#Carmen sandiego season 4

[random-lil-illing]

screenshot redraw of everyone’s favourite hacker!! i may have gone a little overboard with the neon, haha. do i regret it though? not at all.

[chaoticriderlessb]

Carmen Sandiego Thoughts

Ok, mostly really random, and I know I don't really get on Tumblr, anymore....

But, I've recently rewatched "Carmen Sandiego" on Netflix, mostly for a fanfic of mine that's now being rewritten. I totally thought there had been a season 5, but then again, I am an idiot, lol!

I gotta say, though...(spoiler alert for those of you who have not seen the show, yet) the last half of season 4 really disappointed me. Personally, I hate it when creators or show writers decide to just make the main character evil, especially out of the blue. I never grew up or watched the original "Carmen Sandiego", but I know that in the original, I think Carmen was evil. For the most part, anyway. Even so, in this reboot of "Carmen Sandiego", I didn't like what they did with her in the last half of season 4. That was just...very strange, and like I said, I personally don't like when main characters just suddenly turn evil.

I also didn't like that V.I.L.E. was so easy to take down when they're supposed to be...what, the most powerful evil organization on the planet? They had like, over a hundred operatives or something, and even the faculty members were supposed to be pretty powerful! Not just physically (Coach Brunt), but also mentally (Maelstrom). I feel like Cleo and Bellum would've been a combo of both, especially with Bellum's tools. Out of the four of them, I would've thought Maelstrom and Brunt to be the hardest to take down. But instead, every faculty member (except Shadowsan, of course) were so easily caught? What?!

Carmen being evil was just...pointless. It didn't even last very long, and there was nothing shown for it, other than a random time-skip. I just don't think it was very necessary.

About the Gray/Carmen thing.... I'm not much of a shipper, and I never shipped those two, together, anyway (honestly, if anything, Carmen and Julia being a thing would make more sense, but...ship whoever, I guess...just don't war over it, please). So, I'm not sure how to really feel about that, other than to me, it was just weird.

And if I remember, correctly, from the last time I watched the show's finale, Carmen just up and split with everyone? Ivy, Zack, Player...did Shadowsan go with her? And what about Carmen's mom? They never found her! Did they?! I don't quite remember....

Overall, I do think the last half of season 4 was very rushed (no thanks to Netflix probably pounding on the show's door to hurry things up or whatever...because it's Netflix), and I also think that yeah, there should have been a season 5, and made that the last season. I don't think I'll be rewatching season 4, again, if I'm being completely honest. I mean, first half of it was fine, and I liked the episode with Ivy/Dash Haber (I do ship them, sue me). But other than that, I think I'll be rewriting things for my fanfic or something.

Some people say that season 3 was pretty useless, but I don't know, I liked it. To me, the different shift in tone was nice, and giving the V.I.L.E. faculty a lighter side made me laugh. I don't know, maybe I'm just easily amused by that kind of thing. I don't really see anything wrong with the 3rd season...but, that's probably just me.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for today. If you agree with me, cool. If you don't, cool but please don't get at me for my opinions and feelings. Please, respect them.

Later!

[depressnt]

Jules when Devineux shows up at her history lecture: 😒

Jules when Carmen shows up at her lecture: *stutters, ends up ending lecture having lost all composure and rushes to her office to meet up with Carmen*

[fedorah-the-explorah]

Player, waking up from a nap: Umm.. Hello? How long have you been here?

Carmen, on the floor: Four hours.

Player: What? If you wanted to chill you could have woken me!

Carmen: Oh, no. I just came here to drop off the new hard drive but then I had an anxiety attack so I decided to lie face down on your floor.

Player:

Carmen: It was very refreshing so I just stayed here.

Player:

Carmen:

Player: I am begging you to get therapy.

[cypher-unsolved]

THE BEST PART OF THE END OF SEASON 4 IS THAT EL TOPO AND LA CHEVE GET TO BE GAY AND OWN A FOOD TRUCK TOGETHER

[skipppppy]

carmen sandiego tier list: who is most likely to watch and cry over children’s cartoons?

This was less of a ranking and more of a series of hypothetical observations. Considering half the characters in this show are boomers and the other half wouldn’t even know what a fandom is on account of not using social media to avoid being traced by law enforcement

[randomfandom-3]

JULES TRUSTS CARMEN BUT IT'S NOT CARMEN OMFG I'M GONNA CRY😭😭

[one-chaotic-neautral]

I seriously can’t be the only person who visualized Sasha as a Milf?

I've recently started looking at Fandom content for tpp cause I’m finally up to date, and absolutely no disrespect to the designer, but I was rather disappointed by how different some of the designs were from what I’d imagined, so I’m just going to do maybe a few drawings of what I'd seen the characters as before seeing the canon and fanon designs, but maybe update them to more Canon compliant.

But Sasha is one where I refuse to give up the 6′2 absolute unit of a woman that I have in my head.

[youraveragecatastrophe]

Can you imagine what it must all have been like for Gray though?

Like. Picture this. After getting badly injured on your job, you get out of a long, long hospital stay. We're talking months. You don't remember any of those months. You don't even remember the accident.

So you get back to your boring little life. It's the same as it was before, but after brushing so close to death you do have a better appreciation for it. Or you try to, anyway.

And then you meet this weird young woman for whom you feel an inexplicable fondness. You talk for about 4 minutes. Later, instead of meeting you again as promised, she slips away. You think you'll never see her again. Well.

A few months later, she appears out of thin air again and says she seeked you out specifically to help with her job. You want to help, so you say yes, and you fly to New Zealand. There, everything seems straightforward until it- doesn't. It looks like you've been tricked, but for what? Then you find yourself into a situation more sinister and dangerous than you thought possible, yet you're not scared. When someone threatens the woman (your friend? It feels weird to call her a friend when you barely know her, but you feel close to her), you don't recognize the voice even though it evokes contradictory feelings in you. Happiness, fear? When you're in front of that weird bomb-like device, you don't know what it is but you know how to disable it, instinctively, confidently, like muscle memory.

Back in Sydney, you still don't get all the answers you want. The woman disappears again, but it's okay. You think this won't be the last you've seen of her. And maybe then you'll get your answers.

[inoghmia]

If Carmen and Crackle/Grey are supposed to be a sister-brother relationship, why didn’t the show known for its show don’t tell, show it? What even are they?

Before you say that it was clarified 2 times and that you prefer Julia x Carmen, this is NOT a Redcrackle post, just hear me out. I love Jules and Carmen as much as the next fan, but since season one I couldn’t shake off the weird tension Grey and Carmen have.

I’m not really good at rants and these are just my thoughts and confused feelings I’m trying to understand.

Ok so it was clarified in the beginning that Crackle is “like the big brother she never had”, and in the flashbacks of the academy you can kinda feel that vibe, it’s very reserved but it is there. They’re kinda playful and caring but not to an extent I personally would call it a sibling relationship, but I digress, family bonds come in all forms and some may be more reserved than others. However, having said that, after the academy flashbacks, it’s back to the weird tension in the train. It was really hard for me to describe it, but I feel like the fact I had to repeatedly remind myself of their supposed relationship indicates something about the writing.

Carmen Sandiego as a show is great in “show don’t tell”, the quiet representation of different relationships (lgbtq+ representation my beloved) and atmosphere and even if some aspects are stated, a lot of things are left for interpretation, or it just well shown. The best example I can come up with at 2 am is how we see shadowsan slowly become more and more a part of the family, and even if in the later episodes it’s acknowledged by the characters once or twice, we mostly see the development happen and notice it for our self. It's great writing.

Now I’m mentioning this because Carmen Sandiego did an amazing job at writing family relationships, in which we have a sibling relationship, Zach and Ivy, and they did an incredible job. Some aspects can appear exaggerated, but even I, a lonely child, felt like all their interactions and body language was one of true siblings, it felt right and I never had to question anything.

So WHY (I’m asking this genuinely) do they mess up on Grey and Carmen? You could argue that they both come from very different lifestyles, Grey lived his life presumably lonely and since he doesn’t seem to have any family bonds with any foster family, (assuming all VILE operatives are indeed orphans) and doesn’t have a pet or partner, he doesn’t seem like someone to get acquainted with others. Carmen on the other hand, has been always surrounded by people she sees as family and later on seems to love making new acquaintances. While others may see students at the academy as just that, students, Carmen may have seen them as something like distant cousins you see at family gatherings. It would be understandable if they weren’t very compatible but despite it, they don’t necessarily need a strong bond to maybe be called siblings by Carmen since everyone at VILE is, to quote Coach, family. If you look at their relationship, it truly started off the “mutual enemy” kind of thing, and and idk, I feel like it would be understandable why their vibe was off when calling eachother such endearing names. (Edit Note: I wrote this at like 2am and have no clue what I was going on about for the most part of this paragraph)

They act more like work friends than anything. The lack of intimacy that you’d find in siblings COULD be explained, seeing as Grey may never have had the chance to feel brotherly love for a longer time than a few years (assuming he even had siblings in a foster home to begin with) and Carmen being mostly surrounded by adults and therefore not having a chance to bond with someone her age. Still, personally, I expected SOME intimacy, seeing that they were at the very least best friends, which is to be fair, something we see happen in the academy flashbacks, but like only once (talking here about body language).

In the train scene there’s this tension between them, but it’s not one of seeing your best friend or sibling betray you, it felt more like a coworker letting you know HR is mad, and tbh, I was really surprised when Carmen said she saw Grey as a brother.

(Edit: this was a part written late at night so it’s a bit hasty)

Later on their relationship is hard to describe, it feels uncertain and could range from a random coworker to the dearest person in the world, it’s really confusing imo.

Then the amnesia happens and oh boy. I 100% believe Grayham had a crush on her, I mean, who wouldn’t fall for a random mysterious lady in red that (literally) sweeps you off your feet? Every time I saw them interact I was always expecting a different reaction from Carmen, instead of acting like the supposed younger sister, she acts mysterious, (imo) almost unaware to herself flirty, due to her unnecessary secrecy.

They later on bump into each other and at that point it was SO fucking hard to understand what they were, they were neither acting like siblings, two strangers attracted to each other, nor friend or enemies, the jail scene was so confusing I had to rewatch it a few times and I’m still not sure what I’m meant to understand them as.

After Crackle gets his memory back, I will say it, he acts like a past lover. In all the later episodes I always felt like I was watching two people that had some tragic lovers-to-enemies story which one was still bitter about. I’ve often been considering the possibility it may have been Greys resting fuckboy face, but idk, I don’t think that’s totally it. As I said it feels weird in the grand context of things, but I really would believe they were lovers at some point If I were to watch just the last season. Heck, when Carmen was evil, they lowkey had a power couple vibes, but EVEN THEN it was hard for me to distinguish if they felt romantic, platonic or like siblings.

Tell me I’m not the only one who sees this

(WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?!???)

Here’s my biggest problem tho:

In the last episodes, the moment Grey contacts ACME, was the first time in the show I felt like I was watching a brother fight for his sibling. Idk if it was because it felt like I first ever really saw raw emotion in him or what it was, but I truly understood the sibling implication for the first time. In the scene he’s begging her to come back and Carms about to electrocute him (side note, can we talk abt how she was willing to kill like 3 ppl), I truly felt the sibling dynamic.

AND THEN THE FUCKING HOSPITAL SCENE MAKES IT FEEL LIKE THEY WERE IDK WHAT BUT SOMETHING LOVING, IDK IF IN A PLATONIC, FAMILY OR ROMANTIC WAY BUT IT WAS LOVING AND AWISSFIOASJMDFÖIKJAGJWSIO WHY IS THIS SHOW SO CONFUSING

final conclusion:

I am so fucking confused and its 02:30 am - somebody send help

[hidden-insomnia]

Help me find a fanfic

Guys, I need your help finding a Carmen Sandiego fanfic. Here’s the details I remember:

- It was posted on AO3 around April 2021

- It was a post season 4 fic

- It surrounds Carmen coping with post season 4 events by joining underground boxing

- (I think) she climbed up the ranks quite quickly, and one day, she was paired up with someone hiding behind a ski mask

- When her opponent was told to unmask herself, it turned out to be Sheena

- If I remember correctly, it only went up to 2 chapters, or only had 2 chapters uploaded last time I saw it

[sunflowerandstrawberryspice]

CARMEN SANDIEGO? In 2024? It's more likely thank you think! Please excuse the shit quality for some reason I wasn't allowed to upload the normal pdf and I had to upload a fucking screenshot???

So my friend convinced me to watch Carmen Sandiego and since he's watching ALL of Ninjago for me I thought it was the least I could do to watch four season of a show with a pretty decent concept but uh... yeesh, don't get me wrong the show is really fun but lord have mercy does it have problems especially the last two seasons which were just so wildly disappointing to me. It went from a show with an interesting look on morals to pure pro-cop and mostly black and white thinking so quick (that not mentioning the breaking up a found family full of people with abandonment issues) it was honestly just so disappointing so me and the friend who introduced it to me decided to rewrite it! (I will not be animating nor do I plan on doing more than MAYBE a comic or art piece here and there because my chronic pain ridden ass can not handle that much lol)

The main goals are to:

1) Flesh out characters that aren't Carmen and actually give them reactions based on their lived experiences and how they might realistically react instead of what the show needed to move the plot along

2) Having characters other than Carmen be actually relevant to the plot the main one being Chase Devineaux who we're gonna kind of have as a parallel to Carmen (trust me yall) as kind of a "What if Carmen didn't have her friends/family to ground her and fall back on" but for all the Chase fans out there (gods I hope there's some other than me) he will be getting a happy ending but bro is getting put through the RINGER first

3) Have both A.C.M.E (now standing for Administration for Containing and Monitoring Evil) and V.I.L.E be the bad guys. Also just as an extra bit of fun we're making VILE a full blown cult, they were very cult like in the show so we're just gonna make it one. Both are going to be very morally questionable and while it'll take a bit longer for ACME to show it's true colors don't you worry they definitely will ;)

4) We're doing canonical lgbtq+ rep, I know the show teased a lot of relationships and really only gave yall background gays not to say thats bad but we can do better than just a brief shot of a damn taco truck. I mean like come on in a story about a young woman going against the government for the greater good why not put some rep into it ya know!

5) We're making it light sci-fi, not like SUPER high tech but definitely beyond what we've got currently, as shown with Carmen's prosthetic, and don't worry I'm doing my research as a disabled person I know how it feels to be misrepresented or ignored so I want to make sure I'm being realistic

6) PLAYER ISN'T GOING TO BE A CHILD! I don't know if this bothered anybody else but to me it was really weird that this 16 year old's only friends were in their 20s!

Alright I think that's what I'm gonna say for now, I'd love it if yall tuned in for updates if your curious since this is a passion project for me and my friend and we're having a blast writing it!

As always I am still working on stuff for Ninjago cause I could never abandon my one true love, currently there's a Pixal drawing in progress (it's giving me hell T-T) something for Cole and Geo, and something of Sora MAYBE even Euphrasia if I'm feeling up to it.

Having said that I hope yall have a great day/night and PEACE OUT!

[cain-speaks]

LMK Season 5 Animation Analysis

basically just me rambling about how i feel about the animation. i'm not going to talk about plot but i tagged spoilers just in case :3

First, to put it bluntly:

No, I do not like the look of season 5. The movement of the characters is regularly stiff and slow, the character proportions are odd, lines are oddly angled instead of smooth (like the monkey tails), you can tell they're still adjusting to how LMK does character lighting, and it's not as flashy and fun in my opinion. I think some of the sound design was a little weird this season, too (in EP3, Wukong busting a giant hole in the wall makes like no noise? Just seems weird to me). The space cracks are oddly... solid, if that makes sense? In season 4 they appeared much more delicate, while in this season they're, in a way, heavy? Also, this is certainly a personal irk, but the blended style for the tears? Not a fan. I could be misremembering, but Flying Bark made them crisp.

Having said that, it's not nearly as bad as I (and others, I imagine) thought it would have looked, judging from the trailer. Part of this is probably because they reused a lot of animation from previous seasons; which, by the way, isn't bad, it saves time and I'm sure it's a lifesaver while they're learning. It's just... obvious. Very obvious, especially because you can tell they did it more this season than Flying Bark did.

I've watched some clips from Carmen Sandiego because I think it's one of Wild Brain's most recent shows, and I think you can see the similarities. I didn't watch a lot, but it seems to me that characters are less expressive with their body language and more stagnant. They also don't seem to be super facially expressive to me, but like I said, I didn't watch a lot. Now, Carmen is a beautifully animated show! But it's different. And different's not bad, it's just... hard. Unsatisfying and disappointing, currently. Flying Bark's style, in my opinion, had the characters constantly moving. Whether it was a tail twitching, a position shift, a little expression in the background, they were moving. And they moved fluently and quickly. It really made the characters feel alive. I THINK it's also a different between puppet animation and frame-by-frame animation but don't quote me on that.

ANYWAY all of that is to say that yes, there are visible differences and they're upsetting. I hold LMK very near and dear to my heart as I'm sure many of us do, so as thrilled as I am to have season 5, it does hurt a bit.

HOWEVER.

Wild Brain isn't responsible for that. Flying Bark had a learning curve just in season 1 vs season 2. We have to give the new studio TIME to grow and adapt to the style. It's really unfortunate because now we have what feels like a very crudely animated season that I just know would have been better with the style we all know and love, but hopefully there will be more seasons, they'll get better, and we'll realize that this is just a blip in our hopefully long lives.

And to the neurodivergents: you are valid, we are valid. God knows I loathe change. I was really hoping the studio change was just a misunderstanding, but unfortunately it's not. LMK's visual aspect is important. If you decide to leave the show behind, that's okay! If you don't, welcome to the ship I'm trying to keep afloat!

Back to everybody now. Your decision is yours; don't let others make you feel bad about leaving or sticking with the show and most DEFINITELY do not lash out at the studio, because istg if the show gets cancelled from backlash I'll jump off a bridge (/dramatic).

Anyway idk if this is really an analysis. But it's something! Less than 4 days for the english dub, whoop whoop!

[depressnt]

Teacher: "you really need to unglue yourself from your screens every once in a while, before you wind up isolated with no idea of the world around you >:("

Player, literally hacking into a secret criminal organization with connections all around the world and billions of dollars at his fingertips that his parents don't know about: 🙂

[fedorah-the-explorah]

The Double Agent Caper: Chapter Six

The world seemed unreal. Distant and dream-like. She couldn't grasp it. Something was happening, but she couldn't describe it. Dreadful and imposing, frightening. The world was wrong.

[bigmilk-13]

right so I ADORE evil Carmen

but hold on a second...

what if we do a little switcheroo:

PRESENTING

(drumroll please)

MY EVIL JULIA ARGENT HEADCANONS

She was captured by V.I.L.E in season 4 episode 6 (me thinks?) to help them with translating the relics right?

so what if she was just taken and never given back? what if V.I.L.E though "oh, she's useful! she might be a good operative and be able to catch Carmen Sandiego since she's so OBVIOUSLY in love with her a person she cares about."

anyway here are the headcanons:

She was, like, off the grid (obviously) after she was taken by V.I.L.E. It was like the episode where she was taken.

She was brainwashed like, instantly after she was kidnapped. Though, before, she was forced to give away ACME secrets otherwise they'd kill her only living family (another HC: she only has a dad and a sister)

obviously, she was scared for their lives- if she was threatened with her own death she'd never give away anything- and after some torture finally gave in and just said the basics before getting brainwashed.

she became, with some training, one of the academy's best operatives in history (like black sheep was supposed to be, like shadowsan used to be)

she was still a history nerd, she still had her knowledge on a lot of things and places like she had before

she was a stealth specialist- she could sneak in and out like a shadow and never be caught.

she does ballet as a hobby at V.I.LE

she has no clue who she used to be (obviously) but sometimes gets flashbacks to her time helping Carmen whenever she talks about history

the younger V.I.L.E operatives LOVES her history rants (ha fuck you Devineaux) (no hate tho)

she started fencing as an extracurricular when she was studying in her younger years, and now when she joined V.I.L.E, she keeps getting memories back of those times

she's a better fencer than Professor Maelstrom

she mostly fights with a sabre or hand to hand (another hc: she learnt Kung Fu when she was younger and was one of the best in the country, no wonder ACME wanted her. But she barely uses it now since she's scared she'll legit knock someone out too painfully)

Her codename is Dame Noir, or Lady Black, because her suit is always black

Anyway that's it. That's the post