about these people (I also heard them do twenty minutes of their slightly older material in the Edinburgh Unlocked audiobook from 2020), so I can’t say I know a lot about how their double act works, but from that experience I think it works really well. They’ve constructed complimentary niches that let them play off each other and fit everything they want to say into one person’s voice or the other, so it always works. I think that’s one thing that makes this one work so well overall – they do have something to say. It seems like they started from being really sure of what they wanted to say in this show, and then worked out how best to say it, instead of trying to come up with stuff to fill an hour.

I’ve now enjoyed enough musical comedy so I’ve stopped bothering to say “musical comedy is often not great, but [person I’m talking about at the moment who pulled out a guitar or whatever] is actually really good!”, and I’ve just acknowledged that musical comedy can be shit like everything else, but I don’t think it’s more likely to be shit than anything else. In this case, I rather liked that one member of the double act could do the music bits and the other couldn’t, because that meant they couldn’t rely on the music too much. There were enough songs to be funny, not so many that they took over the show.

Also, and this is where me being in their target demographic comes in, I think they managed to find a few tiny patches of new ground, or at least ground that hasn’t already been trampled into dust by hundreds of comedians before them. It’s not completely new, but it’s not a hugely common subject. It was mainly about the differences in the ways that people, mostly men, treat women they perceive as feminine versus women they perceive as masculine. And how little a change it can take to move from one of those categories to the other. They hit on some specifics of this experience that I haven’t heard talked about in comedy before, they said some things about it that I haven’t heard said before, and a lot of it resonated. So I might have laughed a bit more than someone would if this stuff didn’t all resonate with them, but I’m pretty sure a lot of it would be funny to anyone. I really like these people and I hope they film more stuff.

Andrew Maxwell – Showtime (2017)

I watched this one pretty much because I don’t much like Andrew Maxwell, and I couldn’t tell whether that was unfair or not. Last year I thought I didn’t much like John Robins, and then I watched one of his shows and it was amazing, and now I know I very much like John Robins, and had unfairly judged him for being a car crash on Mock the Week once and playing golf. I wondered if there was something similar with Andrew Maxwell, because I couldn’t really articulate why I didn’t like him, I just find him annoying when I see him on TV. And I had seen some clips of him doing stand-up on YouTube, and heard a few on Radio 4, and not hugely enjoyed them, but you can’t judge someone from clips alone.

This is absolutely ridiculous, but I think my bias may be influenced a bit by how often his name came up last year, when I was trying to find the meaning of the term “Chocolate Milk Gang”, so I kept looking up stuff about that. And I kept finding stories that didn’t quite explain the exact meaning of the name, but they’d explain why those comedians were grouped together under some name. These stories were about Edinburgh Festivals from the early 00s, when there was a divide between the comedians where always drinking and partying, and the comedians who stayed sober with Daniel Kitson because they were nerds. That was basically it, a number of articles framed things in weird, high school movie-esque terms like that. And in those stories, Andrew Maxwell was always named as one of the people on the “other side” of that, a counterpoint to the CMG comedians, the party animal that they were not.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I eventually learned that the Chocolate Milk Gang got its name because the “party animal” comedians called them that to make fun of them for drinking milkshakes instead of alcohol after late-night shows. Credit for coining that name has been given to Glenn Wool, not Andrew Maxwell, but Andrew Maxwell was also around, making fun of them for carrying bags around and not being alcoholics.

Now, I should be clear that obviously, it did not actually work like a high school in an 80s movie, with Andrew Maxwell pushing David O’Doherty into lockers. Even high school doesn’t genuinely work like 80s high school movies, so I’m pretty fucking sure the Edinburgh Fringe Festival circa 2002 didn’t work like that either. I’m pretty sure all of those people were actually friends and the stories they told about those differences were in good fun, and no one was meant to be painted as a villain. But I already found Andrew Maxwell mildly annoying on a few panel shows, so I think hearing him cast in that role in the CMG stories just solidified the bias in my mind, and I decided I didn’t like him.

I recently decided that is not a fair reason to dislike someone, and I know he does political comedy, and I’ve been complaining lately about there being not enough political comedy out there, so I may as well at least watch the stuff that exists. So I watched a full Andrew Maxwell show, in the spirit of properly giving him a chance. And… yeah, it’s not great. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. But it’s not great.

I agreed the fuck out of it, as Stewart Lee says, and I did laugh, a bit. But not really enough, it just wasn’t that good. A lot of what he said was really obvious, stuff I’m sure was already hack even by 2017. Stuff I’d heard before, sometimes so often that I wondered how he got away with using it as material. He didn’t have much to say that was new or interesting. Stuff about how people from different places are different from each other. That sort of thing.

Some of it was good, and I know it isn’t really fair to judge an entire comedian by just one show. I liked some of the stuff he did about Islamophobia, he brought more of a personal touch to that issue (due to his wife being Muslim) that made it a little less like just repeating stuff I’d definitely seen on Reddit since long before 2017. So it wasn’t all bad. But it didn’t convince me that I was wrong to think Andrew Maxwell is not a comedian I like all that much.

I’m sure he’s a perfectly fine person, though. He’s like five feet tall, he could not possibly have gone around bullying David O’Doherty. That’s just a weird narrative that got written into some articles, I’m pretty sure no one was genuinely bullying David O’Doherty (except for that one McSavage guy, but I try not to think about him because one time I got so mad about him that I emailed Stuart Goldsmith about it and that was such a stupid thing to do, anyway it’s fine).

Tiff Stevenson – Mad Man (2015)

From there, I decided to jump further into my theme of taking comedians I don’t love, and giving them more of a chance. I’ve never disliked Tiff Stevenson, but I’ve found her a bit annoying at times. This is partly because she committed the sin of being on those early episodes of the post-John Oliver Bugle, while not being John Oliver. Like how for a while I disliked Matt Forde for the crime of not being Russell Howard, back when he first replaced Russell on the old radio show with Jon Richardson, and I had to remind myself that that is not reasonable cause to dislike a comedian. I’ve now gotten over that, and any animosity I have toward Matt Forde is founded in the perfectly legitimate grounds of him being a big fan of the Labour Party when it’s run by a war criminal but not when it’s run by a socialist.

Anyway. That is not the point here. The point is that Tiff Steveson may have suffered a little from my intensely averse reaction to any non-John Oliver version of The Bugle, which I did get over and in fact come to love that new version for what it is, but it took some time. Also, Tiff Stevenson does have a habit of doing that thing that annoys me, which is talking about being into fashion in a way that sort of says “All the women know what I’m talking about, am I right?” And one time on her own podcast, she did a very good interview with Andy Zaltzman, but I thought at times it sounded like she was trying to lead him into saying the post-Oliver version of The Bugle was better than the original version (he didn’t end up saying that, he just talked about how it had grown into something different and very good in its own way, which is true), but I didn’t like the sense that she was pushing him toward it.

So again, I had little biases for no properly good reason, and I decided to give her a chance by watching a full show. This time, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought this one was really good, not the best thing I’ve ever seen or anything, but really good. Some of the humour was uneven, but I thought almost all of the points were strong, and it had enough humour to make it worth it, even if that was spread out in a bit of a weird way.

I liked the theme she chose – the whole show was about how commercialism co-opts and ruins everything. It’s a bit of a specific theme, and she still managed to fit a wide range of topics into it, which I thought was well done. Again, I’m biased by the fact that I strongly agree with her theme, I find the branding and commercial co-opting and the social media-ization of everything in the world wildly depressing. But also, who doesn’t find that depressing? If you find those things depressing then you’ll connect to Tiff Stevenson’s theme, and if you don’t find those things depressing, you don’t have a fucking soul. It’s a pretty widely relatable theme.

There was one bit when she started talking about Iggy Azela and Jennifer Lopez, and I started thinking “Oh dear, I was just starting to like you and now you’re doing material about pop music stars?”, but then she actually made several good points and it was funny. She took on some difficult subjects and handled them well, I thought. It was unapologetically feminist without being a show focused entirely on feminism (not that that’s a bad thing at all – I don’t want to sound like one of those people who says “I like that she could be feminist without really hitting you over the head with how feminist she is, you know?”, because fuck those people, lots of great comedy shows are focused largely on feminism, this one just isn’t one of those), it was political in a way that mixed in personal stuff as well.

I think my favourite routine was near the end, stuff about clothing and identity and sub-cultures and rock music and getting lost in Australia. It made me like Tiff Stevenson. I’m glad I watched this one.

Aditi Mittal – Mother of Invention (2020)

After Tiff Stevenson, I decided to seek out shows by a couple more people whom I know from their guest appearances on The Bugle, starting with Aditi Mittal. She brings a different perspective than most comedians I’ve ever heard, as she lives in India. So when she talks about being Indian, it’s not from the perspective of an immigrant, it’s talking about what India is like (or what her corner of it is like, obviously it’s a massive country with a truly ridiculous number of people).

I really enjoyed this one, by the end. I thought all of it was good, but the second half was much better than the first. It started as an entertaining comedy show, the first half definitely made me laugh, but then it picked up steam, and by the end it was a beautiful picture of motherhood and symbolism and religion within culture and expectations within culture and the concept of “scared” and feminism and strength in the face of oppression and familial love. But it managed to be all those things while still being very, very much a comedy show. Some comedy shows blur genre boundaries, stop being funny for a while to take on tough topics, and I think that’s a perfectly acceptable and sometimes good thing to do. I’ve hugely enjoyed some comedy shows that do that. But this one didn’t – it never took a break from being funny for more than a minute or so, it never stopped seeming like comedy, but it worked those heavy topics in anyway. I thought it did that really, really well.

I thought she wove everything together really well, first making it seem like her bits were relatively unconnected, but as she neared the end she kept pulling in thread after thread. Everything had a point, and sometimes she undercut her earlier tone to make a point bigger than it initially seemed.

She talks about serious subjects in a lighthearted way, so lighthearted that the serious side sneaks up on you. Her anger comes through even though she doesn’t yell, her love for her family comes through even though she doesn’t get into flowery language, her fear comes thought even though she doesn’t cry, her passion and belief in her convictions comes though even though she doesn’t grandstand (and again, I like lots of comedy that yells and cries and uses flowery language and grandstands, but this one doesn’t, and it doesn’t need to). It’s really, really good.

Tom Ballard – The World Keeps Happening (2017)

I know Tom Ballard for being one of the most common guests of the post-Oliver era, probably the third most common one, after Alice Fraser and Nish Kumar. He also initially suffered from my bias against anyone committing the crime of not being John Oliver, but I got over it a little faster with him, I think because he was on often enough to develop a rapport relatively quickly. It also helped that he was clearly a fan of the original version of the show, could reference it easily just like Nish and Alice, and that endeared him to me.

I like Tom Ballard on The Bugle, and was interested to see what his stand-up is like. It was good, overall. Very good in parts. A little off in parts, but again, I don’t know if it was objectively off or just ran up against some of my biases. There were times when I found him almost aggressively “Millennial”, and for some reason that really annoys me. Millennial or gen Z people who play too hard into generational stereotypes, even when they’re doing it ironically. Especially when they’re doing it ironically, actually. I don’t quite know why that annoys me so much, but it does, and he did a bit of that. That annoyed me to varying degrees.

But otherwise, I enjoyed it. It was probably 60/40-ish of political to non-political material, with the political stuff being the majority. He mixed it together in ways that were mostly good but sometimes jarring – a couple of times I was really enjoying his political routines, and then he was suddenly off on a story about something else, and I couldn’t properly enjoy it because I wanted him to get back to the earlier routine.

There was some relatively explicit stuff about sex in there, which was only weird because I’m used to him from The Bugle, where he, you know, doesn’t say stuff like that. Or he does sometimes – The Bugle isn’t a purely clean podcast – but it’s more purely a joke, while when I hear it in a stand-up story, it sounds like something similar to that that probably actually happened in some form. It’s like hearing about the sex life of someone you only know from school or whatever – you’re not supposed to be up to those things.

Honestly, I think I’d enjoy this one more on a second watch. The first time, I was a bit jarred by the way he was a little different to who he is on The Bugle, a bigger personality, more personal, definitely more details of a sex life. I think all those things are entertaining, but my surprise at encountering them took away a bit from the enjoyment.

The political side of the show, as I hoped and expected, was great. All of it well done, angry and cathartic in all the right ways, ended with a routine about drugs that annoyed me way less than comedy routines about drugs normally do (I guess because it was also a routine about politics, and I do like those). He’s clearly passionate about all of it, particular some of the stuff that was personal to him, as he was a gay Australian in 2017, when the toxic language in the same-sex marriage debate had really heated up, and course he had material about that.

I felt like I could see what he was going for, and even when he didn’t seem to quite reach it, it was still good and I liked where he was going. I liked that he was willing to stay on the political topics for longer than the time it takes to give a platitude or two. He said some things besides the obvious. He got specific.

I’m interested to see his more recent show; I feel like he showed some unrealized potential in that 2017 show and I’d like to see how it developed. But even as it was, I enjoyed it.

Ali Brice – Bin Wondering (2019), I Tried To Be Funny But You Weren’t Looking (2022)

So, I went into these two with two opposite biases that I think may have canceled each other out, leaving me with a fairly accurate opinion. I was biased toward them because I really wanted to like them, and biased against it because I didn’t really expect to like it much. I watched them anyway, and I’m really glad I did. I hugely enjoyed both of these.

I didn’t expect to be that into them because I saw this guy described as a “character comedian”, and looking him up revealed language that you’d expect to describe a children’s birthday clown. I know there’s more to that sort of comedy than children’s parties, I know there’s a whole complex art to the offbeat wacky character comedy, but it’s not really a thing I know a lot about so I expected to maybe not really “get” it. Which is the same thing I said about “absurdist comedy” when I went into watching John-Luke Roberts, and I absolutely loved his stuff, so I should really stop assuming I’m not going to like comedy based on its sub-genre.

I get the impression that both these relatively recent shows might be a bit of a departure from the “wacky offbeat character comedy” stuff that I see described when I look him up (though I don’t really know that, as I didn’t find any of his shows besides these two); they both featured a bunch of narrative comedy about fairly heavy subjects. But they also both featured plenty of character/prop/sketch stuff, and I enjoyed all of it. The props and the costume and the weird gimmicks were funny. The heavy narrative stuff was… definitely not all funny, it wasn’t meant to be. But a lot of it was. He did well to find opportunities for funny bits even in the darkest bits of some pretty fucking dark stories; he got laughs out of me without even stepping out of the narrative, just by putting jokes into the middle of it.

I really liked both of these shows, especially the second one, I think, but both of them. Both had all these things I like in comedy – a good structure, coherent themes, callbacks and endings that give meaning to earlier bits and make the beginning make more sense. An easy and logical flow between the serious and silly, no matter how dark the serious got. Sometimes surprising us with silly in the middle of the serious, which made the silliness even funnier because you’re also laughing at the surprise. The props and the costumes and all of the other silliness just added to it.

Like I said, I wanted to like these ones, and I was so very pleased when I did. I laughed a lot in both of them, I also got hit with the darker parts in, I think, all the ways he intended. He connected with the audience (I mean, I guess I can only really speak for myself as one virtual audience member, but he seemed to be connecting in the room as well) really well in the short time, coming off as genuine and earnest all the way through, a style that could carry almost any material. He’d go from very silly to disarmingly honest in half a second.

It was smart, and heartfelt, and dark and scary but funny and hopeful, and it’s on NextUp Comedy and I really recommend it.

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yuriyuruandyuraart · 4 years

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part 12

ink was getting nervous. Error was coming by at night, and since every other vampire was sleeping, he couldn’t do anything but wait in his garden-

Something wasn’t quite normal with error. He looked pretty anxious, wary even-

Ink sighed. Life was so empty- not even death could fix that

He discovered that over time, most vampires could get used to the sunlight after being exposed to it very lightly. He also noticed that vampires couldn’t be murdered unless they were shot or stabbed in the soul

He not only wasn’t affected by the sunlight in the first place, but he had no soul to begin with-

Death wasn’t an option.

Boredom was the only thing that was “killing” him

Ever since he could remember, life was always so boring

Empty

Without any goal to achieve or get going with

He clenched his fists

The only thing that was following him around and that let him stay alive was…

Guilt

For something he could never forgive himself for

Maybe he could fix it?

He didn’t want to think about it now-

He traveled inside his garden, wandering around his maze, then sat down near some bushes

He was an immortal being with barely no will to live, but he did have a passion to stay sane

And it ended up being art.

Painting, sewing, designing, sculpting-

Creating was a nice compensation for destroying everyone’s lives…

Now that he was thinking about it…

…….

Wait, who was that?!

Ink noticed a shadow fly away from his garden. ‘Right when he had some inspiration to draw’. He ran to them, but he realized they already left.

It was probably another vampire, but the vast majority preferred to go out at night since they won’t be so visible to the mortals. Though it was unusual for a one to fly off so fast and early in the morning. The sun was bright, and even he felt pretty nauseous staying on spot without anything to shield himself from the heat of it.

Even so, he stared at his surroundings, curious to see if the person left something, when he noticed a crispy letter on the grass.

Ink sighed, who could it beee?

He painfully leaned down to catch the letter, and opened it.

Right, it was him.

Just when he thought he’ll get to talk to him personally-

He sat down and read the long paragraph that decorated its paper.

…

“…oh-“

He got up and dusted off his clothes from the remaining dirt and leaves that stuck to him, then trailed off to his castle-

“Looks like the meeting is still ongoing”

******

His steps were heavy,

And he was getting weaker-

He collapsed on the ground

It was so painful to be alive

And he hated it

He HATED ink for what he did!

He-

He…

….

Well, the forest wasn’t a good place to fall unconscious in, so he painfully got himself up.

He could hate ink all he wanted, but the mortals were even worse

If only he could just KILL THEM ALL

ALL OF THEM

Ugh-

“…”

Huh

Crying?

Him?

Out of character, right?

He wiped away the tears that were slowly forming themselves in his sockets. He had to- he had to go and ask for help like the idiot that he is! He…he didn’t want him to-

…

Die? Who? What the flip was he even doing in that forest anyways?!

Oh yeah, heal himself

Obviously

He sat by a tree and painfully tightened the holes and scars with bandages after carefully removing the bullets and disinfecting the injuries with his magic. He really didn’t want to see him again,

But he didn’t have a choice anymore

********

*tap*

He sat on his sofa, slowly waiting for his guest’s arrival in front of his large window.

He closed his eyes patiently, then sighed calmly

“nice seeing you again, error”

His silhouette slowly appeared in front of him, threatening as always.

“…”

He looked away, a frown still in place.

“it’s okay if you don’t want to see me, but god can you be stubborn!” ink pouted. They knew each other for years, but one thing that didn’t change was the fact that error was never happy to see him

Nor to spend time with him

Actually, the times where he’ll be “happy” is when he almost “kills” him, or when he leaves-

Yeah, a nice “friendship”

“I swear if it wasn’t for an important reason I would’ve never stepped a toe in your hell of a castle!”

“but you still came here. And I’m sorry if I am worried about this reason that’s so important it actually made you sit here, and talk to me for once.”

Error flinched at his sarcastic tone, and he thought about giving a spiteful remark back, but he sat on the sofa in front of him, directly facing the window, choosing to ignore his off handed retorts to leave that place as soon as possible.

“… well-“ error tried to collect his words, obviously tired of what had happened to him this past weeks.

“there is a small town very far away from here who sent a…detective? Spy? Whatever, A trained mortal to hunt down the vampires while being hidden amongst the normal villagers, and he’s been very wary of YOU especially.”

“He had been giving some “ideas” to the mortals, and if he manages to convince them to overthrow your rules and influence, he’ll quickly discover your intentions and the hidden place of multiple thousands of vampire, causing the extinction of the race in a second. And while I flipping hate your guts and I despise you all so much, vampires and mortals alike, I can’t really be all that powerful and safe when the humans can win over me; the amount of vampires decreasing giving them “courage” to kill the remaining.”

He stated the last sentence with disgust. He didn’t give two cents about vampires, even less monsters or even humans, which he hates even more, but ink’s motives were vastly different

ink loved vampires, because he had to; Being the original vampire who first existed. He was the reason so many mortals turned into those people, feared by the pitiful society called the living. And just like that he and the other vampires that followed began growing stronger in number and power.

You could say that he didn’t have a choice- that it was in his nature; he’s a vampire! He can’t help but drink blood, in the case of monsters, magic-

But

Not only can vampires resist the urge to drink blood, by simply eating meat, but in ink’s case

He doesn’t even like drinking blood nor magic

He was more into literal ink

The only reason he drank blood in the first place was to get feelings

The first vampire didn’t have a chance to get a soul, so he discovered he could get feelings another way.

And he despised doing that

Because

Of how he discovered

That-

“INK!”

Ink looked at error, realizing he must’ve been daydreaming for too long

“…”

Ink got up, then undressed himself from his coat.

“Huh? What the he- what are you doing???”

“Well, suffice to say we’re going to catch that little comedian and eliminate him as soon as we can”

Error didn’t expect such bluntness from ink, but he couldn’t care less about that, more like, he was caught off guard by the “we”

“Hey, hey, hey- this is YOUR job, mister! It is not my business to attend”

Ink looked back at him, and gave him a warm smile

“Didn’t you say earlier it affected you if all the race disappeared? Wouldn’t you want to stop that from happening? I might add that you wouldn’t come here unless you really had to, so is it just for a message or did you need my help?”

He hated it when ink gets smart

But at the same time he was right

Though there was still another reason on top of it all, but he kept his mouth sealed

That bastard didn’t need to know

“…fine. What to do now”

Ink’s smirk became predatory

“What makes you think we’ll need to do anything?”

Error flinched

“What?”

Ink giggled-

“Well, it’s getting quite late don’t you think?”

Error looked back at the window, the moon shining bright in a cold, dark night

“Ink! I need answers!”

Ink paused his laughing, then smiled

“I’ll tell you more about it if you’ll be my guest.”

He bowed slightly, still keeping eye contact with the other

Error tensed- he didn’t know what to do now

“…is this a trap?”

Ink looked surprised at that statement, but quickly rectified

“Not at all!”

“Then what makes me believe that you’re not going to kill me in my sleep!”

Ink paused a second, kind of offended by the other’s skepticism when he just wanted to welcome him

Well, guess it can’t be helped

“I promise you that I will answer your questions tomorrow, It’s just that you might be exhausted from the constant travelling- the bruises and scars look like they just need a bit of attention, and you-“

He trailed off, citing multiple reasons why he needed a shelter from him, and error quickly cut him off

“Okay- okay- I get it”

It did make him feel a bit better though, considering ink takes his promises very seriously, so he might as well stay for a night

“Just ONE night”

He crossed his arms, and ink chuckled

“Sure, sure-“

He smiled

“Goodnight then, error”

*******

“well, how about we talk more about it in a more...private environment, yes?”

**********

ink belongs to @comyet/ @myebi

error belongs to @loverofpiggies

dark cream belongs to @zu-is-here

well, it took a while to update you guys, but i’m really happy about it!

error holds a huge grudge against ink- what is it? still haven’t finished that part yet guys ;D

also, the illustration is a spoiler for the next part focusing about ink, but as they say- it’s not a real spoiler if you have no context right ;)?

((remind me not to paint an illustration for a writing i haven’t updated in a while it just makes it worse))

also, the reason i haven’t drawn error once is because i can’t decide on a design he often hides his face with a very dark cape. i will give you guys a sheet with everyone’s faces (protagonists only) their mouths (the difference between their fangs) and their markings/eyelights

very exited to write more about ink though- it’s going to get interesting very soon ;)

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

Text

…the ugly. SYAC: The Master Review 4

Last post I covered much of what I consider the good or passable strips of SYAC of the pre-Dobbear era. What I have admittedly not covered yet, were three certain characters of the strip that exist beside Dobson.

Persistent Pam

Curmudgeonly Carl

And… this guy I am not even sure has a name.

No, seriously. He shows up in like the 61th strip of the series for the first time and yet I never see his name mentioned once

All I know is that he is an accountant, who pities Dobson (for good reason)

And despite Dobson not liking alcohol, they regularly meet up in a bar as if they are some late 80s comedy duo

Funnily enough, he shows up way before Pam, who would have her premiere in these strips

And despite only showing up in a few strips after her premiere (mostly to make “fun” of overbearing and snarky commissioners I suppose…)

She actually managed something no other character or series by Dobson managed to get: A fanclub

Not that she would really be of any major importance afterwards.

As for Carl, he is supposed to be something like an antagonistic embodiment of Dobson’s “old” art teachers and people being stuck in old ways, who shows up for the following strips forming a sort of arc.

In addition, it is very obvious, that Carl is supposed to be a mockery of people flaming Dobson. Not helped by the fact that THIS character sheet of him made by Dobson assures us, that there were quite a few even less “endorsing” things he wanted to name the character.

Yet funnily enough, Carl turned into such a popular character with readers, Dobson was essentially “forced” to make him reappear in other strips. Not of the “classical” SYAC strips, but he showed up as the “antagonist” to Tenku in the storydriven multi pagers. Though even antagonist is a strong word, as he is essentially more of a jerkish art teacher and college advisor who is harsh on Tenku, but actually has his best interests in mind. To the point he even offers him to be his “harsher” art critic in the years till he enters college, because he wants to see him grow artistically.

However, Carl was also more of an “accident”. Cause when it came otherwise to tackling criticism or things that irked Dobson (and were not anime related) he would end up more or less creating strips that painted him in a manner where he would supposedly always look like “the better” compared to his opposition or mock it. Which is where a lot of the irk Dobson would earn over the years eventually comes from.

Now to be fair, I do not want to call every comic in that regard “strawmanning”, nor do I want to say that Dobson doesn’t have the right to also mock to a certain extend the mentality of certain “snobs” and so on. For example…

On one hand, I know there are people out there who think they are “special” by having the best tools at their disposal. When in reality you can achieve good results also with less expensive stuff. So mocking that sort of attitude is fine to me to some extend

BUT, when you also make down the line a comic like this…

… essentially making yourself come off as a “better” artist or person than others because you have “chosen” the better mass produced crap (btw, that is coming from someone who types this review on a Mac that runs Windows) , then the hypocrisy ends up to be rather strong with you.

Which is also essentially the biggest issue with the strips I am about to show. The hypocrisy of Andrew Dobson. And no, I do not mean the tumblr blog by that. I mean the simple fact, that the content of some of the soon to follow strips gets kinda muddled when you take into consideration some of the things real life Dobson had said and done either at the time or in the years to come. Well that and the way how he tries to mock issues people have with his work, not realizing how he is essentially just reassuring those “silly critics” in their opinions while making his flaws more obvious to people that may have been previously unaware of them.

But enough talk, let me just show you in quick succession examples to confirm said point.

Considering Dobson’s longterm disdain for DnD you have to wonder what the joke really is outside of him portraying DnD players as ugly nerds, supposedly too geeky even for him. Which is hilarious in hindsight as he would years later become a fan of TAZ among other things.

Less hypocritical but the set up is kinda flawed. Like, you are obviously at a convention trying to sell stuff. Why would some old dude not interested in “kids crap” be at the convention anyway? Is he just bringing someone there and just wants to go, but first needs time to belittle your life choices?

Rather hilarious in hindsight to me. Cause for someone claiming he has ideas that last for a life time and who seems rather distraught on the idea of others giving their input, he turned out to be so in need of ideas. Alex ze Pirate e.g. became from 2015 onward only defined by Dobson talking about the sexualities of his characters (and not even in comic as by that point it was discontinued, but rather in tweets and so on). Formera, which ran heavily on cheap shonen anime tropes ended up cancelled after two volumes, Cabin Rest was a failure after 20 strips, 2019 he relied primarily on cheap comics about Miraculous Ladybug and his understanding of certain genres is so bad, he can’t even think up the most basic ideas for a magical girl story.

Weirdly enough, that pitch of a garbage truck driver who fights crime? I think that could make for an enjoyable short story about a vigilante a la the Punisher or Sin-City.

The way Dobson perceives criticism, while also essentially giving a quick rundown how he appreciated criticism in his childhood way better than in adulthood. Yeah, because criticism by your parents as a kid was always VERY constructive. (looks back at certain drawings from own childhood) brrr. And sorry Dobson, but sometimes criticism by strangers is better than criticism from friends. Cause friends may mince their words. Plus people have over time given you quite some insightful criticism aside “U SUX” when it comes to comics. You were just never willing to listen

Hey Dobson, you hear that? That is the sound of your career, dying and no one caring.

Yeah, I think someone who made such “brilliant” comedy as in these comics, totally has the right not to listen to what seems to be solid theoretical advice.

BTW, that Talus comic… I swear to god the worst “joke” Dobson ever told.

Wow. You essentially make a point why you suck at drawing. While still not trying to change.

And as someone else once said: Don’t play with fire if you can’t deal with the heat, BLOCK-son!

This is not how I perceived your shit over the years. See, on one hand it is true that Alex ze Pirate e.g. has its own webpage to read the comic for free. HOWEVER most of his comics Dobson would hide from the start behind a paywall. The idea being that he would e.g. put a small reading sample of 10-15 pages up somewhere and then expect people to buy his comic for full price to get the rest. And you know, if you are e.g. a professionally published writer, that is fine. But when your average art output looks like THIS

And you expect people to pay more than 10 dollars for something that is only around 70 pages long while most people can get 200+ pages for the same amount of money that look like this…

You can frankly go and screw yourself.

On one hand I get that the joke is meant to be, that as an independent content creator you may find yourself in a weird spot where your “child friendly” work may be put in a palace between edgier stuff other creators sell at conventions. On the other hand, I find it rather insulting in hindsight, that self declared feminist Andrew Dobson portrays such competition as either psychopathic murderers or stereotypical cartoon bimbos. If modern day Dobson saw the same strip by any other person, he would be insulted on behalf of the female that she is portrayed as a bimbo, when she could also be a very smart and attractive woman who knows how to tell brave and sexy stories.

Also, I have read your “child friendly” stuff, Dobson. I would call Atea or Alex abusive bitches who like to bully orphans but child friendly? Not to forget that your work is so basic and shallow in depth, it’s like the someone tried to create a chimera out of some of the worst traits associated with Dora the Explorer, 80s toodler cartoons and the Fairly Oddparents.

I frankly hate this theory on comedy. It is true, a lot of comedy can be deprived from conflict, misunderstandings etc. Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry and other cartoons as well as screwball comedies such as Rat Race can depend on it. Heck, one of my favorite comedians of all time is Christopher Titus, who based his entire career on the misery and absurdity of his life.

But comedy is not just defined by misery and conflict.

There are for example also the following theories when it comes to comedy…

And to get back e.g. to Titus, yes, he has build a lot of his comedy on the bad stuff that happened in his life. But he is also someone who in his comedy has build a lot of punchlines on the absurdity of certain situations he has been in life but which in a way have enriched his life positively.

What I am trying to say is, comedy (and entertainment in that regard) does not just have to be defined by misery. And all things considered Dobson, you could have really tried to also just make comics wherein either you or your characters are just happy with their situation in life.

For example, this page from an Owl House fancomic?

I think it holds more entertainment value than your “joke” right here, despite not even telling a joke.

Simply because as a page overall, it tries to convey a positive emotion. Which is more than I can say about the strip.

Because of a lack of different level of thickness regarding your lines, which would trick people into perceiving depth, the fact that the fill bucket and shade layers can only do so much to cover for the rather monochromatic dull nature of your comic, the fact that your characters are not really all that complex and look rather simplicstic even compared to stuff from a comic like this…

And that is just coming from the top of my head as someone who never studied art. If any reader has something to add, I am willing to listen

And considering you could in later years never keep up to any release schedule, which among other things resulted in only three SYAC strips in total being released in 2016, I say go fuck yourself. Not to forget that even some of the worst newspaper comic strips out there tend to actually find a decent following and good jokes eventually, otherwise they would not manage to stay popular for years, if not even decades.

As someone who has worked internships a lot in life, I just want to say fuck you in all our names. Glad to see you having just as much respect for interns than any other scumbag on the planet. Probably even less respect, cause you know, in some places interns tend to get paid.

Also, there is supposedly an entire real world story going on about Dobson having worked at his former university at the time the comic came out and Chaz is based on a fellow intern.

Things are unfortunately rather vague in that regard and only hold up by demonstrative evidence such as the name of Chaz showing up in certain pages of the university and Dobson’s internship being mentioned somewhere.

Well, would you look at that: People have different opinions on your stuff.

There are ways to draw memes funny and then there are ways to fail at them

You failed.

Funnily enough, that comic rings a lot truer to text than you expect. Considering how Dobson would often emulate certain aesthetics in his comics of shows that were rather passee by the time he published his stuff, plus how he will obsess over certain trends and games for years to come (like Skyrim or his Quiet Hate Boner) while also being unaware about current trends (how do you e.g. not have heard of My Hero Academia by 2018 at least once by accident?) Dobson has always been kinda late to the party. Missing the “zeitgeist” of nerd culture and as such never quite finding an audience.

Yeah, what Pam says. Not helped by the fact that yes, the floating eyebrows are real. Look at some earlier sketches or “professionally published” comics by his and you will see that each time characters get excited, their eyebrows will suddenly split into sets of three and float higher than Pennywise’s victims.

Ironically, that fits real life Dobson at the time and later on even more so than this comic version did. Sorry, but what am I supposed to call a person who has an hate boner on anime for years for superfluous reasons, made Danny and Spot a “gaming webcomic” deliberately to piss on non Nintendo fans and has admitted in some by now deleted youtube video, that he kept a list of usernames from an old forum just to remember even years later the people that were mean to him online?

Fuck both of you. I do not expect the Sixtin Chapel in the background, but something to filll up the empty space behind you is at times needed.

The comic here is actually called politics. … ironic how things changed once a certain reality show host turned president.

Jesus Christ. I am not even that much of a Transformers fan (Prime fan for life however) but even I know that this is not supposed to be what you design the head of a Transformer like. Not even if they ever produce the Transformers equivalent of Teen Titans Go.

Too bad you still can’t stand the heat, otherwise you wouldn’t have completely disappeared last year.

When you know you are in a no win situation, and still manage to choose an even dumber option to escape. I really don’t get it. I just think the Portal reference makes the comic dated and Dobsn’s attempt at a smug face looks so stupid. Like his cheeks are falling in and his mouth is about ready to get raped by a garden hose or something.

Yeah, considering Dobson’s later constant need for safe spaces and to be in control of a situation and the narrative, which led to so many blocks over the years… if you know anything about Dobson, how this comic becomes harsher in hindsight is rather self explanatory. I just want to say one thing: There is a difference between genuine agoraphobia and just wanting to be by yourself. And I think Dobson just prefers the later on average. Which is okay, but humans still need to interact with other human beings in one form or another, even just for the sake of keeping their mental health stable. Why do you think are so many people getting depressed in times of covid lockdowns, despite many having all sorts of technical gimmicks at their disposal to at least keep boredom at bay?

And by putting himself into a bubble like that, I think Dobson has deprived himself of some of the most basic human interaction, which was likely a severe factor in his mental degeneration over the last years.

It is still a valid suggestion! Just draw some cartoon characters or a nice fantasy scenario on a mural and earn yourself some bucks. Just be sure they are not by Disney or the Mouse will tear down the school!

… Just google up the words Andrew Dobson and Samus Aran commission by ED and you will see how this comic just further shows how much Dobson seems to actually be proud of being an unproductive asshole.

And by the way, I know that any form of artistic work takes time. Just writing these review posts takes a lot of time for me. But that doesn’t change the fact that people should post and create stuff in a timely fashion, especially when there are e.g. deadlines to hold up too. And by the way, Sloth’s don’t have fingers, they have claws!

And that is it.

Sorry if I missed anything folks, but I just saw how many pages in word this is already filling up, so I call quits for this part here right now. I think I made my point about how Dobson trying to badly deflect arguments people may make against his art and work ethics via jokes clear enough, while also showing some posts that are either harsher or hilarious in hindsight.

Next time we will however address one certain issue about our main character, that has been not directly addressed here. In the meantime, have a little fun video that shows hopefully how entertainment and a certain amount of comedy can be gained NOT via misery.

youtube

#adobsoncomic #Andrew Dobson #Tom Preston #comic #webcomics #syac #so...you are a cartoonist #review #master review

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florrickandassociates · 3 years

Text

TGF Thoughts: 5x04- And the clerk had a firm...

You can tell I’m enjoying this season when episodes air on Thursdays and I’ve written a recap by Friday night. More under the cut, as always.

I woke up very early on Thursday morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to just watch this episode on my phone (I write these on rewatch). I’m sure the show was hoping that the upside-down clips of fake!Love Island would be disorienting, but wow, did this work on me. Between the lack of sleep and how plausible it would’ve been for me to accidentally have my phone upside-down with rotation lock on... I truly thought it was an ad for Love Island and also had to pause the episode to check my phone settings. Good job, show!

It turns out, however, that Carmen is doing a headstand and watching reality TV on her laptop. Very happy to see Carmen at home. It would be easy for the show to have her just be a mysterious presence at the firm, so even seeing her do perfectly normal things is a good reminder that she is a whole person and not just Associate Who Will Defend Anyone.

(I wouldn’t have expected Carmen to enjoy reality tv, but then again, I love Big Brother so...)

Carmen lives in a studio that doesn’t look like it is brand new!!! I’m ridiculously excited to see an apartment that actually looks like a place someone fresh out of law school might live. I’d believe it if Carmen lived in a studio in a luxury building or a one-bed on the salary she’s surely making at RL, but it’s very refreshing to see a character who isn’t super-wealthy on this show that tends to be about, well, very wealthy people.

Carmen is smarter than every other character on this show and on most TV shows: instead of opening the door without taking any precautions, she puts the chain on first. Remember how people used to just show up at Alicia’s door when she was the governor’s wife, and she’d always just open the door and look surprised?

Charles Lester is at Carmen’s door even though it’s nearly midnight. She tries to get him to leave, but he insists on staying. She closes the door to undo the chain, and uses the privacy of the closed door to grab a makeshift weapon, just in case.

Carmen explains her apartment by saying, “student loans.” So she doesn’t come from (excessive) money. (Or she was cut off by her family, but I feel like the early character description of Carmen said something about her family not having money.)

Lester has something very important to tell Carmen, but all his notes are on different scraps of paper and, even though he says his information is time sensitive, he takes his time looking for the right piece of paper.

He says Carmen can’t say she heard the info from him, blah blah. He’s there to share that in ten minutes, someone at the firm is going to be searched by the FBI. This info comes, of course, from Rivi.

Do we think Lester has to reference his notes to remember that the FBI is searching a name partner of Carmen’s firm? Or do we think he’s fucking with her? I think the latter.

Carmen was doing exercises to help with migraines, btw.

Carmen calls Diane to tip her off. Diane and Kurt are already asleep, but luckily, Diane has her phone on full volume and takes the call. She’s not happy about it and asks if it can wait until tomorrow. Asks is the wrong word—she instructs the caller to hang up if it can wait.

Even though Carmen can’t say where she got the information, Diane knows it must be from Rivi. Seems obvious enough.

Kurt gets out of bed and starts locking up guns and getting to work; Diane calls Liz. Liz is in bed with a guy we’ve never seen before and she does not really want to talk.

Liz notes that the info also could’ve come from Wolfe-Coleman, since Carmen is “tangled up with some rough characters.”

I’m sorry, fake Netflix CEO man... WHY ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO KISS AND PLAY WITH LIZ WHEN SHE IS ON THE PHONE TALKING ABOUT PURGING FILES AND THE FBI????

I don’t even hold this against the character. This is one of those things the writers of this show LOVE doing to heighten tension. They think people behave like this in real life and that it’s funny to have a million competing priorities at once, so they insist on doing things like this. In reality, I would be concerned about any person who did not hear “FBI” and go, “um, what the hell is happening? I should stop trying to fuck rn.”

Kurt starts burning papers. Is no one going to point out that maybe being on the phone (after you KNOW you’ve had NSA issues) talking about tips from powerful criminals and asking questions that are pretty clearly about document destruction... is a bad strategy?

Dude, why are you STILL GOING after Liz clearly tells you to stop!? Do you want me to hate you?!

Liz adds Jay to the call. He is asleep and also his hallucination from the premiere is (sadly) back. I still don’t get what they’re going for with this, so I’ll just be happy that (1) there is only one hallucination this time and (2) it’s only on screen for a minute.

This dude is really chanting “Let me see ‘em!” at Liz while she is on a frantic work call! This is how we are introduced to him! This is not funny! If this weren’t being played for laughs/to raise the stakes by having a lot going on I would be calling this man misogynistic!

Liz remembers that Diane has full boxes of files! They spill onto the floor as she tries to hide them! Drama!

And then the FBI arrives, so Diane asks Liz to take her 9 am with Wackner

The FBI enters, accompanied by... Nancy Crozier! Nancy is now an AUSA for some reason!

Nancy has graduated from “just a girl from Michigan” to using her pregnancy for dramatic effect. I guess she’s aged into being Patti Nyholm, or something. (I would LOVE to see Patti Nyholm show up on TGF.)

I know the client files are top of mind for Diane, but isn’t it kind of obvious that the FBI would be there about Kurt, given that the FBI was talking to Kurt days earlier?

9 mins in is early for credits!! (This first act flies, too—did not feel like 9 minutes.)

I say this once an episode, but isn’t it so fun to see all the characters from season one of TGW pop up in season five of TGF?

Liz sees her new man, Del Cooper, in reception. He’s a client. They try to be professional with each other. Liz remembers Diane’s 9 am with Wackner and asks the receptionist to tell her when he arrives. She dismissively says it’s “Some judge guy.” Wackner is, of course, already there and watching the interaction with interest. He uses this as an opportunity to “look for the restroom,” observe Liz meeting with someone else, and walk down to the associate floor.

He asks associate Leah (we’ve definitely seen her several times before) where he’s supposed to go for the staff meeting. She asks if he means the partner meeting or the associate one—he wants whichever is more interesting. She says she only knows about the associate meeting, and so he tags along.

Leah and Lucy (the associate from last week; Michael Boatman’s daughter) talk and assume that Wackner is from STR Laurie and thus in charge of the fate of their careers.

The associate meeting is fairly small—Leah refers to it as their “daily” so I wonder if it’s more like a team meeting than a meeting of all the associates.

The COTW is about a comedian who isn’t always PC. FakeNetflix is getting a lot of Twitter pushback.

“Ah, so you’re worried about being cancelled,” Liz notes. “Don’t say the ‘C’ word,” Del jokes. Then he asks the firm to do a sensitivity read of the comedian’s act.

Liz asks why them. David doesn’t get why she’s asking, though obviously Liz knows he won’t be offended by her question since they have a relationship outside of work. Del thinks that RL is the right firm for this task because they are a black firm, and also because this can be an audition for the rest of their legal business.

This seems like it is better for a PR firm or image consultant? Not a law firm? But sure.

Diane explains the whole January 6th situation to Liz. Liz immediately understands that if Kurt is in trouble, Diane is the one representing him. Because Kurt is Kurt, I’m willing to accept the “spouses-representing-each-other" trope here. But let the record reflect that, as always on this show, it is a TERRIBLE idea to have your spouse represent you! Just pick someone outside of the firm! JUST PICK ELSBETH, KURT.

Diane asks how her 9 am went; David Lee interrupts to ask Liz why she is being so casual with Del. “David, I am on the phone,” Liz responds. I love that she doesn’t really answer him.

Leah and Lucy try to turn the associate meeting into a showcase of how great they are; the other associates catch on quickly and all are happy to answer Wackner’s questions. He wants to understand jury trials.

Nancy’s pregnancy act does not work on Judge Farley, yet she keeps it up anyway. Court doesn’t go well for Diane, but it also doesn’t go well for Nancy.

Some of these interactions remind me a little too much of Peter’s trial at the end of TGW, like this one where Nancy goes to Diane with information about Kurt.

Leah gets off the elevator as Diane and Nancy talk, and to Diane’s surprise, Wackner is shadowing Leah! She takes a moment to look surprised before we return to the scene with Nancy.

I like all the little interactions within this Wackner plot. Diane asking Liz to meet with Wackner both connects Wackner to Liz AND shows that Diane would turn to Liz for back-up, and having Wackner/Leah run into Diane in court is a good reminder that even though Diane is dealing with a pressing issue, Wackner hasn’t just disappeared.

Diane encourages Kurt to talk. She wants to know if he’s not telling her something because she’s his wife or because she’s his lawyer. This is maybe why you don’t hire your wife as your lawyer.

Kurt says it’s because of politics—Diane doesn’t like that, since this is one issue where their politics should be shared.

“Diane, this works between us because we don’t let our political judgements overwhelm our respect for each other,” Kurt explains. But... is that relevant to this particular issue?

Diane asks the same question, essentially, noting that January 6th changed “everything” for her and she can’t treat this like a “chess game” anymore. Kurt wants to know what she’s calling a chess game. She says their marriage is the one thing that’s not a game.

On one level I understand exactly what Diane is saying and on another level I have no clue what this dialogue actually means. She can’t treat things like a game anymore, but also their marriage is the only thing that isn’t a game? So does that mean she can treat everything else like a game, then? I think what she’s trying to say is that the time for seeing political disagreements as a calm and rational game of strategy is over, and that she values her marriage and won’t play around with it.

Kurt tells her what he burned—a list of people in his little group. He says he’d protect them just like he’d protect Diane’s book group friends. Oh, wow, I was not EVER expecting to hear about that arc again! This is a pretty perfect time to mention it, though, since Kurt DID protect book group for the exact same reason he’s protecting the members of his club.

Other than “winning over a new client is important,” I have no idea why Liz and David Lee would gather together a group of partners to do the sensitivity read. I don’t know who IS the appropriate person to do the sensitivity read, given that this is a law firm, but I know this is a bad call.

Oh, they are going to go through line by line dissecting each joke in a group. They get through one joke before Madeline notes that the comedian is “objectifying black men.” A black male partner says he doesn’t mind. Madeline says that doesn’t matter because the joke is racially insensitive.

Overlapping chatter ensues, and the partners try to make changes to the comedian’s jokes, like substituting Norwegian for Nigerian. This... is not what law firms do. The joke isn’t funny with the substitution, but it also wasn’t funny before. It was low hanging fruit and the correct answer is to just cut it entirely. (Also, if you’re a comedian and all your jokes are about common stereotypes of groups to which you do not belong, you are probably not a very funny comedian!)

Diane has Jay do some more investigating. Jay looks up when Diane says, “ringleader of the insurrectionists,” and Diane is just like, “I know.” Then Carmen walks in.

Diane congratulates Carmen on “hitting the ground running” and then asks again how she knew about the warrant. Diane says she’s covered by the same attorney-client privilege, so Carmen should be able to share. Carmen notes the warrant was actually about Kurt, which does not answer Diane’s question. “So this came from Rivi?” Diane asks. Carmen says she can’t confirm.

“Carmen. You have been here three weeks. You have two clients: Wolfe-Coleman and Oscar Rivi. It’s one or the other!” Diane notes. Yep. I love that they didn’t forget that this isn’t much of a mystery. It’s more about principle than anything. If Diane knows it’s one of two sources and needs more information, I’m sure Jay can figure it out.

Carmen knows she’s stuck, so she asks if she can make a phone call. “I think that would be smart,” Diane says.

I’ve noticed that Liz and Diane are both being quite firm with others this season—and I like it. They're spending more time with lower-level characters, and both Diane and Liz have reasons to be more curt this year. Diane is under a lot of stress and it’s showing in all of her interactions; Liz is making a point of seeming in control to establish herself as the leader of the firm.

Then Marissa walks in. “What is going on with your crazy court judge?” Diane asks. “My?” Marissa asks. “Marissa, I am in no mood for defensiveness,” Diane insists. She mentions Wackner missing his meeting and shadowing Leah. That’s news to Marissa.

Marissa heads to Wackner’s court to figure out what’s going on.

Wackner is now experimenting with juries. This is interesting to me—I'd wondered before how smart it was to just have Wackner make all the rulings, so exploring the idea of having a jury shows he’s thinking about that, too. Also, it’s another sign that Wackner wants his court to have many of the same structures as a real courtroom. There are still judges, juries, witnesses, trials—he's starting something new, but it feels more like he’s testing out improvements for an imperfect system. I wonder if his end goal would be to set up separate courts, or if he’s more interested in shaping laws/reforming the system? Surely Wackner has ambitions of scaling up whatever conclusions he comes to. So what are they?

The reason for the juries is that the associates told him that juries are racially biased, so he’s trying to correct it. He also explains how he ended up shadowing Leah, and advises Marissa to go exploring whenever she’s kept waiting. (I have a feeling Marissa doesn’t need to be told this, but then, that’s why she’s Wackner’s “muse.”)

Marissa notes that Wackner’s court is looking nicer—there must be money coming in from somewhere new. Wackner confirms there’s been a sympathetic donor.

Wackner is dealing with a case about NFT fraud. Marissa says she doesn’t know what that is. I’m going to assume that Marissa is using Wackner’s strategies against him (she had just accused him of playing dumb to get others to talk) because I cannot believe that Marissa, who always knows random facts, ESPECIALLY ones that involve weird corners of the internet, would not know what an NFT is.

Marissa hears the case is about $4 million, and she’s shocked because this raises the stakes a little more than even she is comfortable with. Wackner has a signed and notarized document saying that both sides will honor the verdict. It is, as Marissa points out, notarized in 9 ¾ court by Wackner about a fictional case. “About a fictional crime,” Wackner adds on.

I’m a little surprised this is all these writers had to say about NFTs! Maybe they knew that by the time this aired, the actual topic would feel dated.

Mandy Patinkin is just SO GOOD as Wackner! I’m watching a fictional show about a fictional crime in a fictional court and even I am starting to believe in his ludicrous court!

Wackner’s jury selection process involves catching potential jurors in traps, like pretending to know the national anthem when they don’t. Smart. Probably super problematic if you think about it too hard and put it in the wrong people’s hands and people start to know the system. But smart, for now.

Diane is now in the sensitivity read meeting, for reasons passing understanding. They are still talking about the first joke. Jay calls Liz out of the meeting and notes that everyone in the room is old and no one is funny. “I’m funny!” Liz argues. Diane tries to leave the meeting, and Liz tells Diane Jay’s idea about needing younger people. “Oh god yes,” Diane agrees. I’m glad she sees it and a little alarmed that Liz doesn’t! I feel like they should’ve sent the tape to everyone interested in participating, then asked them to write up (separately) anything they found questionable or offensive, and gone from there, ending with a close review of anything that wasn’t previously flagged. If you debate every single line for hours you’re going to get nowhere.

I don’t know why Liz is so concerned that Jay thinks she’s not funny? But she is.

Diane asks Liz to join her meeting with Carmen and Lester. This is a scene I’ve been waiting for! Diane and Liz are both there and so the scene FEELS important. The plot advances. And, most importantly, they address why Carmen is staying at RL!

Lester reiterates that Carmen is super important to Rivi, so if Carmen says she can’t share info, then she can’t share info. Liz and Diane do not accept this. “I am a name partner. Carmen is a first-year associate,” Liz says. “Now, Carmen is free to resign and hang her shingle wherever she’d like. She can even go and work for you. That is up to her. But while she is here, she is subject to the rules and the mentoring of this firm.”

Lester tries to take Carmen out of the meeting. Liz and Diane won’t let him: They need to know if Carmen is staying with the firm, now.

“You have a lot to learn, Carmen. And you can only do that here,” Diane pitches. I don’t think that’s exactly true, but it’s not untrue.

Here is a question I have about Carmen: she is WILLING to represent drug dealers and rapists. Does she WANT to? She chooses RL, so I’m guessing her interests lie in big law and not in aiding criminals.

Lester leaves, but not before saying Kurt is about to get a grand jury summons. Diane gets one too. It’s not the usual guy! Too bad.

A bigger group is now deciding on if jokes are offensive or not, and they’re doing so with paddles that are red on one side (offensive) and green on the other (funny). I’m sure this is going to go well.

The group sees the replacement jokes and they are confused. Marissa wants to see the original joke. Julius shows the room, and everyone laughs. The joke is funny—and offensive. Someone from the mail room notes that he would be the butt of this joke, but he finds it funny, so he thinks the comedian should be able to continue with her set.

Here is where I think I fall on this: Get sensitivity reads to get ahead of any huge issues (like, don’t be Pepsi with the ad with whichever Jenner it was who solved racism). Be aware of the potential issues. Let viewers decide what is and isn’t offensive, and make informed decisions rather than arbitrary rules about what content to show. You’ll KNOW if you are indulging the tendencies of someone with a history of making the same type of problematic jokes (for example, maybe if you are reviewing something by Tina Fey and she tries to write another edgy plot where racial stereotypes are the punchline, you advise her to not do that because, I mean, why WERE there so many episodes of 30 Rock that involved blackface??). You’ll KNOW if you are giving a platform to someone who is actively trying to spread misinformation and be cruel to others. Someone’s going to be offended by everything, and it may be a huge deal and it may not be. IMO, it doesn’t really matter that I can’t make an exact set of rules about what is/isn’t smart to air. I don’t think anyone—not networks, not creators, and not audiences—would benefit from that. Lawyers might, though, for all the billable hours...

“You can’t tell a joke without offending someone,” Jay notes. I do not think this is true! Puns don’t offend anyone!

David Lee’s counter-example to Jay’s point is Gilbert & Sullivan. Of course it is.

As always, the argument devolves into overlapping chatter. These episodes exhaust me. At least this episode has some fun with the topic of the week and seems to have more of a point of view than some of the past episodes where the only conclusion is, “Wow! Controversy is controversial!”

Marissa ends up in the mail room with Jay and one of the mailroom guys (captions say his name is Jimmy). They are mocking the partner’s ideas of comedy. Jay and Jimmy agree that the best comedy is mean. But, Jay says, now it feels like you need “a permission slip to tell a joke.” Is... this true? This feels like one of those things people who would never actually get “cancelled” worry about because their fear overtakes their ability to understand what really gets someone cancelled.

Then again, this episode was written by professional writers who would absolutely know better than I am if people are really hesitant to tell jokes.

Jimmy has started making literal permission slips to allow people to tell jokes about specific groups. Jay and Marissa are down.

Jay asks Jimmy to make a card for something so inappropriate he wouldn’t joke about it... and Jimmy prints a card that says Greta Thunberg. No one wants to joke about that.

And you know why this joke lands well for me? Part of it is that the vibe of this scene is very fun and laid back. But mostly it’s because Younger tried to make a Greta Thunberg joke this season, and it was quite possibly the worst, most embarrassing thing I’ve seen a TV show do in ages. It wasn’t funny, just mean, over the top, lazy, and never-ending. (Poor Younger. That show had an awful final season.)

Liz is still worried she’s not funny. She asks Del if she’s funny and mentions Jay’s comment. He says she’s funny, but she’s not convinced he’s being honest. He points out this is a discussion no one will win. Del ends up accidentally saying “I love you” to Liz, which is a big deal for a relationship we’ve seen for all of two seconds. Liz says they don’t have to talk about it, but Del insists on explaining that he meant “affection,” not love. I’m glad they’re talking about this.

“Then maybe we should get married,” Liz says as seriously as possible. She stares at Del and smiles. He laughs and admits that was funny. It was VERY funny!

Grand jury time! Yet Another Ham Sandwich: The Sequel: The Musical: The Series. (Am I funny? Pls tell me I’m funny and hip with the teens!)

It’s Diane’s turn first. She does well, but there’s not much to say when Nancy plays the recording of Diane phoning the FBI with the rioter’s name. I did not need the clip from last episode in here. Diane is calm in court, but rushes to tell Kurt immediately. Nancy predicted Diane would do that, so she calls in Kurt before Diane has a chance to warn him.

So, wait, Kurt thought all of this was just a COINCIDENCE? Diane didn’t tell him earlier?! I don’t love this choice, but okay.

Liz finds a joke permission slip on her desk. Julius has one too. “Did you use it?” Liz asks. Julius doesn’t understand what that even means. Then they trade clothes, because Liz does want to tell a joke about white girl clothes.

Julius suspects the cards are a way to make fun of the partners for being unfunny. The associates are also chatting about the cards, having lots of fun, so it’s clearly not about the partners.

I think now is an appropriate time to mention that TGW and TGF have both been consistently hilarious shows and have been on the air for a combined twelve years. Neither rely on the types of jokes that these cards permit. This is a kind of interesting thought experiment, but... doesn’t it say something that the shows never use these jokes as crutches and still manage to be funny? This is what I meant earlier about people being afraid of cancel culture when they’re not actually really at risk of coming under fire. These writers know how to write things that are funny. They know how to make comedy out of absurdity and subverting expectations. And yet they’re worried about how to have jokes that aren’t mean? Really?

The first laugh out loud funny TGW moment that comes to mind right now is the episode that ends with that obnoxious talk show guy trying to out Diane as a lesbian. That joke deals with identity. But it still holds up 12 years later, because the joke isn’t that Diane could be gay... the joke is that Diane DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT what this pest is saying about her on TV, and so she laughs. And because the tension of the talk show guy’s BIG DRAMATIC REVEAL is cut with Diane’s dynamic, loud laugh, we laugh with her! I’m not really sure what I'm trying to illustrate with this example. I’m just noting that you can be topical, funny, and entirely appropriate at the same time... and these writers are great at finding that balance.

HR starts, like, texting (they TEXT Marissa!!!) employees about the joke permission slips? It’s so bizarrely done that I thought this was going to be a prank.

Jay decides they won’t go to HR, and Jimmy decides they’ll delay. Why wouldn’t HR just come down and take away the cards?

For this week’s dose of Wackner Wackiness, witnesses will be fully costumed, and it goes without saying that the costumes will be as over the top as possible.

David Cord is the mysterious donor. Marissa spots him and instantly puts the pieces together. Cord explains he met Wackner on the elevator. I can’t say enough how much I like that this season has a lot of moving pieces that feel like part of a whole. Cord showed up as part of a case that caused internal debate at the firm and had a thematic parallel to an ongoing plot, then crossed over into Wackner’s plot once he was established as a character!

Cord says he’s interested in “disrupting things” so he’s interested in Wackner. I did not need the still photo of where they founded HP that’s used to illustrate humble beginnings, I guess.

Nancy mentions Kurt’s unfortunate last name—she so would. Kurt takes the fifth. Was this thing about needing a reason to take the fifth true in the earlier seasons and just not mentioned? Didn’t Kalinda and Will use this strategy?

Nancy, obviously, plays the recording of Diane reporting the rioter. Kurt conceals his reaction for the grand jury, but he’s pissed.

Diane tries to apologize and Kurt asks for another lawyer. This is the right move. I can’t be all that sad.

The partners have collected all the cards and are trying to do damage control with HR. (Interestingly, there are certain topics the cards we see don’t touch on. Like, where’s the rape joke card? Aren’t rape jokes what we usually talk about when we talk about comedians getting cancelled? And where are the jokes about minority groups (aside from little people, referred to using the PC name instead of the names that would probably be used in most offensive jokes about little people) not represented in the TGF cast? I find this little bit of self-censorship quite notable, especially given that the writers seem to be arguing in favor of not regulating humor. These omissions, which MUST be intentional, tell me the writers do have their own lines they won’t cross...)

(My larger point there, and where this funny-but-unnecessary subplot fails for me, is that this whole episode feels like a bit of a panic over cancel culture and winds up being a strawman argument. I don’t disagree with the conclusions the writers come to and I do find some of these scenes funny. But at the same time, I don’t think Cancel Culture is actually about coming after every single joke that makes fun of any person or group (if we must do a cancel culture plot, why not do one about someone who is an odious person and yet still has a following even after they’ve been “cancelled”). And I don’t think that showing HR as a very stern, strict, humorless body is helpful. I’m getting ahead of myself, but all that accomplishes is having Liz win on a point that pretty much everyone can agree on, because no one is actually as humorless as STRL’s HR department! Humor has so many gray areas and if you try to make it black and white, obviously the side that’s saying YOU CANNOT MAKE JOKES ABOUT ANYTHING is going to be the one that is wrong.

I did just remember that all of these writers have probably dealt with unfun and strict standards & practices departments, and I like the way HR is portrayed more if I try to imagine them as Standards & Practices.

Liz decides she is going to see HR so she’s seen as an authority figure, not someone subversive. But first, Liz has to meet with Del and the comedian.

Wackner and Cord are in Diane’s office. Diane’s skeptical of their alliance. She also points out that it is corrupt for Wackner to be financed by Cord and decide on Cord’s cases. This is true. Cord says he has no vested interest in any of the cases. And Wackner says he’s the “most untouchable man on earth” and quotes a song again. Yet another example of how this court only works if Wackner is in charge.

The comedy meeting does not go well. David Lee is already trying to pitch their other servicces. The comedian finds the censored version hilarious in how terrible it is, and then she starts making fun of it, loudly, and for way too long.

David thinks it went poorly; Liz isn’t concerned. David is all, “you failed” and Liz asks him to cool it and notes that David isn’t the highest-ranking person at STRL, so he should “stop the shit” and work with her. She’s already sounding more like a boss.

Julius complements her on being “Boseman-like,” which is true (though I wish she didn’t need to be compared to her ex-husband). “I know,” Liz says quietly, likely because she hates that Adrian is still influencing her this much.

Del joins Wackner and Cord in the elevator, and this isn’t the end of the episode but I’m going to pretend it is so all the episodes can end on elevators this year. It’s close enough.

Kurt’s new lawyer is Julius. Ah, yes, choose the corrupt judge Trump pardoned who works at your wife’s firm to represent you. Seems smart.

Liz walks past Diane’s office and the camera follows her up to HR. She tries to get HR to understand humor. They do not. And that’s the episode.

So, a few thoughts to conclude. First, I went into this recap thinking I’d have a lot more to say about cancel culture and the way this episode handled the debate. But I ended up liking this plot—and this episode-- more the second time around. I still don’t think this episode said anything groundbreaking about cancel culture, because I don’t think it actually engaged with the topic beyond the surface. As I noted earlier, coming to the conclusion that jokes should be allowed because we’re all human isn’t really a resolution the real topic. What about accountability? What about allowing for some jokes to be too far without taking the teeth out of every joke? What about the way people panic over cancel culture when they’re not being canceled (this episode felt a little bit like a panic over cancel culture, which is why I reacted negatively to it the first time through) or about how cancellation doesn’t always stick or have meaning? There is SOMETHING to explore here, but I don’t think this episode found that something.

Second, because I didn’t find a way to work it in above... is it me, or is it actually HELPING the show to not have Adrian or Lucca around!? This season feels so much more focused than the past several, and I think it might be because the writers (who are, as always, very good at adapting to curveballs) had to restructure the show. Lucca always had her own subplots that were separate from everything else, and Adrian’s charisma tended to overpower others’ presence (especially Liz’s) whenever he was in the room. It didn’t help that the writers seemed to LOVE writing Adrian plots, even if it meant neglecting others.

Don’t get me wrong—I love Adrian and Lucca both. But there’s something to be said for a tighter show with three main interconnected pieces (Liz/firm drama, Diane/FBI and Kurt, Marissa/Wackner’s court) that carry over from episode to episode. Like the titles of the season, these episodes build on each other.

Also, there’s the right amount of every character this season. David Lee is used sparingly; Jay and Julius are supporting players who sometimes get the spotlight; Wackner is a huge presence but his plot feels like part of the show; Carmen feels important but isn’t being given screentime for the sake of screentime; Liz is finally the type of lead she should’ve been from the start; Marissa has nicely grown into a role closer to leading than supporting; Diane remains a clear lead.

5x05 next week!!! I am expecting some Hitting the Fan level quality and at least one fan-service-y reference. (Not really, but wouldn’t it be fun?)

#tgfthoughts #the good fight

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fandomlurker · 4 years

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A Ponderous Rewatch: Bubba Bo Bob Brain and Cameo

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lab mice?...”

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

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

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

…This is also a lot to unpack.

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

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

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

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

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

“I think I prefer knee-highs…”

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

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

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

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

BONK!

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

“Who am I to judge?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…Pinky?”

The hand-on-hip pose here is great.

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

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

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

“You know I wouldn’t understand!~”

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

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

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

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

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

“You have no idea…”

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

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

Nice try, Pinky.

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

Two things here:

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

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

“I have recorded such a message.”

He’s still holding his tail, aaaa!~

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you think, Pinky?”

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

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

“Sometimes you hurt my head, Pinky…”

And yet, Brain. And yet…

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

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

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

“I just adore Willie Ray!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Egad, Brain!”

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

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

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

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

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

It’s possible Pinky’s right, though.

BONK!

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

“Stop talking, Pinky, I must think.”

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

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

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

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

“A cowboy hat.”

“Check!”

“A southern dialect.”

“Check, ya’ll!”

“Nice, Brain.”

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

“Working class values…”

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

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

“A song.”

“Check!”

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

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

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

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

“And…a height of at least six feet!”

“Aaa--guebuh…”

Whoops. Forgot about that one, huh?

“Drat!”

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

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

“Hmm, let me think…”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Pinky.”

He is trying his best!

“Faster, Pinky! Faster!”

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

Oh. Oh no…

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

“You amaze me, Pinky.”

“I do my best…”

A very cute exchange.

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

“Proceed, Pinky.”

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

“Ki-yi-yippee-yi-yo. How do I look?”

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

“Oh, very nice, Brain!”

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

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’.”

“You are my manager, Colonel Pinky.”

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

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

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

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

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

“But for now, on to Nashville!”

“On to Nashville!”

BONK!

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

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

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

“Two tickets to Nashville, please.”

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

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

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

This lady is flirting with a mouse on stilt legs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s ‘Bubba Bo Bob Brain’, Pinky.”

“Right! Sorry. Zort!”

Honestly, Pinky’s version is much cuter.

“Concentrate, Pinky, concentrate!”

BONK!

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

Brain out here looking like a bad Minecraft texture.

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

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

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

Pinky and the Brain sure is a show that exists.

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

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

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

“One can only hope…”

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

BONK!

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

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

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

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

“Right-o, Bippie Bebop Balloola!”

“…Sometimes you frighten me, Pinky.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He ain’t half bad.”

“Ain’t half good, either.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now, Pinky!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corporations be like…

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

“Let’s buy his record…”

“And listen to it twenty times a day…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRAIN!

Well, yeah. That.

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

“Haha, go on.”

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

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

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

“Hahahahaha!”

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

“How’d you find it?”

“I used a map.~”

“Hahahahaha!”

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

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

“Bubba Bo Bob Brain!”

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

“EGAD! YIPPEE! Narf! Ah hahahahahaha!”

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

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

“You’re embarrassing me, Pinky.”

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

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

“What’s he sayin’?”

“I don’t know.”

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

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

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

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

“Oh, how nice!”

“Well isn’t that nice!”

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

“In two words: Bubba is hot!”

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

Furries, come get these poor, confused women.

“You gotta know how to cut ‘em

Know how to shuffle

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

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

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

And then you die in your sleep~

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

“An angel will get its wings?!”

If only, Pinky.

“NO, Pinky!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, that.”

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

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

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

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

“The tape, Pinky, the TAPE!”

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

“And now, I’d like to introduce…”

“This is it, I’m on.”

“Good luck, Booba Bip Bop Brain!”

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

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

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

Uhh, Brain? Getting a liiiittle close there.

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

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

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

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

“Now, Pinky!”

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

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

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

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

Heh, that hand flip.

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

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

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

Holy shit.

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

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

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

“Who is he?”

“Get him off!”

“Boo!”

“We wanna see someone famous!”

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

Later...

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

“…Turn that off, Pinky.”

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

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

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

“Same thing we do every night, Pinky:”

“Try to take over the world!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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thoughtfullyyoungduck · 4 years

Text

Arcade

aquesion Summary: You can do one where Eddie has a teenage son and Richie thinks he doesn't like him?

A/N: this was requested by anon, I hope you enjoy!

An ibuprofen looked very appealing to Richie right about now. The tension building up in hos forehead and the back of his head led him to believe this was a stressed induced headache, and Richie has no issue pinpointing exactly who orchestrated it.

In all fairness, Luke, Eddie’s son, had every right to think going to an arcade was lame, but Richie was stuck with an eighties mindset and imagined the arcade being more like those times, instead of a sad, worn down building with a handful of arcade games and only five people present, two of them as old as the building they found themselves in. The man behind the counter to change money into coins creeped on every person occupying the machines, peering over his low hanging glasses and staring unabashedly.

Luke flipped the pocket money Richie dumped in his hands out on the counter, the stoic look not allowing one shift that would grant Richie the possibility of reading his emotions. He’s Eddie son, and so Richie mistakenly assumed that winning over his favor was a matter of hours, but the way their progress was crawling by, his favor might never be granted.

The money traits with a pitiful six coins, meaning a total of two games each, way less then Richie calculated in his head, and then creeper has the audacity to laugh at them, showing his grungy yellow teeth.

‘Four? I payed for way more than that.’ Richie holds his ground, recounting the aquesion again and concluding again that the coins he received are not enough.

‘More money more games’, is the only thing the man says for himself, the sentence probably memorized and routine.

Richie bristles, he’s been on edge for the better part of the day, more than ready to take on some guy in a sleazy arcade who acts like he can effort to be indifferent towards his very unattainable customers, but Luke gathers them in his palm and waves of Richie’s protests.

‘It’s fine. Faster we’ll be out of here anyway.’ It’s the most he has spoken since their arrival and it’s to express his wish to get this over with. Good job Tozier.

‘Aren’t you a comedian anyway? I’m sure you earn a ton of money.’

Though it’s true, it’s still a rip-off, and when Luke turns his back Richie adamantly flips the creeper the bird, before scooting after his ‘stepson’. Supposedly, if all goes well at least, which it hasn’t up to this point.

The comedian part is the first thing Richie messed up, by resting on his laurels and assuming that he was up to date with what the kids categorized as cool nowadays. His whole target audience consisted of teenagers, aged Luke, and so he thought he had a few trendy points saved up to appease the son of the love of his life, but apparently not.

It wasn’t even like they spewed out the fact they were dating to him straight away either. Eddie took him on day trips every weekend since the divorce, to gingerly introduce the new parts of his father Eddie had hid away, from himself too, like him being gay.

When Eddie did come forward and came clean, he excitedly informed Richie that Luke was okay with his father being himself, but that he hadn’t mentioned Richie yet.

That was normal and Richie understood, he never pushed Eddie for a meeting despite gaining excitement the more information he gathered about him. In fact, Myra told him about the relationship out of spite and jealousy, to turn her son against his dad, but that backfired horribly.

Luke’s curious peeked about Richie too. About the man Eddie renewed his whole life for, but he must not have liked what he found in Richie, because the boy hanging out with Richie now is cold.

And Eddie warned him too, but Richie was too stubborn to listen. Gently bringing up the fact that Richie needed to tame down the over sexual jabs, especially in regards of Eddie’s mother. Richie brushed that advice off, mind set on the idea that Eddie loves his joke, even when he pretends he doesn’t, so Luke must find some humor in them too. Mission failed.

Luke’s hobbies consisted of painting and video games, and Richie didn’t understand the slightest about painting, but he did know a lot about videogames. Visiting an arcade seemed fun, a way to show Luke that Richie mastered the skill of triumphing in any computer based game, but the place he decided on was a dumpster, and the machines were likely not updated since the eighties.

None of it looked appealing, the dust thicker than Bill’s smallest book, so much so that even Richie shuddered at the prospect of touching it. Luke ambled between machines with his hands deep in his pockets.

‘See anything you like?’ Richie strikes up a conversation, nibbling on the pad of his thumb to stop himself from making another joke. Luke didn’t find his last one so funny.

‘No’, Luke says, continuing his path without even bothering to look at Richie. Richie wants to asks him if he’d like to go home, knowing for sure the answers is yes, but he doesn’t want to blow the only opportunity he may have to get to know Luke, so he toughens it out.

‘Oh look at this.’ Absentmindedly, he walks over to the one game he spend his entire summer playing, street fighter, and pins down the start button, the intro song emerging from the speakers.

‘This is what I impressed your dad with back in middle school.’

‘Somehow I don’t see how that would’ve worked out.’

‘I won all the time and your dad hated that he lost to me, so he fought me again and again, losing every single time and returning next day for another beatdown. It was a good way to hang around him without seeming suspicious.’

‘Maybe you were good at it then, but you’ve regressed old man.’

‘How about I show you how good I am at this game?’

‘Bring it on.’

They compete in silence, emerged in their own players actions and desperate to win from the other. Luke’s good, really good, with his little experience of this particular game he whips the floor with Richie.

Richie obviously can’t let that happen, so he opts to distract the boy the same way he did to others in Derry, in the hopes of coming out on top.

‘Really? And you say you’re a video-game expert, my grandpa can do better then you’, Richie eggs him on, delivering a punch to Luke’s character with a hard knock on the controls.

‘I sure am. And are you sure it’s not yourself you’re talking about? You know, because of how old you are?’

Richie gasps dramatically, releasing the consoles and clasping his hands on his chest while he gasp in faux-upset. Luke laughs once, then delivers the final blow to end the game with Richie losing.

Richie gapes open mouthed, beat at his own game, the end credits blinking by.

‘Guess I’m better than you expected huh.’ Luke’s laughing now, his frown relaxed in a gentle smile that resembles Eddie a whole lot.

‘Maybe we can go again and see who wins?’

‘You’d want that? I mean of course, let me go get some more coins.’

Luke blinks, his face back to neutral but at least he’s no longer frowning. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

#my writing #reddie #richie x son #richie as a dad #eddie as a dad #but just mentioned in this story #it chapter two imagine

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mochuelovelli · 4 years

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ASOUE AU? ASOUE AU. Pt 1 (Characters)

Okay so I just posted a little doodle I did for an A Series of Unfortunate Events AU that I had been thinking about ever since I realized that Esmé was obviously Magica's VA (which was 3 days ago so oop). I don't have all the characters figured out right now (mostly bc quite frankly there aren't really enough adults that act so... neglectful towards the kids in ducktales). I'll list the ones I am pretty concrete on VS the ones I'm unsure or ones that I "reimagined" due to not everyone fitting perfectly in this world.

Characters that are Definite:

Glomgold as Count Olaf: Think about it, horrible actor/cosplayer (yes thats what he is). Both obsessed about riches, revenge and are generally incompetent. Really, Olaf is much more wicked in the ASOUE series imo (bc even tho Glomgold wants to kill Scrooge and steal his money. This anger only extends his wards if he wishes to use them against Scrooge and is less keen on the murdering of kids. Notice I said LESS). Not 100% if I want him to be as...well explicit as Olaf can be at times. Especially his characterization in the Bad Beginning if you know what I mean (pst it's child marriage)

Magicia DeSpell as Esmé Squalor: Like I said, this is a no brainer. She has the stage performance of Magicia with a bit of Mark Beaks Mom (forget her name) mixed in. Probably would downplay her love for fashion and replace it with an obsession with the occult. I would also not have her be obsessed with Glomgold, its more in character for Glomgold to be obsessed with her anyhow. It is also possible bc I tend to believe she is a more compelling villian in canon that she might take the place of Glomgold on the Island in "The End". But I also plan for Scrooges Number One Dime to replace the Sugar bowl so, maybe not.

Doofus Drake as Calmanita Splats: Duh, spoiled brat who is very creepy and probably has parents that want them dead? Instead of wanting to sing all the time he mainly wants to wreak things/people. He still definitely dresses up tho into a hodgepodge of things. It always changes and Glomgold is always annoyed by this but he likes him more than Magicia. She definitely wants him dead just like Olaf in the series (she really hates kids).

Duckworth as Larry your waiter: Yeah not much competition for this role. It was either him or Launchpad. Duckworth is too perfect for this role and he honestly will play a better spy than canon Larry. If I ever write it out a lot of the "fight scenes" and anime-esque "explaining how I fooled you" dialogue will definitely be reworked but still present. I will however not keep out the main theme of neglect or ignorance with the adults, they will still fail in that regard as always but will just not literally stand there and tell Olaf "We finally caught you, now let me explain why we are so smart oh no you set something on fire again". I mean...maybe for a Mr. Poe but not the VFD. Or...SHUSH I should say but more on that later (or in another post who knows?)

Scrooge McDuck as Lemony Snicket (sorta): Okay so OBVIOUSLY we can't have our "Lemony" have the hots for the McDuck siblings mom (yes another thing I must explain oh boy). Scrooge will still be gilted in love by, of course Goldie though I am still not 100% if she should play part of the the role of Kit Snicket (again NOT related to Scrooge) or should she be someone else entirely. Scrooge is basically the reason everything is happening in this AU just like the canon Lemony but writes sad letters to Donald and Della as well as Goldie. As you might of well guessed, Scrooge's Fortune is also the riches the McDuck's have.

Fethry Duck as Dr. Monty: Of course a snake lover will become a marine lover in this AU! Also of COURSE Mitzy will play the roles of the incredibly deadly viper AND the great unknown! Fethry and Dr. Monty not being mentioned by their family but also too enthralled with their studies to care all that much (but seriously thats fucked up ducktales). Totally made for this role. As far as setting goes this will be where the siblings will be underwater first but since the series already has plently of aquatic locals I will probably swap out the Lake Lacamose story with Peru or the Galapagos. Speaking of...

Ms. Quackfaster as Aunt Josephine: For narrative purposes it would make sense that Ms. Quackfaster would lose her edge as a brave and bold woman. For what exact reason I am still trying to figure out. Not sure if I still want to keep the "Ike" storyline, maybe she just got really spooked by FOWL. Maybe some creature from the Galapagos ate her leg or something.

Ma Beagle as Dr. Orwell: This particular role was sort of hard for me to cast due to the fact that Dr. Orwell is older and romantically involved with Olaf (at least its sorta there). I really didn't want to give this role to Owlson bc other than she isn't a bad person, she is also way too young. Ma Beagle already has a similar motivation im canon to want to reclaim Duckburg as Beagleburg so the Terrible Mills plot to frame the B for causing a fire in order to have control over the mill is very in line with Ma. I originally wanted the Beagle Boys be working in the Mill but since I am changing the setting to Egypt, I decided to use the people stuck in the pyrimid (idk what they are actually called) and will either use Amulet, Launchpad or Dijin as Cookie

Characters that are Mixed with others:

Huey Duck as the Narrative Role of Violet B.: I mostly imagined(?) the kid characters in a approximation of set characters from the books/series. For this reason, Huey plays the ROLE of Violet Baudelaire so that he can take the "inventor" occupation. I went back and forth on finding who would have Violet's quirk of using an object to help her think. My mind originally went to Webby since she has a bow and I wanted Huey's obsession with the Incomplete History of Secret Organizations to take the place of his JWG. However I reworked it so that Huey's JWG would act as Violet's ribbon with him having to flip through his beat up (and slightly burnt) journal to find a quick solution or just to calm his nerves. Something that applies to all the triplets and twins is that their last names are changed to "McDuck" mostly bc it sounds better that they are later called the "McDuck Murders" instead of the "Duck Murders" as well as Scrooges edited role in the kids lives. He has a mix of Klaus' social awkwardness and habit of talking at length about his special interests to whoever will listen. Huey is also the one who gets hypnotized in the Miserable Mill ep.

Louie Duck as the Narrative Role of Sunny B.: Pretty sure I swapped Louie and Webby for this role in my first post but whatever. I wanted to confusingly change Klaus' role into a "Charmer" or "smooth talker" (obviously still a work in progress) since I felt that Huey in DuckTales canon was always well researched as well a good mechanic and having two characters who pretty much fit the same role was... redundant. I also wanted to really make Webby's Sunny much more inline with her notorious/abnormal fighting abilities. However, I realized that instead of changing Klaus' role I should just change Sunny's characterization since I would have to rework it anyways since she was a baby. I also got the idea from recently rewatching the series and saw Sunny basically trick her way out of being trapped with the Hook handed man (i.e. Fernald). I will instead make Louie's role as what he functionally is in DuckTales (the guy who can talk his way out of anything). He would probably also say his occupation is "Defense Attorney" or something along those lines. He is also the one who gets captured the most but not by much. However while he still has Sunny's sarcasm, he also has Klaus' inherit skeptism and distrust of adults.

Webby Vanderquack as the Narrative Role of Klaus B.: Like I said in Louie's segment, Webby is changed to Klaus or more accurately the "Researcher" of the group. She is often the one who stays up late, researching ways to get out of Glomgold's schemes. Unlike Klaus though, she has more of the optimism of Violet but might not put as much belief into all authority as Huey might. She still has role models that she looks up to but isn't against bending the rules. She also unfortunately takes Violet's role of becoming "Olaf's bride" in the Bad Beginning. In the story she has always lived with the McDucks but didn't take their name and still had Mrs. B (until she was around 10, she was 12ish when the fire happened). However, she is still in the McDuck Will and therefore Glomgold hatches a plan to use her to get the fortune. She also tricks him by signing her name "Vanderduck" or "McDuck" instead of Vanderquack to make the marriage null in void. She is also a mix of Sunny since she is generally the most physically capable out of the children.

Dewey Duck as the Narrative Role as Quigley Quagmire: Okay honestly after a rewatch, I don't exactly know what makes Duncan and Quigley that different from each other. I'm pretty sure Duncan is the Klaus of his siblings but whatever. Dewey mostly just 1/2 of the reveal that two people survived the fire during the Carnival segment (which is changed to an underground wrestling theme for reasons to be explained). I am fairly certain that during the last part of the Village of Fowl Devotees I want Dewey be the one left behind with Webby and Lena that way we can have more time spent with him and Weblena/ Magicia v Lena drama. Dewey's occupation would be "Comedian/Host/Actor" . He also is the one the adults ignore during the first half and will be the subject of Triplet/only child jokes that the Quagmires face.

Gosalyn Mallard as the Narrative Role of Duncan Quagmire: Okay so like, no she isn't related or adopted by the Quagmires

Lena Saberwing as the Narrative Role of Isadora Quagmire: c'mon both these kids like poetry. Literally I can think of no other DuckTales kid that likes that (other than Webby but that was more of her liking Lena's stuff). She will still have her background as Magica's niece and might take some of the role of Fernald where he gets redeemed by betraying Olaf/saving Sunny. I am unsure by what extent though as she isn't going to be a henchperson of Glomgold or Magica. It might be that she is uses morally questionable ways to get what she wants/needs. Maybe she is "good" but has to commit a terrible act similar to how the Baudelaires have to burn down the carnival.

Characters that I am uncertain about or straight up don't have someone in that role:

Violet Saberwing as the Narrative Role of Fiona Widdershins: Like Fiona, Violet was also originally distrusted by a part of the cast (in this AU, it probably be Webby and/or Louie as Huey catches feelings lol). She is also obsessed with the occult not fungus and has to save probably Louie from losing his soul or something (wip). Violet more than any of the main cast of kids will probably act more like her canon self since she is naturally straight forward and booksmart. She probably gets forced to stay with Glomgold until her and Lena can escape again. Also since I didn't want it to be another underwater local and wanted it to relate to DuckTales17 a bit more closely I thought it be better if they were in the sky. Maybe Violet got the Sun chaser or maybe even the Spear of Selene. Maybe instead of going to look for their dads (since they are dead oof) they come back at The End to tell the McDuck Siblings et all that they might of found something...or someone important.

Boyd as the Narrative Role of Friday: This is definitely more of a stretch as really he is only Friday because in role only because I want him at the Island at The End so that he can save the siblings from whatever organic incident happens since he is still an android. I previously thought he could also fit the role of Fernald since he could go through a redemption arc easier due to him sorta going through one in the show. Its not out of the realm of possibility that Glomgold could have reprogrammed him to obey him (he might still do something similar I haven't figured it out 100%).

Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera as the narrative role of Hector: He probably won't faint as much as Hector but he will have to be pushed by the kids to be confident in himself during the Vile Village (which will probably change to a Capital city since I plan to rework FOWL into this). Maybe its similar to a military academy which makes having a set of rules make sense. Its also possible that Fenton escapes with some of the kids in the Sunchaser by the end of this.

Steelbeak as the Narrative Role of Fernald Widdershins: I mainly chose him because Steelbeak and Hookhanded man both most clearly are shown to be sympathic antagonists. They are still functionally villians, much more so than any of the children like Boyd or Lena who, yeah, have done bad things but in one case wasn't given the freewill to decide for himself or was but when she decided to stand up for herself she was literally tortured and had her freedom taken away (more so than in the beginning since. Steelbeak would, like Fernald, be making a choice as an adult man to be apart of a mad man's troop and was harden enough to commit murder if it meant he could impress his boss. But because he is not related to (by blood or otherwise) any protagonist I struggle to know where to put him. I might still have him defect during the end of what would have been the Grim Grotto ep and comes back with the Saberwings at The End. Maybe he brings Gosalyn back after finding her at some point, maybe he dies somewhere towards The End. Not sure.

Gladstone/Ghost of Christmas Past/News Reporter Lady as the Narrative Role of Mr. Poe/Mr. Poes Wife: wow this one is really confusing. My reasoning behind these picks is because The News lady would be a great pick for Mr. Poe's wife or at least a substitute as she has similar motivations in DT17. The biggest set back for her tho is that she has no reason to be on the Baudelaire case (or McDuck case anyways). Ghost of Christmas past is a bit of a stretch since why the fuck would he be in charge of making sure the kids had guardians? I mainly want him just bc of his motivation (or lack thereof) to do his job and being incompetent at it. Gladstone while making some sense that he also would be uncaring about where the kids go is also a stretch given he is a relative and he while he might not care 100% about their whereabouts he wouldn't lose them like Mr. Poe would simply bc he is so damn Lucky. Its possible to work that against him, maybe in a scenerios like where he drops off the kids but gets whisked away because some rando gifts him a boat. Still unsure.

Mrs. Beakley as either the Narrative Role of Jaclyn S (Mr. Poes Secretary/VFD spy)., Olivia C. (Librarian): I want Mrs. B to have a role which fits her being experienced and competent but also met a tragic demise. I might mix the experience of JS with the fate of OC. Poor Webby.

Justice Strauss as ???: I'll be honest, I am stumped with this one. This is a very important role to fill and I can't quite find an adult character that fits the bill of Justice Strauss. Mrs. B is too smart, Launchpad studying law while ridiculous, is something inline with the show but he doesn't have a DT17 motivation similar enough to Strauss where he's desires can be exploited nor has he really want kids in the same sense as Strauss. Drake Mallard is close since he is an actor but having him work with law is a bit of a stretch, I also think that making him somewhat bumbling is an insult to his character but Strauss is tragic since she WANTS to very much be the Baudelaires guardian but fails so much. Maybe in a safer world she could have been, maybe if they were luckier. She loves them so much, but they run away where she can't find them to at least try to be there for them and is left heart broken by the end. Whoever becomes JS is in for a world of hurt and I'm sorry. Goofy could also be a replacement, maybe Max died for more angst 😬.

Goldie or Daisy as the narrative role of Kit Snicket: This kinda gets really fanfic-y as neither of these characters really fit nicely into this role. Goldie definitely has the skill of Kit and her disregard for the rules but the pregnancy thing is... something. Not entirely sure if I actually want her to be pregnant but I also want a Beatrice II type character (of course she would be named Della II) but again very fanfic-y. Daisy I am more comfortable being the one who gets pregnant, she might take Olivias role as the new VFD recruit instead of Kits more seasoned one. All I know is that if either or both outcomes exist they will die also a Dewey Deanumont(?) Character wouldn't be the father it would of course be Donald or Scrooge depending who gets pregnant.

Jacques Snicket as ???: Another mystery for me. Functionally? Maybe Manny could play this role or even Launchpad (he really is just my go to for any character idk about huh?) Whoever it is will die but wont have a romance with the Olivia character(s). Maybe its Goofy lmao.

This is quite long enough, let me know if y'all got any more ideas. I'll edit this when I can since I am tired of writing. Please comment or reblog for suggestions and the like thx u. And please...Look Away while you still can.

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batz · 5 years

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youre just super cool and i. have post notifications on for you because you make me feel secure in an odd way and i wanna befriend u so bad but I'm!!!! nerbous,,,ALSO TELL US JR RAGGEY ANN MOVIE IDEA!!! 💞

OMG M SORRY FR TAKING SO LONG 2 RESPOND 2 THIS AAAA im just so rambley and whrn i ws asked abt the movie idea i essentially like..... froze up... my brain working 2 fast......... thinking abt Everything.......

ALSO omg u can come off anon whenever! i pride myself on bein chill (when it counts ofc..!) so dw fhskdhddjd i hope ur havin a good day..!

ALSO OK RAGGEDY ANN MOVIE IDEA again ill make a post about it soon but ill give some key points 2 it

- i want it to be 2D, but cgi/live-action works too. the medium doesnt exactly matter as long as it looks good. big thing is you never see the humans faces, the key focus is on the toys and should only Be on the toys. my voice hc for Ann would have 2 be Kate Micucci. but Andy is up in the air, rlly any weird white boy internet comedian works, like john mulaney or smthn? idk :/

- its a musical! obviously. u cant have a raggedy movie with some musical numbers. i would like it to be broadway-esque in genre but if they have 2 have a cash grab radiofriendly song in there thats cool too as long as its like... good

- main plot is a volland raggedy ann (one of the first made raggedys from 1918-late 1920s) is trying to find her brother after years of being separated. but due to being holed up in an attic for almost like. 90 years. she doesnt really remember much of him, other than the fact that they have matching tags indicating their previous owner. she sets out on a journey to find him, and its ur typical fish out of water/Im In The Future Woah kinda deal. when she does find andy, its in a toy museum, full of other raggedys..! andy is this rough n tough kinda guy, very rude and very brash. key point here is andy doesnt think ann is His Ann, kinda having this preconceived notion that His Ann would've been Cool and Adventurous. not the mousey kinda naive Ann he met, even tho This Ann is very certain that they were Real Sibs! (the brand does exist within the movies universe, so there are TONS of different anns and andys, thus the reason why andy is so skeptical). anyway shenanigans ensue, adventures are had, etc etc. the key point to this whole thing is that you never really get to know if they truly are sibs, at least, the sibs they knew Way Back When. but they grow closer n eventually see eachothr as sibs and thATS what MATTERS

- i want the moral of the story to be that, like, blood relation doesnt equate family. yea you never exactly Know if this ann and andy were 'actually' sibs but you know that by the end of the movie they are. its just a good moral thats not rlly explored in a lot childrens media.

- anns character is more similar to the 1977 animated movie, but with some. actual character. so, shes sweet n kind n affectionate, but also a little ditzy and naive. alongside that, shes rlly smart, handy and brave! shes forgetful, but adamant about the things she remembers. shes also fairly wise, in this childlike way. as her animator from the 1977 movie, shes like a wise little girl who is also 70 years old. shes like,,, v quirky fun lead, with some deep seated issues but also Gets Shit Done.

-andy is also similar to the 1977 movie, but again with like, some actual character added to him. hes a strong tough terrific boy, who's also audacious in nature? like hes just rude and obnoxious and a know-it-all. but, alongside that, he's insecure and anxious when met with Real Challenge. he often frets about remaining in Good Condition, mainly bc hes already had to get his leg reattached once, hes worth a LOT u know!!! but hes also sentimental, in a way that one would either not notice or not get to see. he takes his past very seriously, and even though he cant remember too much since, again, 100ish years is a long time, he finds himself drawn 2 what once was! so like, ur typical brave cocky lead, but also hes kind of just a big baby..!

- their personality differences definitely cause them to butt heads, and woild obv cause the keypoint in the movie where they go their separate ways. (NO it wont be the misunderstanding trope i hate those... itll probably just be an outright disagreement)

- i wont get into the actually Plot yet, bc i had too many ideas, but im certain itll lean toward either trying to find Ann's Andy, with Rude Andy™ being the sidekick. or something to do with the toy museum andy resides in.. hmmmm

- yea!!!! im being crimge but I DOMT CARE.... have a raggedy post!!!!

#frank.txt #rag sibs #long post #ask to tag #ok to rb ig!

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 5 years

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what are your thoughts on the skeleton twins

Hi! I finished watching it last night but desperately needed sleep after because I knew I had things to do this morning, and I also wanted to process it (sometimes I have to take some time to process movies, other times I just word vomit about them).

This is kind of long but I’ll add a read more later when I have the chance!

Anyway; The Skeleton Twins...I really enjoyed it! I went in knowing absolutely nothing except that Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig were in it and playing twins, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. I think, given the two actors I mentioned, I was expecting pure comedy or something? But I was so blown away by the film and the performances they gave.

Obviously I love both Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig anyway but this movie really showed their serious acting chops. There were some funny moments too, of course, but they’re both really talented doing genres outside of comedy too, and it sometimes takes me aback when I see comedians do such a good job with non-comedic roles - then again, comedy is probably the hardest genre to pull off, and so it’s no wonder they’re both talented anyway. (I’m rambling, sorry!)

{below here I’m talking about themes related to mental health/suicide, and I can’t put a read more at the moment because I’m currently on my mobile - I will be putting a read more here when I get the chance later!}

I was so taken aback though because the film starts with Milo attempting to commit suicide and Maggie contemplating it, and I guess...it’s something I have struggled with, and so it really made my heart drop especially when I saw Milo in the bathtub and the water turn red. It doesn’t show him actually cutting but we all know what happened. Without going into too much detail, SH and mental illness is something I really struggle with, even though I’m slowly recovering these days - it never truly goes away though, you know it’s there even if you’ve gotten better and it’s something you learn to cope and deal with.

Honestly, I was sort of pleasantly surprised by how well the film portrayed mental illness and suicide with both the main characters. I felt at times I should have hated Maggie for cheating and lying to her husband but I also sort of empathized with her (not with the cheating, just the whole situation and being in a huge mess), and I think what made the film was the relationship between the two siblings because it’s so real and natural, especially if you consider the circumstances when they were younger. Their interactions as siblings was so believeable too, like sometimes you’ll watch movies with siblings and the siblings are all mushy or too at each other’s throats, and it’s unrealistic. They both feel so relatable and easy to connect to, though I suppose I am kind of more biased towards Bill’s character because he’s the reason I watched it (after seeing the clip of him dancing online - that was literally the only part I had seen before).

This is kind of dumb, but as I said, I thought they did a great job portraying depression and the aftermath of the suicide attempts? Like when Maggie was drowning herself and then panicked and tried to swim back up but couldn’t - I’ve heard stories of people who have survived jumping off of bridges or whatever, and they’ve said that after making that jump they instantly regretted it. I think that’s so accurate - it’s not glamourizing suicide either, like it would have been so easy to have her sink peacefully and be rescued without her wanting it and then realize what she’s doing but instead they showed the panic, the regret.

I think what especially caught my eye, however, was the fact that Milo was wearing bracelets on his wrists later in the film to hide his scars and like...? That is so relatable, that is something I do during the summer if it’s been one of those instances, I wear bracelets and wristbands and sometimes even tie a bandana around my wrist to hide it.

I don’t know if that’s just something I do/have done and I’m projecting, or if it’s because actual research/thought was put into it, but either way it was something that really stood out to me and made him more relatable?

I can’t remember the name of Milo’s ex teacher but he can get fucked for all I care. He took advantage and manipulated a teenage boy and I think that’s important to remember. It would be easy to just freak out because omg cute gay couple but to me I just saw it as a one-sided unhealthy relationship where one is manipulative and abusive to the other who feels like they need their love, and it’s kind of depressing - but then Milo basically says “fuck that” by the end, and it’s beautiful because it’s like he’s deciding “you know what, I deserve to be treated better” - and he does, he really does. Beforehand it felt (to me) like he allowed himself to be used and mistreated because he felt like that was the only way he could feel worthy, but then he grows and develops and I think that’s so important.

I think I should also briefly mention that the scene where Maggie tells Milo “maybe next time you should cut deeper” genuinely broke my heart for many reasons - because she’s so upset and her marriage is ruined and everything is a mess, so much so that she actually says that to him before immediately regretting it. And ofc I was so upset because that’s literally something your brain tells you when you’re depressed and suicidal/self harm, that maybe next time...yeah. You can see the flurry of emotions on his face as he processes what she said, like he’s in genuine disbelief that she - his own sister, his twin - said such a cruel and disgusting thing to him like that. It genuinely broke my heart to see, though I was glad they did eventually mend things between them.

Some other things I want to mention but don’t have the brain capacity to talk about properly because I’m exhausted and a dumbass:

The Marley and Me joke was so relatable omg, I read the more child friendly version when I was little but I had no idea the dog died and it broke my damn heart, so that little joke about Marley and Me was hilarious to me

Honestly I’m talking a lot about Bill Hader but I do truly adore Kristen Wiig too, like she’s probably one of the most diverse actresses who does all sorts of genres and projects - from voice acting to drama to SNL etc - and she’s incredible in this film.

Lance was a sweetheart and I feel sorry for him? Like he genuinely loved Maggie and was such a nice guy, and while some of the stuff he said wasn’t always helpful or correct, it came from a place of caring and that’s what matters. Also he was totally cool with his brother in law who he never met before coming and living in his house, and he even helped Milo get some work (even if said work WAS clearing brush away)

The scene where the twins go out and Bill Hader is dressed in drag is honestly a highlight of this movie

Actually the scene where he sees himself the first time in drag is also a highlight

The scene where the mother is making a long ass toast while everyone is waiting to drink their wine, and Maggie/Kristen Wiig just downs her glass before she’s finished is so relatable

Okay but there’s a scene where Milo goes to a gay bar looking for a lay and just...the night he goes, of course it’s fuckin “Dyke Night” (their words, not mine!) and then he comes home absolutely pissed and telling his sister and his brother in law that he just wanted “some c*ck”, omg I was laughing way too hard. Also let’s not forget that he said the two “lesbian ladies” he met were lovely and taught him to play darts, we love mlm and wlw solidarity!!

Well since we’ve already established I’m fucking trash for Bill Hader, let’s just include that moment where his character is shirtless (kinda) in bed

That scene where Maggie meets up with some woman she knew (in high school I think?) and that woman has a son, and the son is a little dick and the mom and the son are cussing at each other was a whole new level of hilarious I didn’t expect, like I was deadass expecting this chick to go on about how wonderful it is to be a mother even when he’s a dick to her, how it’s a great gift, but nope, she knows and even says he’s a fucking dick 😂

THE DENTIST OFFICE SCENE JESUS CHRIST I HAD TO PAUSE BECAUSE I WAS GENUINELY PISSING MYSELF WITH LAUGHTER?!

THAT DANCE SCENE AM I RIGHT, OMG, like he’s so cute and happy in that scene and then she joins in and it’s so dorky and fun??

I LOVE all the water imagery and shit, like maybe it’s just because I’m an absolute geek for swimming (it’s one of maybe three sports I don’t totally suck at??) and I love the cinematography underwater, whether it’s the skeleton key ring sinking or the scuba diving or Milo’s goldfish. So much wonderful cinematography and imagery!

This film has ultimately shown me that Wiig and Hader deserve Oscars and awards ASAP

Also this is just a general note to anyone reading, feel free to recommend movies to me anytime because I’m a cinephile and love getting to watch new films!

#the skeleton twins #kristen wiig #bill hader #asks #long post #will put a read more later!!

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sanjidysphoria · 5 years

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so @julisobsessed and me watched trainwreck (2015) last night and i have some thoughts (i wish i didn't but i do)

for a rom-com it's so long?? why is it so long? who thought that was a good idea?

to be fair we only wanted to watch it for bill hader and obviously he was amazing (his hair was extra pretty) so i don't think i will talk much about him

amy's character was... interesting. not a single positive thought comes to mind when i think of her? how is that possible?

ha ha john cena gay, v funnee

(i thought making this review would be fun but you know what no, this is pain)

things happened so fast and yet the movie was so long. no character development at all. things just... happened. like amy met bill hader and they got together. almost instantly.

amy relentlessly shits on everyone disregarding race, age, sex and sexual orientation. we stan a woke queen.

her dad is "homophobic and racist" (direct quote) but apparently he was the best person ever.

i kinda gave up after the 178th joke about sex. none of them were funny.

on-going joke about pregnant women and kids and emotional bonds that are not exclusively sexual are ridiculed.

amy tries to prove that she has black friends by showing aaron a picture of her and her friend while a black waiter is pouring them water. then she acts like her phone's battery died. yeah.

mendonthavefeelings.mp3

what you NEED to know about amy is that she calls other women whores and slut-shames everyone but when this overall really nice guy tells aaron that she slept with a lot of men it's offensive. and yeah i guess don't slut-shame her but at the same time you can't ignore the fact that she did that as well. for 2 hours.

they managed to make tilda swinton look like the furthest thing away from tilda swinton.

the thing is that so many comedians are in this movie and yet it's just generally unfunny.

the movie tried to start off by telling us that she turned out the way she did because of her father. the problem is that storyline is never fully explored and she knows that her father is a bad person.

so when they try to make her look a bit better by (after having an argument with aaron she tries to leave and aaron is like "why are u leaving??") making her say "isn't that what we're supposed to do now??" it's just not fucking working. at least it didn't for me.

every attempt at a joke is cringy and bad and awful and i hated it.

she tried to fuck a 16yo kid who has a kink for slapping and his safeword is.... wait for it...

(it's so funny i can barely type)

(here it comes)

...

pineapple

his safeword is pineapple and that is just hilarious isn't it?

anyways she does this pitiful performance to win aaron back despite her being an awful person and it works and god it's finally over it was so bad i-

i need to repress all my emotions about this movie.

this movie gets 0/10 from me and bill hader gets 11/10 because he did everything he could and he was just being really pretty idk.

anyways. i know what satire is. i know racist jokes don't mean that the person making them is racist. but they are still bad jokes. they are excusable but the whole movie made me feel gross and uncomfortable.

we had to pause it numerous times, one time i started crying and we kept yelling at the screen.

i do n o t recommend it.

#trainwreck #bill hader #://#yikes #aaron conners #trainwreck spoilers #well that was a review

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elanska · 5 years

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Manhwa recommendation = Miss Not-So Sidekick

ever since reading bakarina, I've longed for lovable hilarious heroine in otome isekai that I can root for. And believe me when we said that it's hard as searching a needle in haystack, as the common problem in comedian = too many self-respect that holds you back and/or worse - demeaning other people for your joke material (you know, like in the family meeting - when your parents/uncle/relative exhausted their conversation material and use you as butt-of-the-joke. God, how I hate those........Ahem, where was I?

Ahem, so yeah, you know how the otome novel/game isekai genre. Girl transmigrated to isekai novel, knows the plot beforehands, and trying to change the outcome of her own pre-determined tragic fate and became OP or growing reverse-harem as result. There's million variation of this, all with varying title length and heroine powaaaa, but I have to tell you how I fell in love with Latte (the heroine in this manhwa)

First, true to the title of this manga, Latte is a sidekick character. She's not prettier than Ibelin (the supposedly female lead in the novel she transmigrated into), is NOT more talented than Ibelin who study serious subjects like arcane glyphs, have ultra beautiful voice, and looks so enchanting while dancing. Latte is just here to entertain us all with her antics while she's trying to have good seat to lean back while watching all of Ibelin x three Male Interest's cutscene and munching popcorn (I'm in the cheese flavor faction, btw).

Second, ARWIN x LATTE!!! damn, this is the reason I love this manhwa to death. Usually in otome game isekai genre, the heroine will heal the male's trauma/problem etc, resulting the male interest's falling for them instead. Not so with Arwin. You may come across people defining their relationship as slow burn, I'll add - 'and how it's interesting to see Arwin's struggle to free himself from his pre-destined male-interest-to-Ibelin route + how we see him grown up from elementary-boy-level of showing affection to the person he likes' on that

This will be long as it is my favourite section, so get ready: In original novel, Arwin is set to be one of male suitor to Ibelin. We don't know how he's supposed to be attracted to Ibelin. She's pretty, but Arwin doesn't even bat an eye on another top-most pretty character (Peridot Garnet), so we suspect that he was set up by Fate/the novel Author to like Ibelin. Ibelin is the perfect heroine - pretty, smart, kind. It's no wonder if anyone fell for her charm. Arwin, however, also (or more accurately we can say, mostly) likes people who are funny and come across Latte.

Have you experienced when you're writing a fic and write a situation and throw a character in, and he refuse to do what you intended to do and do something else because that's how he is? That's Arwin X Latte. One of my joy reading this manhwa is when Latte narrating that we'll see Ibelin x three fishes cutscene soon! and then we sees Arwin deviates into Latte route instead. Because she's more fun. and Arwin likes funny people y'see, it's his character. And amongst all male interests that usually written just to highlight the female lead's good/saintly trait, I find his insistence to go 'my way' is charming. One of particular example I love is where Arwin complaint he's bored of Latte's 'supposedly fun activities but turns out not' (boys who accompanied their gf to watch romance drama = relatable, bro) and make an early exit (boys = oh how I wish I can do that). of course not forgetting to also said that Latte should watch on her own (without him) next time (despite that Latte not inviting him to watch with her actually, he had a habit of attaching himself to her) and if she lonely, she can hug the doll he gifted her (Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww).

the interesting point is, something nearly identical happen on Ibelin X Arwin route, where he also forced to watch a boring play for Ibelin's sake. Which obviously didn't happen on this manhwa because he ditch the show early and chase after our girl, Latte, who surprised and make an internal monologue how Arwin is not supposed to do that, because even though Arwin is a selfish-entertainment seeker, he (supposedly, according to original novel) toned himself down when he's with Ibelin.

Truthfully, I'm not immediately rooting for this pair at first. Y'see, the first time Arwin trying to actively get Latte's atention (all dolled-up for banquet event at the time) is by childishly and selfishly messing her hairdo (Esula worked hard on that, you psychopath (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ ). However, he seems to learnt his mistakes (on the same evening, no less) and strive to do the gentler approach. And as chapters by chapters goes by, his continuously effort to woo Latte by being nice to her had win me over.

What interesting next is Ibelin's role for both of them. Latte still believed that Arwin is male interest on Ibelin's love story (and therefore very flabbergasted whenever he expressed he doesn't all interested with Ibelin anymore) while Arwin had to deal with his girlfriend(?) following all-around* and fangirling over a girl he finds boring and seemingly shoving Ibelin's all boring charm points at his face. *except to a super-boring play called 'Tainted with blood redder than roses'. Latte is not into boredom torture. **also, I think I have to make separate post regarding Ibelin-Arwin-Latte triangle relationship as this is getting rambly

Third, I love the side characters. I didn't like the crown prince (looks like narcisst) and Kenneth (hostile to our Latte, grrr) too much (well, they progressively became better after knowing Latte a bit/not too focusing with Ibelin's charm). However, I do love all side characters - Bishot, Esula, Gandalf....errr, Arobrock, even miss finger fly and Iron mentalle appearances (yes I always love phoenix-wright gag-naming). I love the gag references littered all over, particularly actress!Latte and *the genre still not change*

//By the way, am excited with new villain appearance - Peridot Garnet - whom originally had roles of Ibelin's rival and had eyes for Arwin. Considering it's Arwin we're talking about, I think Peridot will strictly doing harassing and bullying the girl (instead of flirting with the boy and inciting the girl's jealousy, breaking them apart, and so on, you know the drill). Well, Latte doesn't aware yet that she had stole Arwin's heart........but anyway, this should be fun thing to watch *munch popcorn*

#miss not so sidekick #latte ectrie #arwin hebrim

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f4liveblogarchives · 4 years

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Fantastic Four Vol 1 #201

Tues Aug 27 2019 [12:08 AM] Wack'd: So this is the last regular issue of 1978 [12:08 AM] Wack'd: There's also an annual. And also last year's annual because there's literally no room in 1977 or 1978 for it to have happened, so Marvel Wiki shoved it here [12:10 AM] Wack'd: We opened with us still being in Latveria! Okay, sure [12:10 AM] Wack'd: Definitely the outfit of a man who's planning on putting together some meaningful democratic elections

[12:11 AM] maxwellelvis: That hat looks familiar... [12:11 AM] Wack'd: But he confirms he is. He's real happy that political parties are forming and that there's "fighting and endless squabbling" because it means progress is happening [12:12 AM] Wack'd: Political parties never result in anything bad happening, ever, especially when they hate each other's guts [12:12 AM] Umbramatic: yes [12:12 AM] maxwellelvis: SupercalifragalisticexpielaWACKY! [12:13 AM] Wack'd: So the team returns to the Baxter Building, mostly because it's the only place in NY they can put the Pogo Plane [12:13 AM] Wack'd: Reed is still kinda iffy on reforming the team, which naturally everyone rolls their eyes at [12:14 AM] Wack'd: Collins is there to greet them! Good old Collins [12:15 AM] Wack'd: Even though the Four are a damn nuisance there's literally no one who wants to rent the Four's old headquarters, for fear of supervillain attacks, so he offers to let them back in..."for, ahem, a raise in the basic rent, of course, to make up for my losses" [12:15 AM] maxwellelvis: Yer a peach, Collins [12:15 AM] Wack'd: Ben is like "actually, fuck you, we want the rent lowered, a promise that the heat will stay on, and a promise of no solicitors" [12:16 AM] Wack'd: Collins...doesn't really have a choice unless he wants to keep losing money on like a sixth of the building [12:17 AM] maxwellelvis: Y'know, I think I'd take Mr. Ditkovich as my landlord over Collins. [12:17 AM] maxwellelvis: How about you guys? [12:17 AM] Wack'd: And so within the day contractors are on the scene to get the Four back in working order [12:17 AM] Wack'd: Just, uh, regular ol' contractors, apparently! Who are a little baffled by Reed's talk of "ion displacer cables" and "Negative Zone locking mechanisms" [12:18 AM] Wack'd: But they're doing their best [12:20 AM] Wack'd: Johnny maybe you're not having any luck on the dating scene lately because you're a misogynist

[12:21 AM] maxwellelvis: Frommage? Sue, I think you've been swindled. [12:21 AM] Wack'd: She means From Mage. It's a magic dress [12:21 AM] Wack'd: It's actually really impressive Johnny managed to set it on fire [12:22 AM] Wack'd: Hey hey! A good ol' fashioned Baxter cutaway. I've missed these.

[12:23 AM] Wack'd: And, for the first time, an acknowledgment that the building has two other walls on which rooms can be constructed [12:23 AM] maxwellelvis: Interesting that Ben's quarters are marked "when he's staying at the building" [12:23 AM] maxwellelvis: and also "Room X" [12:24 AM] maxwellelvis: Bet we're going in there soon. [12:24 AM] Wack'd: Ben and Alicia are living together, presumably. [12:24 AM] Wack'd: In siiiiiiin [12:24 AM] maxwellelvis: If it's good enough for Sweet Aunt Petunia, it's good enough for them, I guess. [12:24 AM] Wack'd: So, uh [12:24 AM] Wack'd: Franklin is now ten years old, assuming time is still moving [12:25 AM] maxwellelvis: You'd think that it is, and yet... [12:25 AM] Wack'd: He still has a crib. And a door that opens directly into his parents room [12:25 AM] Bocaj: Room X FROM OUTER SPACE [12:25 AM] Wack'd: But I think my favorite detail is--and I'll admit there's maybe no way to avoid this problem--there's a rocket launch pad right next to Franklin's room [12:26 AM] Bocaj: Amazing [12:26 AM] Wack'd: That kid is gonna have some sleepless nights [12:26 AM] maxwellelvis: Maybe that's how Comic Book Time gets you. It creeps in, in small doses at first, until you have something like that staring you in the face. [12:26 AM] Wack'd: I mean probably that makes a fuckton of noise wherever you put it but Franklin needs ten hours a night! He's a growing boy! [12:26 AM] Wack'd: Right next to his room is by far the worst option! [12:27 AM] Wack'd: Also, hey. No place for Agatha. So I guess we're done with her being a live-in nanny [12:27 AM] Wack'd: In fairness Franklin is back to having the regular presence of two parents. In theory [12:28 AM] Wack'd: So back to the story [12:29 AM] maxwellelvis: She might be living down the way at Avengers Mansion. [12:29 AM] Wack'd: Reed, the police exist to oppress minorities. And other superheroes...are probably fine, relatively, that's a good point. NYC is fucking packed

[12:30 AM] Wack'd: Anyway Reed is attacked by "Microbe 201-B" and now I want to see them try and shoehorn the issue number into every story somehow [12:31 AM] Wack'd: 201-B has grown a lot and escaped its test tube, baffling Reed [12:31 AM] Wack'd: This is probably why you don't hire normal contractors to set up a superscience lab [12:32 AM] Wack'd: Anyway 201-B eats Reed. Bye Reed [12:32 AM] maxwellelvis: Oh no, it's the Intruder! Everyone run! [12:33 AM] Wack'd: Ben and Sue are also attacked [12:33 AM] Wack'd: Ben by his own superscience exercise equipment and Sue by lasers and then a water main break [12:35 AM] Wack'd: Sue, honey, you spent 20 issues divorced and another ten with the team splitting up and got basically no character development. Being away from the team does not guarantee you an interesting arc

[12:36 AM] Wack'd: Johnny is also attacked. But also these are his thoughts so something big is coming, maybe, possibly.

[12:36 AM] Wack'd: Johnny is attacked by fire extinguisher foam because of course he is [12:37 AM] Wack'd: But he manages to escape by flying outside the building and manages to rescue Ben and Sue [12:37 AM] Wack'd: Sue who, I'll remind you, was attacked by a burst pipe [12:37 AM] Wack'd: And is unconscious in a pool of water when they find her [12:38 AM] Wack'd: Reed has escaped from being ate off-panel and is now instructing Johnny to go shut down the main power core [12:39 AM] Wack'd: Johnny is immediately taken out by some gas traps because obviously the main power core is booby-trapped, c'mon [12:40 AM] Wack'd: So Sue goes in after him and manages to stop all the traps with her force field. There's a sequence code to turn off the main power core that if you get it wrong it explodes, because sure [12:40 AM] Wack'd: The obvious solution is to put in the wrong code on purpose and then contain the explosion with a force field so she does that [12:40 AM] Bocaj: This is why you more carefully choose contractors [12:41 AM] Wack'd: If that's the moral of the issue I will be mildly shocked [12:41 AM] Wack'd: I totally believe any given Marvel writer would have a bad experience getting their home fixed and then write a mean-spirited story about it [12:42 AM] Wack'd: So Reed goes over the computer and finds no problems but is gonna call Tony Stark to look them over [12:42 AM] Bocaj: I like the guy but Tony Stark is the last person you should call about a computer malfunction [12:42 AM] Wack'd: Tony Stark: the best at knowing when machines have turned evil [12:42 AM] Bocaj: His whole life is a computer malfunction [12:43 AM] Bocaj: You'd think it would give him expertise but consider also that it keeps happening and never stops from happening [12:43 AM] Wack'd:

[12:43 AM] Wack'd: A few things to note here: [12:44 AM] Wack'd: 1. Yes, those were Ben's exact words. Which means Ben was making fun of "with great power comes great responsibility" like half a year before it was a thing. [12:44 AM] Wack'd: Anyone who doesn't like when Marvel gets self-deprecating or too meta can shove it [12:45 AM] Wack'd: 2. This is still a hilariously simple rationale for getting the team back together, especially since it has nothing to do with why the team split up and only addresses concerns that were first raised this very issue [12:46 AM] Wack'd: 3. Steve Martin was presumably real big in 1978 [12:46 AM] maxwellelvis: He was, actually [12:47 AM] Wack'd: 4. "The Osmond family" is still a metanym for wholesome togetherness. I don't think I need to tell any of you that's not gonna last very long, which is fine, because the Four aren't a very "wholesome togetherness" kinda group anyway [12:47 AM] Bocaj: They get more wholesomeishesque as time goes on [12:48 AM] Bocaj: At least they have a very dangerous edge in the early stuff [12:48 AM] maxwellelvis: The late 1970's is exactly when Steve Martin was at his peak, at least strictly as a comedian [12:48 AM] Wack'd: It's weird when rosy memories of a thing retroactively whitewash their sharper edges. Happened with Jiminy Cricket and Kermit the Frog something fierce [12:49 AM] maxwellelvis: Oh yeah, I remember Jiminy Cricket being surprisingly horny. [12:49 AM] Bocaj: wut [12:49 AM] Wack'd: He's also kind of a snarky asshole, too [12:49 AM] maxwellelvis: Especially to that rotten Lampwick kid. [12:49 AM] Wack'd: Most of his moralizing at Pinocchio takes the form of yelling or lectures or just making fun of him [12:50 AM] maxwellelvis: He HATED that boy. Not Pinocchio, Lampwick. [12:50 AM] Wack'd: Anyway I think the Four are mostly wholesome by comparison? Like Bart Simpson. They're never gonna be flawless role models but as time goes on and you can depict more bad stuff they slowly slide towards the acceptable end of edginess [12:51 AM] Wack'd: Like, they're closer to Mickey Mouse than Deadpool but mostly because Deadpool is waaaaay out in the deep end [12:51 AM] KarkatTheDalek: Bart isn't that wholesome [12:51 AM] Wack'd: Yeah but compared to. I dunno. Stewie Griffin. Which is a real comparison Family Guy spent like an hour making that one time. Also Cartman which is something South Park also got into [12:51 AM] maxwellelvis: He isn't the iconoclast he was in 1989 anymore either, Karkat [12:52 AM] Wack'd: Edgy cartoons love making fun of how mundane Bart's troublemaking is [12:52 AM] KarkatTheDalek: That is true [12:52 AM] Bocaj: It has the same energy as Spawn declaring that "Only SISSIES change their costumes in a phone booth" [12:53 AM] Bocaj: It immediately fills me with disdain towards the property trying to be so edgy in comparison [12:53 AM] KarkatTheDalek: But I do recall an episode where they were at the dentist, and Bart saw Skinner loopy on the laughing gas, so he went in, pretended to be the dentist, then practically beat the shit out of him before pointing the x-ray machine directly at his balls [12:53 AM] Wack'd: We're getting off track [12:53 AM] KarkatTheDalek: Probably, yes

#1978 #Marv Wolfman #Keith Pollard #The Main Book

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jq37 · 5 years

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i know you posted your thoughts on the big arguing scene in “we need to talk about pete” but i was wondering if you were going to post a full breakdown? that episode was a lot and i love hearing your thoughts on eps. ignore this if you have done a breakdown and i’m dumb and just missed it lol

**spoilers for the war of bugs and rats and we need to talk about pete**

What’s up denizens of Magic NYC? Now, I unfortunately live in normal NYC where I have to pay bills and stuff so I’ve been MIA with recaps for the past few eps but, no sweat. We’re gonna do a double feature of the above two eps and then I’ll group in the last battle episode with the upcoming episode. So lets catch up on what’s been going on in The Unsleeping City There’s a LOT to get through so vámanos y'all.

First up, we have our big bug fight in Queens, which Sophie enters with a camelback full of box wine because Emily is Emily.

“I’ve heard of gentrification but this is crazy!”

Brennan enjoys making those gross, chittering, bug noises way too much.

Have we talked about Pete’s cowboy hat? Because, for real, what is up with Pete’s cowboy hat? It seems absolutely apropos of nothing. Was he just like, “Sick,” and he decided to wear it everywhere? That seems to be how he makes all of his decisions.

“Butthole 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

Emily clocks the cat *immediately*. Like to the point where I’m almost thinking, “Did this cat exist before Emily mentioned looking for one?” And I want to say yes because La Gran Gata seems very fleshed out, specific, and intentional. But folks, we are living in a post-Avanash world so idk what to think. (Edit: The cat does have a mini now that I’ve gotten to that but idk, that insert shot could have been shot post ep so like, who knows?)

Anyway, Emily’s entire mission objective immediately becomes saving this cat she’s vaguely aware of.

“5E you crazy.”

The Cast, Knowing Emily just rolled a 25 and still has a 1d8 Bless in Her Back Pocket if She Needs It: Brennan, Just Ask.

The horror on Emily’s face when she realizes that she just called an attack on the cat cocoon.

So Emily goes off on a very Emily side quest to rescue a random cat but happens to unlock a very cool NPC–La Gran Gata–who is like the spirit of all the bodega cats out there. Sophie immediately calls upon the entirety of her limited Spanish skills to try and make friends with the cat, and succeeds.

The, “To arms, to arms my brothers!” thing kills me every time. Are all rats just Like That? Is that what they’re like when they’re out and about too?

Kingston rolling a nat 20 to literally walk across the store is wild.

Oh also, Pete failed a wild magic surge roll which just lets him fly. So far, those wild magic surges have really been working out for him.

Anyway, Bug Boss Becky turns Ricky into a “buff-ass” dog.

Zac playing dog-Ricky with almost exactly the same self-awareness (or lack thereof) as normal-Ricky is so funny. He’s an Akita and I was expecting Dalmatian but that makes sense too. Ricky, the very good boy, attacks Becky and–as a Sentinel–stops her in her tracks.

Emily does a ton of damage and Brennan, about to describe her attack, is like, “Are you still drunk?” Emily shuts down the opportunity to look cooler and is like, “I am a messy, drunk bitch. Describe that.” Emily isn’t here to be cool. Emily is here to roleplay.

I had never heard the word brindled before now and Brennan uses it to describe two separate animals in this ep.

Siobhan rolls a nat 20 to dispel magic on Ricky which is objectively good but also I would have loved for him to be a dog a little longer. Also, this moment makes me really, really want to get some backstory on Misty. Like, clearly there are some serious Fae Shenanigans going on with her and I need specifics yesterday.

Also, Ricky comes back with pointier ears and wolfier senses and I’m just picturing Channing Tatum in Jupiter Ascending.

Before I forget, Sophie, Pete, and Misty yoink magical items from the magic bodega within the bodega La Gran Gata opened up. Sophie’s is a magic ring that amps up her punches. Misty took a mirror and Pete took a grill (like for your teeth). Not sure what those do yet.

The fact that this whole fight wasn’t under the Umbral Arcana and there are people out there that remember is a little concerning for me. I can’t quite tell if it’s the sort of thing that will come back or more of a warning of what can happen if the U.A. goes down again.

Post-fight, Sophie asks La Gran Gata for mismatched David Bowie eyes like the cat has. Siobahn goes, “That’s what you’re gonna ask? You drunk bitch.” But Sophie has her wish granted. I’m sure that won’t raise any questions with people who have known her her entire life.

“She’s gonna fuck that cat.”

So the fight’s over and they realize that the Key to the City is missing which I can’t imagine is a good thing.

This brings us to the RP ep, We Need to Talk About Pete, which picks up directly where the previous ep ended.

Ally and Emily go for the exact same joke of getting Guinness’s post-fight. Kingston–as a medical professional, Vox Populi, and sanest adult of this troupe–loudly objects (smacking the beers out of Pete’s hands multiple times) and wants to know what the hell is going on with the bugs they just fought.

Sidenote: Sophie took a level in Warlock with La Gran Gata as her patron because of *course* she did. I wonder if this was the plan from the beginning or if Emily was watching all her friends spellcasting and started getting the jitters from magic user withdrawal.

Murph’s “What?” face when Emily says, “I’ll be waiting, but not in an impatient, desperate way,” is gold.

They search the bodega and find a thing of 1000 Hour Energy and Kugrash gives it to Ricky over Pete’s objections. They also find Holy Grail Laundry Detergent (Kingston pays for it), The Grill I mentioned earlier (Kingston hates this), and this bagel.

All the magic users show up. Alejandro wants an explanation pronto and everyone points a finger at Pete who explains everything in his typical, nonchalant, vague, kinda spaced out way which Alejandro is not digging at all. He starts to go off on the enormity of the situation and Pete starts dropping acid.

I’m gonna stop here for a sec to talk about how Ally is playing Pete. There are moments when I feel like Ally is doing something as a comedian for a bit. And there’s kind of a sense of, is this funny? Obviously. But what are the in game implications of this move? Like the running joke of Pete constantly being high on something is funny, out of game. But, in game, it’s massively concerning. And I’m really curious about where Ally is choosing to draw the line between doing the funny thing and doing the prudent thing. I almost said the in-character thing but Ally made a character so consistently bonkers that whatever he does could plausibly be the in-character thing. Pete is kind of a massive disaster.

Anyway, Alejandro drives home the point that Pete’s actions have consequences and have caused actual deaths at this point. Pete’s magic is internally going wonky as he gets more distressed (I really wanted to see a wild magic surge fail here but alas). But he’s still outwardly like a 4 on the giving a damn scale when the situation is a 13 out of 10. Pete is only half listening to this because he’s halfway out the door, smoking. Alejandro plans with Kingston to discuss Pete later.

Misty, always sowing seeds of chaos, suggests Alejandro stock up on Juul pods before they stop selling them completely. Kingston hates this (this is basically his mood for the episode).

Outside, Pete gets a text from Priya which ends with them planning a meet up for later after leaving her on read for a while. Pete dips without saying anything to anyone but Kingston who ignores him (and also Sophie who Emily hilariously guilts Ally into including out of character). Dipping on the conversation about how to fix YOUR mess isn’t the wisest move but Pete isn’t the wisest guy.

In the meantime, Ricky does the Twilight Bark to summon a dalmatian (yes!) to help him find the stolen key to the city. Kugrash turns into a busted ass dalmatian who has trouble keeping up.

Ricky doesn’t have the plate mail armor that usually makes a Paladin so unstealthy but he is so hot as to have the same lack of stealthiness which is one of my favorite adaptations of the game for this setting. Anyway, Ricky does the superhero thing of running through the city, helping everyone with a problem along the way, and loses the key in the Financial District which smells like death (feels about right).

Siobahn playing Misty as, “Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was Emma Lazarus,” when, in reality, she was the first person who made the connection was great. S/o to ppl who separate player and character knowledge. Misty partied w/ Emma of course because she partied with every historical figure that’s passed through NYC since she showed up.

Post adventure, people need to go to their day jobs. Misty has a +10 to performance but rolling a 3 is rolling a 3. It’s not her best work. Later, her assistant brings her holly, silver, and assorted other stuff which sounds like Fae BS if I’ve ever heard it. Misty cuts her off before she can elaborate more. I know we’re getting a secret spilling episode next time so I’m really hoping we get some Misty lore because she is being frustratingly cagey. She talks so much but says so little that means anything.

Kugrash sneaks into his son David’s house (while Emily learns a rat fact she clearly didn’t want to know) and Murph and Brennan tag team go for the proverbial emotional jugular.

Murph rolls a nat 20 on his investigate and so he gets a lot of his old files and puts together that Robert is Robert Moses–a famous historical figure in NY who I actually heard about for the first time very recently. Or maybe I should say infamous. He did a lot with NY infrastructure–especially highways–(Emily connects this to the Highway Hex immediately) and he wasn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. His bread and butter was working the system. There’s a Pulitzer winning book called The Power Broker about how he was able to amass power and influence. I don’t know enough about NY history to run my mouth off about the guy but the little I do know is in character with his T.U.S. incarnation. Also, just FYI, irl this dude died in the 80s. So, you know. That’s interesting.

Brennan, I guess: Why invent new bad guys when history is full of terrible people I just have to give magic to?

Brennan, continuing his tradition of letting people get emotionally destroyed by nat 20s, has Murph find a crushing letter from David to Kug which was never mailed.

Note: So, as I was writing this, my video timed out right at the line, “I don’t expect this letter to find you before my funeral,” which is kinda good bc idk if this is what I need at 1 AM. Anyway, back to the pain.

The letter reveals that David has devoted his life to stopping crooks like him (Kug) and that he’s mostly upset about how his leaving has affected the younger, more fragile Wally.

“I leave the letter because I’ll remember it.” Yeah I bet you will.

It looks like Kug is gonna confront Wally next ep which I am now even more excited to see.

So let’s move onto the SECOND big gut-punch of the episode. Kingston goes down to the station to give a statement about the Santa Incident. He sees a shit elemental in a lineup which isn’t super relevant to the main events but I can’t not mention something like that.

Anyway, guess what? Kingston’s ex (Liz) isn’t dead! She’s an attorney for the justice system of The Unsleeping City and she’s pissed the hell off. During their interview, he stops the tape recorder to cuss out Kingston for going on a “date” with Misty and for getting her involved in all the magical junk which means she has to do things like fingerprint shit elementals instead of being on track to be D.A. like she originally was. The way she described it made it sound like she was press ganged into it which seems like it shouldn’t be how this works, you know? Is there no blue pill option here? Also, not to be all grass is greener but I actually am a lawyer in NY (closer to Kug’s job, minus the crime) and I would swap with Liz in a heartbeat.

The fact that anything Kingston says as Vox is per se admissible is a cool detail.

Sophie fights an old man (Jackson) in a CVS and joins a monastery which sounds like a shitpost but it isn’t. With La Gran Gata’s blessing she is now a member of the Order of the Concrete Fist.

I saw the Staten Island joke coming the second Brennan started talking but it was still hysterical when it landed.

At the same time, Pete is getting knuckle tats because, sure. And he also goes to see Priya who I am baffled was with him for any length of time. Maybe it’s the artist thing?

Also, Sophie keeps postponing her meeting with Mario which is concerning to me. The story is still happening when you’re not interacting with it. Brennan specifically said when she texted him that she got no response which doesn’t make me feel good about what’s going on with him.

Ricky has three super jacked, fratty firefighter bros, all named John who are like woke as hell. I wish I could follow the dude around for a day because every single facet of his life is wild.

Well, this episode promised we were gonna talk about Pete so let’s talk about Pete.

The gang, sans Pete, meet up with the magical powers that be to discus the destruction the newest Vox his leaving in his wake.

Sidenote, wild that Sophie has been magic for like 15 minutes and got to go to this meeting.

Alejandro wants to know what the plan is for if Pete’s powers go off the rails again. Kingston, who has clearly seen Old Yeller, offers the most drastic solution immediately: if it comes to it, we take him out. (Cut to Ally’s “Yikes” face). Kug, Sophie, and Ricky push back on that.

Misty, hilariously (and also suspiciously), is mainly concerned about NY because she needs theater to keep happening. This woman is chaotic something and I’m not convinced it’s chaotic good yet.

Anyway, I already did my big write-up on this part of the episode, but I’ll say it again: Kingston is right. He’s harsh but he’s right. This is some Phoenix Force BS that’s happening and do you know how that arc ends (the OG one, not the million other Phoenix Sagas that have happened since)? It ends with Jean Grey killing herself so she doesn’t lose control and eat another planet. Ricky is too dangerous for his own good and he doesn’t seem to have the emotional maturity to care (or at least to care at the correct level). Like, he was a drug dealer when this started which is already not ideal. He caused a huge mess and then just bounced without trying to help fix it. He thought that a week was enough time for human casualties to be water under the bridge. Frankly, not considering the nuclear option and just having to figure out if killing him is something the group is willing to do on the fly would be the more irresponsible option.

And not including Pete in the discussion would bother me more if he hadn’t openly blown off every serious discussion people have tried to have with him so far. If he’s not going to take things seriously, it makes sense they don’t invite him to the serious discussions.

The version of this story where Pete accidentally gets a bunch of people killed, finds out what he did, cries about it for a full day, and then finds out they’re talking about possibly killing him is a story where Pete is more sympathetic imo. But still, finding out that people talked about killing you under any circumstances has got to be rough.

IMO, the order of things that should be done right now are (1) putting magical training wheels on Pete, (2a) getting Pete trained or his powers transferred if it’s possible/he wants out, (2b) either way, getting Pete into therapy (like, he needed therapy before he got magic. now it’s just a matter of life and death–besides just his own), (3) talking to Pete again about the stakes and telling him point blank but not in while heated that there’s the possibility of a scenario where his powers go out of control and you have to understand that at that point it’s a matter of saving as many lives as possible. Like, Kingston can say, with conviction, “If I go rogue, you should do the same to me.” They’re in the same boat. Kingston’s just been rowing longer. Well, similar boats anyway. I imagine the Vox Populi powers are less inherently chaotic. And maybe the knowledge that a nuclear option is on the table would make Pete not want the job or want him to have his powers muted or something. Cool. Then you have that discussion at that point. Just, these are the conversations that need to happen. And maybe his own mortality will be the thing that helps get Pete’s head in the game.

What jewel did Ale take out of his pocket during this conversation? Taking note of that. (Juul, not jewel. Duh. Thx thethief )

Pete gets in touch w/ Alejandro’s granddaughters who tell him that Alejandro’s still pretty pissed (which is surprising to Pete but like, bro. People died). Then, Robert shows up to sweet talk Pete and show him the video (that he somehow has) of Kingston talking at the Pete Meeting. When I was watching this the first time I was like, “How long before this blows up in their face–oh, almost immediately. Cool.”

He takes Pete to his vampire nightclub and hits him with Pete’s own “I didn’t create the demand” line that you just know Brennan put a pin in to hit Pete with that Uno Reverse card.

Robert tries to get Pete to summon Nod and then just does it forcibly with some kind of blood magic when Pete is hesitant. Pete wild magic surges, kills a bunch of vamps, and Nod (super injured by being in the waking world) teleports them both to the subway.

The group (including Alejandro) meets them there so they can catch the L train to Nod but Epona shows up. And you already know from Fantasy High that Brennan is on the ACAB train (or is that AFCAB?). Epona is now wearing a crooked badge–crooked badge for a crooked cop. She wants Nod. No can do. The gang gets ready to–to quote Mr. Cubby-make some bacon while Alejandro tries to cast a spell to summon a train to Nod (the place not the person).

So I’ll see y’all next time (whenever that is) for some subway fighting and some backstory unlocking!

#asks #bbistrashbutwhatevs #dimension 20 #the unsleeping city #d20

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Disappointed But Not Disheartened: Reflections on A Wrinkle In Time

In early 2016, when it was announced that Ava DuVernay was attached to A Wrinkle In Time, I tweeted about how excited I was for it and she favorited my tweet so I screenshotted the notification and showed it to everyone on the planet and have been anxiously awaiting this movie ever since. Jennifer Lee, one of the two screenwriters for the project, is who I aspire to be, and Ava DuVernay is, as far as I’m concerned, one of the best filmmakers of all time, and, although I honestly don’t remember much about the plot, I read at least 3 books in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet as a child and definitely really enjoyed them. (I may have read Many Waters and completely forgotten it, but I think I was just not that interested in transitioning to the next generation and so peaced out after A Swiftly Tilting Planet.) In the months before its release, I declared multiple times that A Wrinkle In Time would probably be the movie of the year for me.

Now that I’ve seen it, I can say more confidently: it’s not my movie of the year. Just to be sure, I saw it twice this weekend (and I also watched the 2003 TV Movie in between to compare – it’s not great but it’s also not, like… resoundingly worse). The second time around, I enjoyed it way more than the first, and I think it’ll only continue to grow on me with time. Visually, it’s just spectacular: Ava DuVernay and Naomi Shohan have built a gorgeous and imaginative world. Production design is maybe the only element of cinema that L’Engle’s original novel lends itself to easily, and they tapped that to its fullest potential. But something about the storytelling just didn’t quite click for me.

And before I go on, I want to be clear: no one working on this movie had anything to prove. People will frame it that way – can a black woman direct a $100 million movie? or can a little brown girl carry an action-adventure blockbuster? – but none of that is really up in the air. Black creatives have proven time and time again that they can and will carry franchises, so we can stop pretending that was ever even a question. And we all saw The Dark Knight Rises and were like, “hm, very middle of the road”, and yet no one raised an eyebrow when Christopher Nolan got a Best Director nod this year. Ava is still one of the best working visual storytellers in Hollywood (and has increasingly excellent brand recognition – any studio would be lucky to have her helm another blockbuster). Storm Reid is charming and will continue to get work. Jennifer Lee is still my hero. It is dumb that I’m nervous to admit that I was disappointed by A Wrinkle In Time, like if it wasn’t the perfect movie no one will ever try to make movies like it again. Creatives do not have to break new ground with every movie they make for their work to be considered valuable. And in a lot of ways, A Wrinkle In Time was groundbreaking.

So, bearing in mind that this movie doesn’t in anyway reflect on anyone’s capacity for great filmmaking, what made A Wrinkle In Time feel disjointed to me?

My first thought was maybe it was just a failure of casting. They apparently searched for 7 months for someone to play Charles Wallace, and as cute as he is, Deric McCabe felt awkward and stilted to me the entire movie on first watching. Levi Miller was the cutest stalk of celery I’ve ever seen but that’s kinda the most I can say for him. Everyone was charming, but no one – Storm Reid included – really had the chops to carry the weight of all the bonkers exposition this movie demanded of them.

That said, the performances felt less stilted to me when I watched it a second time – Storm Reid and Deric McCabe did have some really keen and nuanced moments, and Levi Miler, despite speaking like he’s never met another human being before, gives truly excellent face. And the adult casting was superb; Chris Pine as the affirming father of a biracial daughter seems like an obvious and sincere choice, and also ZACH GALIFIANAKIS. Clearly Aisha Coley knew what she was doing because it takes some serious insight to look at Zach Galifinakis and think, “this schlubby comedian will play the kindest, gentlest father figure in cinematic history.” No actor is actively wrong for their part, and no one is phoning it in – the younger folks are maybe just still figuring some things out.

So if the performances felt awkward but it wasn’t a failure of casting, I hate to even suggest it, but maybe then it’s a failure of direction. If these actors had the potential to perform this script well, maybe Ava just didn’t direct them appropriately. There are some moments where I think this is actually true: if you’re working with young talent struggling to create a genuine sense of chemistry, maybe don’t block things so they’re standing several yards apart as they exchange intimate dialogue. There were multiple weirdly slow, far apart exchanges between Meg and Calvin that probably would’ve felt loaded with meaning with more competent actors but just felt bizarre and confusing with these kids.

That said, I am reluctant to criticize Ava’s work here, largely because these children have spoken quite sincerely multiple times about how kind Ava was and how safe they felt working with her. When working with young actors, I think that’s the most important thing. And so if these kids felt most comfortable shouting at each other from across a football field, then fine. I’m okay with that. And also, let’s not forget: Zach. Gala-friggin-akis. Ava knows how to get what she needs.

So then perhaps there was something weird about the camera. The cinematography of this movie felt deliberate, like it was meant to create a real mood around this story. It felt like the idea was to shoot this thing in a way that was disorienting to reflect the magic and uncertainty of the world these characters occupy. But that didn’t really click for me: I mostly just felt like the camera placement was in the way. Maybe because the performances weren’t strong enough to come through, but maybe because cutting from a traditional over-the-shoulder shot to a strikingly tight 90 degree profile is always going to take you a little bit out of the moment. (There were two particularly striking moments that made me chuckle they were so disorienting: one when Ms. Whatsit and Meg’s mother talk in such a tight, shallow-focus profile shot, I could’ve sworn they were about to kiss; the other when, in the middle of a conversation between Meg and Principal Jenkins, there was a cut to a close, shallow-focus shot of his name placard, and then a very artistic but completely unnecessary tilt up as the focus racks a very tight shot of Mr. Jenkin’s face.)

Weird cinematography can interrupt the flow of even the best scenes. But maybe – and I hate to say this even more than I hate to suggest Ava’s work wasn’t as good as it could be – but maybe, I am just making excuses here for Jennifer Lee. Maybe this was a failure of script. And I do think that Jennifer Lee and her writing partner, Jeff Stockwell, made some really positive changes. I think they captured and amplified the essential relationships and motivations in this story. I think getting rid of the twins and playing around with the Murry family structure, as well as adding a lot of scenes with the dad and giving him a central character flaw, gave this story a clearer and cleaner direction than the Weinstein-produced adaptation in 2003. And I think that the whimsy of the book was captured in a way that felt visual and cinematic in this screenplay.

But it’s hard to deny that this screenplay felt a little clunky. There was a lot of exposition and no clear moment when a goal or central question was obviously stated, which probably would’ve helped me enjoy the film a bit more on my first watching. It was somewhat unclear when the acts were changing, which made it hard to be totally swept up in the beautiful and immersive imagery. The sequencing at the end is awkward – why does Calvin just watch a deeply intimate conversation between Meg and her dad? (He’s just smiling in the corner of one shot when they hug at the end and I truly burst out laughing in the theater.) What did Calvin and Mr. Murry do in the backyard for all that time when they tessered away without Meg and Charles Wallace? Why did Charles Wallace get so easily distracted by the family dog (for a seemingly very long stretch of time) when he ran into the house to get his mom? Why did Meg not laugh out loud at Calvin when he said, “Funny how it took a trip around the universe for me to have the strength to confront my crazy dad!”? And speaking of Calvin, while I think the decision to trim a lot of the fat around the Meg-Charles Wallace sibling dynamic was a good one, it sort of begged the question: why is Calvin even here? (It’s actually sort of nice bit of commentary – to help save the universe, men simply need to trust women and affirm that their ideas and instincts are correct – but it felt undeniably odd that Calvin came along when all he did was fall off Reese Witherspoon’s lettuce leaf body and then eat a bunch of sand.)

Having said that, it does seem like there were some fairly substantial reshoots or at least major cuts made after principle production, because based on the trailer, what seems like a big expositional scene got left on the chopping block. I’ve also heard in interviews that they shot and were starting to animate an Aunt Beast scene between Mr. Murry’s tesser and Meg’s final confrontation with The It. Perhaps the original script did a better job of integrating Calvin and establishing clearer act breaks and character voices. Maybe, for reasons beyond their control, this script needed to be torn up a bit and it was too late for the writers to polish the rough edges that were left behind. Or hey, maybe Jeff Stockwell took hostage of the whole thing and made a bunch of bad changes at the last minute that Jennifer Lee couldn’t talk him down from and her hands are clean! (I don’t know enough about WGA rules to totally tease out what that cowriting process looked like based on the billing – that is maybe very possible – but it’s not very kind to Jeff to just assume that about the script so I won’t.)

At the end of the day, A Wrinkle In Time did not come together for me like I hoped it would. It’s not easy to tell why major sequences got cut pretty late in the game or why the cinematography decisions and acting decisions came together as awkwardly as they did. Whatever the reason, this movie just didn’t do it for me. But even as I left the theater feeling a little disappointed, I was not disheartened. This movie wasn’t anything like, say, Suicide Squad, which feels like a project that was fought over, a project where everyone involved seemingly knew the movie was a train-wreck but also “knew” it wasn’t their fault. It’s hard to point the finger at anyone here; everyone has something to be proud of (and something to be less proud of). No sequence feels pulled because the studio didn’t trust its creatives or because the director didn’t trust her actors. It feels like a product that was made by a whole, a whole who struggled with this beast together. A Wrinkle In Time feels delightfully collaborative, a movie made by committee in the best possible way.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway, then, is that adapting L’Engle’s bonkers novel is a hard thing to do. To no one’s fault, the stakes of her story are simultaneously impossibly large and surprisingly small. Her characters speak with a rhythm that is odd even when done well, and the world she built evokes more the concept of beauty than actual images of it. (And let’s not even begin to unpack cinema’s troubled troubled relationship with Christian-influenced fantasy storytelling.)

But here is a group of people who all earnestly rose to the challenge. They made the thing. And it is flawed in a lot of ways. But as Meg Murry knows better than most, its faults are not undeserving of love.

#a wrinkle in time #storm reid #ava duvernay #madeleine l'engle #jennifer lee #zach galifianakis #review #reflections #film #cinematography #a wrinkle in time review #jeff stockwell

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